So I just got a 65nu8000 Samsung TV. I have windows set to use hdr and I’m direct playing HEVC hdr files. But I’m not sure if it’s actually displaying the hdr correctly? It doesn’t look as if it is. Any ideas? The tv says hdr but as soon as I enable it in Windows it says that so I’m not sure I can trust it. Thank you so much!
I could hook up my shield and play the same content to check as I’ve seen that it does hdr better. I guess but my shield is my bedroom device
HDR through computers is currently a very sad affair. There is almost nothing that works.
No matter which OS you are using.
From what I remember, Windows doesn’t even have support for HDR on the OS level.
Windows does have hdr support as of the latest update at the OS level but it’s pretty garbage. Hopefully they get it working. Plex won’t display hdr properly it tone maps it to sdr. I took my shield to the living room and it plays 4k hdr flawlessly. Looks so good!!
This is completely false. Windows Film and Tv has played HDR for ages. MPC Classic and MadVR have supported HDR since 2017. The latest version of Windows fixes the SDR washout issue.
Many of us have been asking about HDR support in MPV player for a long time. It’s extremely frustrating to have to load up another program to play a now industry standard video file.
I am glad I can play them on the shield, but yeah I would love to be able to use PMP. windows has no issues playing 4k HDR videos on youtube and HDR gaming works just fine. and yeah I just got the latest update (1809) and SDR content looks great now when turning on HDR at the OS level
“HDR through computers is currently a very sad affair.” Oh no, it is actually a happy affair. A complicated affair maybe, but for me it has worked first time & straight away. You hook your Win10 PC to an HDR UHD display and turn on HDR in control panel Display Settings. (At NVIDIA control panel level, I am feeding 2160p30 12bit 4:2:2 to the display, an LG OLED.) And then I play PMP (TV interface full screen) on that and direct play 4K HDR MKVs in PMP no prob, great/proper color, it’s beautiful. (Yes, I have confirmed direct play and BT2020 at the display’s level.) Good job Plex, or Microsoft, or somebody. But bad job, Plex, on HDR->SDR at the server level however. Let’s fix that one day.
@scarbrtj how can you tell that Windows 10 PMP is actually able handle HDR? I would also like to test if HDR is properly handled but how can you do this? When you enable HDR in Windows 10 it is just enabled … it does not “disable” or “enable” itself when playing movie through PMP. Do you have some video clips samples where I could easily distinguish weather HDR is handled and processed or not?
@vonkobalus exactly, you are right. i have the same problem. plex on windows is not good for watching hdr content. all other apps/devices work well. when you turn on hdr on window tv shows that you have hdr all the time even your desktop there is no difference between sdr and hdr contenct, worst is hdr content looks horrible, blacks are grey colors are washed out. and my tv is calibrated af9 cant be sth wrong with the tv. when you turn of hdr on windows hdr content is more like hdr but the tv is not showing hdr. if you use internal tv app (which cant passthrough dolby truehd over earc, another problem) you get proper hdr with rich color and super brightness.
people here saying that windows hdr on version of hdr movies on plex they havent checked any other app or device. there is a huuuuuuuuge difference.
I don’t think it’s been mentioned yet, but MPV (PMP’s playback engine) does not support HDR passthrough. They have opted for a tone mapping approach to handle both SDR and HDR content rather than using the GPU and TV HDR modes.
There’s quite a bit of info on this topic contained in MPV’s Github page, with two of the “big” threads on HDR below:
Issue 6405 (check out the user Doofussy2’s posts as well as his discussion on the emby forums about the tweaks you can make to improve HDR tonemapping in MPV).
HDR on HTPCs is still an ugly hodgepodge–it’s a complicated topic and developers have taken myriad approaches to finding an acceptable solution. PMP with properly tweaked settings in the mpv.conf file should give good tonemapping results.
…When it comes to tonemapping though, I don’t know if anyone has come close to what Madshi has done with MadVR. I personally use passthrough via MadVR in Kodi DSPlayer (using the PMP add-on), but know a ton of people on doom9 swear by its tonemapping. MPV’s devs appear dedicated to improving their tonemapping algorithms, so the gap may narrow in the future. Plex appears to outsource all video playback decisions to MPV and place it on the user to figure out what works and what doesn’t. At that point, you’re better off using MadVR.
I can confirm that my LG OLED hooked up to my TV from a Win10PC with a 1050Ti NVIDIA card running 12bit 4:2:0 at 2160p30 with HDR turned on in windows passes BT2020 to the TV. When an HDR movie is played in PMP the TV then further confirms with an “HDR” notification and confirms an HDR BT2020 signal. When the movie is turned off, HDR goes away. This seems to work seamlessly and properly, just like it does for an NVIDIA shield hooked up to the TV. (And PMS confirms DirectPlay in both cases. Of course the advantage for a Win10PC is that it will directplay PGS along with HDR video, no PMS transcode necessary, if the file contains subs.)
That’s part of the problem–watching a movie with Windows 10 HDR enabled is not the same as having a proper HDR video pipeline, at least in my own testing.
To ensure I haven’t missed anything in PMP’s recent updates, I just flipped on Windows’ HDR mode, then opened PMP and played an HDR movie. This setup looks measurably worse than watching that same movie in Kodi DSPlayer via the PMP add-on. That setup uses a 3rd party app (MadVR) to pass HDR metadata directly to the display in Nvidia’s own HDR mode. There’s a noticeable improvement with MadVR (ignoring the scaling algorithms as those are a separate discussion). Both setups show HDR mode on the TV, yet only one of them is handling HDR properly.
If it’s working for you, then you’re set. I’m just saying it usually takes a good amount of tweaking to get things to “just work” as far as Windows and HDR go right now. My experience may differ with others though, so maybe I’m missing something. I’ve never regularly used Windows HDR mode as it has, well, never done anything positive for HDR on a HTPC in my testing. Maybe that’ll change, but I have a feeling either tonemapping or triggering HDR via the GPU driver will be the main methods for some time.
Here are some general observations
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