UHD Color Support in Catalina

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UHD Color Support in Catalina

So I have a shiny new EXPENSIVE Mac Pro 7,1 and sitting right next to it is my older 2013 Trashcan model Mac Pro 6,1 running Mojave. I was running the Mac Pro 6,1 via a Club3D HDMI 2.0 adapter to my Samsung UHD 40" TV as a display which has always ran perfectly at 4K resolution. The text is crisp, 60hz refresh rate and color was as expected.

I now take that exact same HDMI cable which is still plugged into the same port of the Samsung display and plug it into my new Mac Pro 7,1 with W5700X GPU and at 60hz the color is noticably worse and the text is slightly blurred. I have also tried via the newer genuine apple USBC>HDMI adapter as well as a USBC>HDMI Club3D 4K adapter.

If I change the refresh rate to an unusable 30hz then I get the colour and sharpness back, but changing it to 60hz looks poor.

IT IS NOT FONT SMOOTHING or HDR!!!, so please dont keep suggesting this.

It is 100% an issue within Catalina. It has some sort of issue outputting full RGB 4:4:4 color and is stuck outputting heavily compressed YCBCR 4:4:4.

There is no variable in my setup other than Catalina. The internet is flooded with hundreds of users having these types of display issues exclusive to Catalina, which is nearing on a full year old now.

How can this be fixed?

Mac Pro

Posted on Aug 7, 2020 2:42 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

VikingOSX

Community+ 2024

Level 10

116,615 points

Aug 7, 2020 9:26 AM in response to bs44

There are big hardware and GPU differences between the 2013 Mac Pro and the new Mac Pro. There is no guarantee from Apple that your new Mac Pro will integrate to your satisfaction with that 40 inch Samsung TV (which may or may not provide its own firmware updates). Few of us have the new Mac Pro and TV combination to help you further deduce resolution.

I recommend that you use your 90 days of free Apple phone support, and adamantly request a supervisor escalate this to the appropriate engineering teams. Establish some date deliverable out of each communication with Apple to keep the appropriate feet in the fire.

Or… that Kurt Lang has the answer.

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Answer 2

Aug 7, 2020 8:55 AM in response to bs44

bs44 wrote:

...There is no variable in my setup other than Catalina. ...

You have 2 totally different computers with two vastly different graphics

cards. You have not compared Catalina to Catalina on the two different

machines to determine that it is in fact Catalina.

Generally, HDMI connections have been problematic for a very

long time across the whole spectrum of Macs and tends to

be random even among the same model Macs with a

common "Gee, I don't know why your's doesn't work? Mine

works fine" among the responses. BTW, it is not just Macs

either. One sees just as many issues with Windows machines.

It seems the only truly reliable 4K interface is Display Port 1.2 or 1.4.

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Answer 3

Kurt Lang

Level 9

62,106 points

Aug 7, 2020 9:12 AM in response to woodmeister50

It seems the only truly reliable 4K interface is Display Port 1.2 or 1.4.

Exactly. HDMI is not, and never has been meant to be used as an RGB computer interface. It's there for video experts who use DisplayPort to their computer monitor for the software interface (Avid, Premiere Pro, Final Cut, etc.), and the HDMI out to an HD TV to see how the video they're editing will display on an actual TV, which uses a different color space.

HDMI used to work fine in the Mac OS. But way back (Mountain Lion?), Apple decided that HDMI should not be a computer signal. Many, many users suddenly found the only output they could get to a computer monitor was an HD 1920 x 1080 TV resolution, no matter how much higher a resolution the monitor supported.

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Answer 4

bs44 Author

Level 1

12 points

Aug 7, 2020 9:37 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for reply, yeah am aware that there is differences between old and new, but there seems to be a large number of people who have all had issues moving to catalina and HDMI. To say HDMI is totaly outdated for monitors is understandable, but HDMI 2.0 has enough bandwidth to output 4K/60hz 4:4:4 (no HDR needed) for what I need just as a large display. Im in Audio production so I am not after a super accurate colour reference monitor or anything like that for video or photo editing, I only use a larger UHD TV as I am required to sit further back from the monitor in my studio setup and it has always worked perfectly well. So with a much more modern/powerful GPU into the exact same display, through the exact same port with the exact same cable I would have assumed it couldn't be worse than what I already had as working, but perhaps I am wrong.

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Answer 5

bs44 Author

Level 1

12 points

Aug 7, 2020 9:41 AM in response to bs44

Weirdly enough since just posting this, i may have fixed the problem it seems. I am now running a Club3D USBC>HDMI adapter out of the first port in the USB I/O PCIe card and not the MPX module direct outs. I would not have thought that would make any difference (even though they are linked) but after restarting and using this port its working as it was on the older Mac Pro, how odd... Problem solved? *shrugs*

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Answer 6

Aug 7, 2020 10:03 AM in response to bs44

Good. Sometimes, things happen for the better, just by tinkering, and much to our relieved surprise.

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UHD Color Support in Catalina

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