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?

[rooobb]

Just a doubt from us poor people living in the continent ... Goliath is not available in Italy while Transparent is available only in Full HD... so far the only show available in 4K HDR in Italy (but in English) is Grand Tour that features no band....so I cannot test it myself. The only thing I could do was to force HDR on and there are those grey bands... but this is not a fault you cannot view non HDR content in HDR....

[Anonymous]

Thanks @rooobb

However as Sony is already aware of this issue and have suggested a resolution for Amazon to implement, i guess its just a waiting game now.

[Anonymous]

Hello All

This is going to come as a big disappointment, but unfortunately after a full investigation of this issue Sony has concluded that this is a "system limitation and cannot be resolved".  Sony has not/will not elaborate on the definition of "system limitation" - therefore I cannot share why this is the case.

I hate being the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately for this case it is.

Thank you.

[dylan_t_jones]

That’s disappointing.  If its a system limitation, does that mean its the TV porblem and not Amazons?  I haven’t got 4k/HDR subscription for Netflix yet.  I hope it does not have grey bars.

[Risc0n]

The Amazon app sucks, horrendouns lip sync as well as this issue. NOT fixed in Android 6.0

[Armani650]

This is not exclusive to Amazon , I get the gray bars on my Xbr49x900F , with any 4k movie that is letterbox and not full screen , even digital movies i have on my plex server ...

[Joefeesh]

Why is this a problem now when it has been talked about for so long? This was a problem before they released my TV model! And they continued to build with this problem. 

Is anyone working on this problem at Sony???

[Yanos_Audrin]

It seems to be an HDR 10 issue with the Amazon App!

While watching a film with the issue, try going to the quick settings and into the HDR setting, and change it from Auto or HDR10, into HLG, and the bars will turn black while still having a measure of HDR image.

[stormyuk]

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@Yanos_Audrin wrote:

It seems to be an HDR 10 issue with the Amazon App!

While watching a film with the issue, try going to the quick settings and into the HDR setting, and change it from Auto or HDR10, into HLG, and the bars will turn black while still having a measure of HDR image.

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Excuse my ignorance but, does Prime Video support HLG? What you are describing is probably just darkening the whole picture. As far as I am aware Prime Video only supports HDR10 (and HDR10+ / Dolby Vision) and not HLG. I have never tried this I must confess. Good work around if it does work.

[Kuschelmonschter]

You are basically tampering colors when setting HDR to HLG. It is indeed HDR10.

Funny enough I never witnessed those gray bars on an XF90. Tried Goliath which is HDR10 and 2.35:1.