I just fired up the PS5 for the first time and the always-HDR interface looks really stunning! Even better, the Plex app seems super stable so far! Yay!
Just one problem, and it’s a pretty big one, Plex stays HDR when streaming SDR content (which is 100% of my library) and it makes everything look really, really bad.
Interestingly, this does not appear to be an issue isolated to the Plex app, but rather is a side effect of the ps5 being “always” HDR. The Netflix app is behaving the same way and their SDR content also looks very wrong.
Clearly, the correct behavior should be that the HDMI automatically switches between SDR and HDR depending on the source video, rather than displaying non-tone-mapped SDR tagged as HDR.
Given that this is happening with both Plex and Netflix, I assume that this is a problem on the PlayStation end, and that there’s probably nothing you can do yourselves to fix it? However, it seems like a pretty major defect/oversight on Sony’s part?! Makes my PS5 worthless for streaming my (entirely SDR) Plex libraries
Are you guys aware that the PS5 is displaying all SDR content this way? Is Sony?
Also just confirming that if I go into PS5 settings and manually turn off HDR, the SDR content on Netflix and Plex both look correct.
Obviously I’m not that keen to have to manually toggle this setting ever time I switch between playing games and streaming true HDR content via Netflix; and steaming via Plex and SDR Netflix content
The PS4 was very good at auto-switching between SDR and HDR content, so I’m very surprised to see it bungled so badly on the PS5.
Again, I’m sure this is on Sony, not Plex, but it’s an issue that really messes up the usability of your app!
That’s the impression I got from reading the other thread, yeah. But, I mean, it’s all a moot point anyway because my entire library is unwatchable without manually turning HDR off in the PS5 settings every time I want to use Plex, so I’m not using it regardless of it seeing my server or not ¯_(ツ)_/¯
So I just installed Plex on my new PS5 and it immediately hooked up with the server on my laptop, but when I try to play any video it buffers for a while and then I get the Playback Error “An unexpected playback problem occurred.”
Any idea what’s causing that nonstop on the new hardware?
I’m not sure if a) SDR->HDR tone-mapping has been greatly improved, b) my eyes have adjusted, or c) it’s just placebo; but this issue seems to have been resolved.
I noticed that HDTVTest — one of the few YouTube channels that actually knows what it’s taking about in this area — also called out Sony for the same issue, so maybe someone at Sony actually saw it and it got sorted?
