Consistently different results playing different UHD Blurays

Flipflop

Newbie Joined: May 07, 2011 05:21 Messages: 19 Offline

Solved by

Nov 18, 2018 05:29

Hi,

I would be interested in any comments on the following situation. Everything here is using Powerdvd18 2202 and the discs are UHD 4K HDR10.

Different disks give me different results, consistently, let me explain.

Most disks such as Passengers, Ready Player One, Interstellar, the Martian and in fact most of my 4K HDRs play in HDR every time. no problem.

2. Bladerunner 2049 looks great but I don't believe it plays in HDR (although information says HEVC). The reason I say this is that it is the only disk which allows Truetheater to be enabled, leading me to think that it is playing truetheater SDR enhanced, not true HDR.

3. Paddiington 2. Usually plays in washed out sdr. Very occasionally, especially if it's the first disk I play after a reboot, it will play in HDR but generally it is washed out. This can also affect subsequent play issues with other disks that I play and sometimes it will "lock" PDVD, requiring me to reboot.

Why does the ability to play HDR in PDVD depend on which disk I play?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 18. 2018 05:30

QC2.0

Senior Contributor Joined: Apr 27, 2016 04:02 Messages: 610 Offline

Dec 03, 2018 02:01

I think that the quality and the compatibility of current available HDR contents are still varied per my observation.

And, the new GPU driver keeps rolling out to handle the fact: HDR playback is not stable or the color is not accurate.

The recent released Intel GPU driver has annouced that it fixes some HDR playback issues. (I forgot which version mentioned the fix.)
Try it.

BTW, if you don't have a HDR monitor, just play the non-HDR version on the UHD disk.
The artificial and downscaled SDR color playback (from the original HDR one) is overall fake, and not accurate.

If you really care about the playback quality, save your effort, and not to watch the HDR video on a SDR monitor.
The native SDR video can give you a relatively better viewing experience on a standard SDR monitor.

Flipflop

Newbie Joined: May 07, 2011 05:21 Messages: 19 Offline

Dec 03, 2018 05:21

Quote I think that the quality and the compatibility of current available HDR contents are still varied per my observation.

And, the new GPU driver keeps rolling out to handle the fact: HDR playback is not stable or the color is not accurate.

The recent released Intel GPU driver has annouced that it fixes some HDR playback issues. (I forgot which version mentioned the fix.)
Try it.

BTW, if you don't have a HDR monitor, just play the non-HDR version on the UHD disk.
The artificial and downscaled SDR color playback (from the original HDR one) is overall fake, and not accurate.

If you really care about the playback quality, save your effort, and not to watch the HDR video on a SDR monitor.
The native SDR video can give you a relatively better viewing experience on a standard SDR monitor.

Thank you for taking the time to post an answer and a detailed one at that.

I'm trying to play HDR on an HDR projector.

I agree that the latest drivers have made some small improvements (I think I'm on 6373). I keep everything up to date driver wise. One of the issues the driver update recently fixed was that I was losing visibilty of my mouse cursor in HDR movies.

I also tend to agree with you that HDR BR source content seems of variable quality. It seems a mixture of leading edge, content, drivers is leading to issues. This is the price for sitting on the edge I guess.

It's a pity that some of the blame seems to lie with content beacuse drivers and software may be fixed in future but they aren't going to ship me a new BluRay , lol.

Thankd again for taking the time, I really appreciate it.