I think this is something that bugs me the most recently about Plex. How can you call this an ultimate media library solution in 2020 when it does not support HDR. If you have a proper 4k library with HDR10 or Dolby Vision you might have the same issue as me. No matter what i use to play the media either a browser, windows app, android app, app on Samsung Tizen or Xiaomi Mi Box the colors of the HDR contents are washed out and the HDR is off.
This is a huge problem and a huge minus for not using Plex at all in my opinion especially for high quality image enthusiasts like myself. This has been brought up so many times over the time and still the only way to watch HDR is a complicated and very unconvinient Kodi setup with a lot of plugins or (as I heard) on expensive Nvidia Shield. Can we finally have a resolution for this problem on most common platforms at least (so Windows and AndroidTV?).
In my honest opinion this should had been resolved 2 years ago and should not even land as a suggestion, but out of desperation again here I am.
Not true. Multiple Plex clients support HDR video.
Plex SmartTV apps, Samsung Tizen & LG WebOS, both support playback of HDR video. Certain device limitations must be taken into account. Enabling image based subtitles (PGS, VOBSUB) forces a video transcode, which kills HDR. Enabling text subtitles when audio is transcoding has the same effect.
AndroidTV based TVs, such as Sony, support playback of HDR video.
AndroidTV based streaming boxes/sticks, such as the Amazon FireTV 4K and Nvidia Shield support playback of HDR video. Note that due to manufacturer limitations, not all AndroidTV streaming devices support playback of HDR video.
The AppleTV 4K and many Roku devices support playback of HDR video.
Plex Web does not support HDR due to browser, not Plex, limitations.
Plex Media Player and Plex for Windows/Mac both direct play HDR video. Both perform HDR → SDR tonemapping. Granted, they do not output HDR video, but neither will you see washed out colors.
Ok you say that Samsung app supports HDR, none of my 20 4k HDR movies play on that Samsung in HDR even though things like Netflix and YouTube work with HDR flawlessly. Why is that then? I was unsuccesful to watch any HDR content so far on Plex on any device.
With no other users streaming, play a 4K HDR movie with subtitles disabled. Let it play for 30 - 60 seconds, so the logs can capture the problem.
What is shown in Plex Dashboard -> Now Playing during playback? Is the video and/or audio transcoding?
Stop playback, wait 1 minute for the server to settle.
Pull the log files. Attach the entire zip file to the thread.
Also include the XML information for the movie you played. See Investigate Media Information and Formats for details. Attach the information as a .txt or .zip. The forum does not support .xml attachments.
