i’m so confused, if these options exist, why dont they just put them easily in the player? also, if these are the CORRECT settings, why isn’t it the default? is everyone literally just enjoying crushed blacks and it’s been 3 years and no one seems to care?
It’s a good question, though admittedly I don’t recall the explanations as to why the current setup is the way it is. I believe it may have had to do with laptop/mobile playback where the display is essentially set to full or set to a different color space entirely.
I don’t believe anyone on the Plex side has definitively jumped in to answer why a color space toggle isn’t available in the UI (again, could be wrong). My guess is that yes, many people simply watch with incorrect black levels/color space and don’t know/care that it’s not officially right so adding a toggle would clutter the UI. It’s likely just assumed that people who calibrate their displays likely have the know-how to setup a conf file to toggle the RGB levels. That statement isn’t trying to bash anyone either–as with anything, there are myriad ways to experience content and proper calibration isn’t required, or essential, for a lot of viewers nowadays. However, my view is that any piece of media software should aspire to correct output (per the industry), rather than sacrificing it for UX. Why have standards if they’re not followed?
With many TVs containing an Auto setting for color space/output levels, they might simply end up with a Full–>Full–>Full chain where WtW and BtB are clipped, but otherwise things are “right”.
MPV is a great player, and they are doing some cool work with external shaders that should further improve upscaling and playback quality. When Plex Media Player rolled out with MPV as its playback engine I was excited, but have since switched to MadVR. MadVR’s rendering quality is personally compelling enough for me to run the clunky-as-hell (Windows 10) setup of Kodi + Plex Addon + MadVR running in an external player (MPC-BE).
I’ve been holding out hope for external player support in PMP, but don’t think that’s something the devs are remotely interested in. Anyway, sorry for that deep, off-topic dive, but hope that video levels tag change gets you setup the way you need. Enjoy the correct RGB levels!
