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MortenTG Author

Level 1

72 points

apple tv 4k hdr washed out colours

Hi, I have a Apple TV 4k, tried it on both my samsung tvs (2016 and 2017) and the picture is washed out with muted colors in HDR mode except for the screensavers, which look great. The SDR mode looks way better with more brightness than HDR mode for all menus and content except the screensavers.

The screensavers all look great like I'm used to from other HDR-sources.

This must be some kind of bug? Please dont tell me to adjust the TV settings, I've turned all enhancements off and the fact that the screensavers look great tells me this is an issue with the Apple TV and not my Samsung TVs.

Posted on Sep 23, 2017 2:49 AM

Top-ranking reply

MortenTG Author

Level 1

72 points

Posted on Oct 23, 2017 11:09 PM

HDR content (both HDR10 and DV) is delivered in a flat "log" picture profile with washed out colours and milky blacks. The TV is then supposed to add the required filter to make it look the way it's supposed to in HDR according to the metadata in the picture signal. There is clearly a problem with how Apple TV and Samsung TVs(as well as some Sony TVs I think) send and interpret the metadata so that HDR content does not get filtered correctly and ends up looking washed out. Adding dynamic contrast is just a poor fix that somewhat helps with the overall picture quality because the blacks are crushed and saturation is added, but it does NOT look the way it's supposed to in HDR. Especially the extra brightness of HDR will not be added this way. I have the same problem with Netflix in Tizen (samsung operating system) now, so this is not purely an Apple TV problem, it's a problem with how some tvs interpret HDR metadata.

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56 replies

MortenTG Author

Level 1

72 points

Oct 30, 2017 10:41 AM in response to coaoac

Wow, that seems almost to good to be true! Fingers crossed!

Oct 30, 2017 10:58 AM in response to coaoac

Omg

Updating now and testing after dinner. This would MAKE My day. Enjoy the simple things;)

Oct 30, 2017 11:04 AM in response to MortenTG

Sigh

It IS too good to be true. Still no proper signal

On my A1 OLED tv ...

It did ask my to “try” HDR but colors went back to pale rubbish.

No fix yet

Oct 30, 2017 11:42 AM in response to MortenTG

Well it doesn’t. The Dolby Vision for the A1 isn’t released yet. So why doesn’t the ATV recognise it’s accrptong HDR10 , HDR OR HLG ? All these options are available in my settings...

MortenTG Author

Level 1

72 points

Oct 30, 2017 12:44 PM in response to frankfromantwerpen

Any way to share the firmware file so I can test it? I'm not paying for a developer account just for this...

Oct 30, 2017 1:07 PM in response to MortenTG

I don’t think this is the place for that. But if I google you I see you made comments on reddit so you should be able to find what you are looking for there ;)