Amazon Prime 4K HDR-grey letterbox

[dylan_t_jones]

I have a Sony 49XD7004 TV

When I play 4K HDR content from Amazon Prime (I don’t have access to other 4K HDR content yet),  the black bars at the top or bottom of wide screen (letterbox) programs are grey and not black (eg Goliath and Transparent) .  On normal 1080p, they are black.  This is slightly off-putting.  I've tried to change the settings, but they are still grey.

Any idea if this is a bug?

[Kuschelmonschter]

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@stormyuk  schrieb:
So Amazon could use the same work around? If they decided to?

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Sure.

[SnAkEs1210]

I'm not playing my content from amazon so I'm guessing sony is the problem. I was thinking about subscribing to a service but wanted to test hdr first to see if it was worth while. I downloaded the Sony hdr swordsman demo video to test on vlc and if I change the aspect ratio, I get grey bars. I then downloaded some more demos, trailers etc. All suffered the same thing. This is normal though apparently, according to Sony. 

[Kuschelmonschter]

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@SnAkEs1210  schrieb:

I downloaded the Sony hdr swordsman demo video to test on vlc and if I change the aspect ratio, I get grey bars.

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Yes, you can also provoke the issue by overriding the aspect ratio, i.e. by stretching 16:9 to 4:3 in which case the TV also has to add black bars to the left and to the right.

As I have never seen any 4:3 HDR content, the Cinemascope issue is probably the more likely scenario one will run into.

[stormyuk]

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@SnAkEs1210 wrote:

I'm not playing my content from amazon so I'm guessing sony is the problem. I was thinking about subscribing to a service but wanted to test hdr first to see if it was worth while. I downloaded the Sony hdr swordsman demo video to test on vlc and if I change the aspect ratio, I get grey bars. I then downloaded some more demos, trailers etc. All suffered the same thing. This is normal though apparently, according to Sony. 

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You wont get the problem with Netflix I don't believe, I have watched lots of non-16:9 ratio stuff with black bars, its all fine. You will however come across the issue with certain Amazon content.

[Kuschelmonschter]

I also have some Cinemascope HDR samples which demonstrate the issue. Kodi recently took over the transparency workaround from MrMC. Discussion can be found here. Gray bars are now black.

[stormyuk]

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@Kuschelmonschter wrote:

I also have some Cinemascope HDR samples which demonstrate the issue. Kodi recently took over the transparency workaround from MrMC. Discussion can be found here. Gray bars are now black.

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Looks from that thread that again its another screw up from Sony.

[SnAkEs1210]

I tested some of the same samples in kodi and although the borders are black the tv isn't actually running the content in hdr. The Image looks washed out.

[Kuschelmonschter]

Can't confirm that for HEVC. TV properly switches to HDR with BT.2020 color space. Your TV is a XE85 which probably can't properly reproduce HDR due to missing local dimming...

As for VP9.2, the TV does not automatically switch to maximum brightness and BT.2020 color space which results in a pale and dull image. It can manually be overriden via (advanced) picture settings.

[SnAkEs1210]

Yeah, the issue is that the tv doesn't automatically switch to hdr 10 when using kodi. I have to manually change this before I start the film as pressing the action menu button stops the film.

My TV is hdr certified and I have played hdr films in vlc that look superb but unfortunately have the grey borders. Kodi actually does seem to be working for me currently though, hdr with black borders. 

[Kuschelmonschter]

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@SnAkEs1210  schrieb:
Yeah, the issue is that the tv doesn't automatically switch to hdr 10 when using kodi. I have to manually change this before I start the film as pressing the action menu button stops the film.

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I threw a lot of HDR stuff at Kodi, both HDR10 and HLG (HEVC encoded), and the TV properly switched to HDR.

The only exception is VP9.2 which is mainly only used as HDR format on YouTube. The TV does switch to HDR, but "forgets" to max out brightness and enable BT.2020 color space.

Dolby Vision is currently not supported by Kodi. Single-layer DV works fine in MX Player and the stock Video app.