The point is, Apple sells "experiences" and not products. If blue-ray players had the processing power the A10x possesses, they wouldn't be doing mode switches. Those blue-ray players have however defined your product expectations with the inferior experience they provide (as they have been around for a while), leading you to think the ATV is rather doing something wrong.
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ATV 4K is a Scam! Not Truly Delivering 4k/HDR
- Thread starter mmm1345
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The point is, Apple sells "experiences" and not products. If blue-ray players had the processing power the A10x possesses, they wouldn't be doing mode switches. Those blue-ray players have however defined your product expectations with the inferior experience they provide (as they have been around for a while), leading you to think the ATV is rather doing something wrong.
Of course I expected true 4k Picture quality (of course not at UHD BR quality). I get your sarcasm, but it's stupid.
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This is absolute crap.
Apple sells "experiences" and not "products?" Yeah, tell that to all the people with overpriced Macs, iPhones, ATVs, etc. I wasn't buying hardware AT ALL, I was buying an "experience." Yeah, right.
Auto switching isn't based on processing power it's SOFTWARE. It's not just Blu-ray players that have auto switching, almost EVERY video streamer has it - other than the ATV I can't think of one that DOESN'T have it, I have yet to encounter one that DOESN'T.
You are really arguing that a box that has a processor capable of doing everything the ATV can and is as powerful as Apple claims can't do simple Auto Switching?
A Blu-ray player has an inferior "experience" to streaming content? Maybe if you are talking about ease of access, sure. But PQ? That's NOT even up for debate.
Your post is everything wrong with people who blindly worship companies, no matter what they do.
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Re-read what I posted to make sure you understand. Thanks.
Those inferior boxes are doing mode-switching because they don't have the processing power needed for high quality 3:2 pulldown.
It's not just the frame-rate that needs auto-switching though. We need the box to auto-detect when HDR is needed or when Dolby Vision is too. You shouldn't have to go into the settings each time. Literally every other media streamer manages this with their 'experience' so Apple should be able to manage it.
To the OP's original point. Some of the films claiming to be streaming 4k aren't ye, for whatever reason - the latest Transformers for one, is still in 1080p SDR, despite claims otherwise. What films did you test?
It seems like you’ve found a Wikipedia article, failed to properly interpret it and now claim yourself to be the oracle of home cinema. I don’t know how to say this without being rude but all your posts are demonstrating is that you clearly don’t understand what 3:2 pulldown is. Please please do some more reading.
Like I said it’s not a new thing and all of those cheap boxes and Blu Ray players can do it standing on their heads. It was around way before TVs could display native 24fps content and the reason TVs now do this is to prevent the requirement for 3:2 pulldown because it causes problems. It involves inserting frames and this is what actually causes the poor motion!!
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Well this is a fun thread to read. I’m kind of glad I haven’t updated my other television yet, or any of my AppleTVs for that matter.
Did I just read that right? 4K HDR/DV with average bit rate of 6.19Mbps - WTF? Adaptive video, jumping from 4K to 1080p back to 4K?
Ouch.
Did I just read that right? 4K HDR/DV with average bit rate of 6.19Mbps - WTF? Adaptive video, jumping from 4K to 1080p back to 4K?
Ouch.
If you read it though you’ll see that content is actually being delivered at pretty high bitrate if your connection can handle it.
I just saw that - why even bother with 4K?
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That’s the problem. Any hiccup with your connection and you’re screwed. And that goes both ways!
All this could be resolved if we could download a local copy.
That is not how it works no. If you have quick-start enabled, and an adequate connection, you get full 4k and an average bitrate of ~25mbps which is more than Netflix offers it's titles, for one. The problems come in when you turn quick-start off as it then caps the connection to 1080p and hence that smaller figure (~6mbps for 2.35:1 films and 10mbps for 1.85:1) even if your connection is fast enough for full 4k. So quick-start as a feature is broken right now.
The second problem is you have films that claim to be 4k, that just aren't yet - Transformers (the latest one?) claims to be Dolby Vision and 4k but when you investigate the stream, using the HUD in developer mode, the stream server side is SDR *and* just 1080p. It hasn't been updated to 4k on Apple's end.
tldr Apple's 4k streams are at least as good as it's opposition, and in Netflix's case, they better them, in terms of bandwidth. No, they will never touch proper UHD 4k discs, but in terms of streaming the quality is good compared to the competition.
This is actually not true. HDR standard is the first since ages, that is not backward-compatible. Dolby Vision is somewhat exceptional, that it has provisions also for dual-layer stream structure, where base layer is Rec.709 and enhancement layer provides delta to DV HDR. Single-layer DV, HDR10 is not compatible with Rec.709 in any way. HLG tries to offer an acceptable compromise to non-HDR viewers.
Because DV and HDR10 both use PQ as their "gamma" function, because both require 10-bit-per-pixel video and because both encode color information in BT.2020 color space, it is not possible "just to communicate luminance levels" in HDR mode. If it were possible, then why should the telly bother to swithc between two modes in the first place? It could stay in HDR mode forever, even when receiving SDR signal.
At the minimum, apple TV must perform some kind of LUT transform to the SDR signal to pump it up to HDR levels and color values.
This morning I did my Speedtest check and I receive about 80Mbps download speed even to a Stockholm-based server (my ISP sold me the 100/100 contract).
The Quick Start bug has been mentioned oftentimes, also on this forum. With QS Off, I also only get the stream in FHD:
This morning, my store stream also achieved UHD size at 30Mbps video bitrate. Audio is still the mediocre 384kbps AC3, I think this is all this stream contains.
Viewing SDR content in any of the HDR modes on the Apple TV absolutely desaturates the colours. It’s not even subtle.
Settings - Apps - Itunes Films and TV Programmes.
If you haven't changed it though it will be on by default so won't be your issue. Which films had you tried that you were unimpressed with, as some titles are claiming to be 4k streams that aren't - Transformers 5 for one.
does your transformer 5 HUD streaming info came from iTunes preview? or actual 4k UHD HDR purchased movie, i have not seen this movie but planning to rent it today from iTunes. thanks.
Your contribution is actually more substantive compared to others I've read here save for a fatal assumption you are making.
You are assuming that the ATV output being HDR necessarily means the input or content is also HDR( given your talk of "dual-layer". Not true.
For example, if your ATV output is set to Dolby Vision, but your source content is SDR, it can be processed and embedded together with relevant metadata such that even though the output signaling is Dolby Vision, after processing by the TV's Dolby Vision engine, the original SDR "intent" is displayed. That is what Dolby VS10 is all about.
IMO, this is a big problem. If I rented the UHD version because it's listed as HDR or DV HDR in itunes on the ATV, and apple actually streams it at 1080p, then I want my money back on that rental. That's false advertising.
It came from the HUD info upon playback of the actual film itself. The banner says 4k Dolby Vision but it's not either.
I should point out that I redeemed an HD code to my iTunes account, I haven't bought the film through iTunes itself. Maybe that makes a difference? Although I did exactly the same for John Wick 2 and Arrival and the both playback as they should in 4k DV.
You have to access the developer settings menu. Instructions on the first page.
Which one of my assumptions is fatal?
No, what I am assuming, no, I even know it, is the fact, that my telly has two distinct operating modes - SDR and HDR. It affects it's picture processing in all the above mentioned ways (codec, bits per pixel, EOTF, color space, even backlight intensity). It is the metadata in signal, that causes it to switch.
aTV will keep the telly in either mode permanently, depending on the selected setting. It will not switch this mode dynamically, based on source being played back, like most other things do (like my BD player or even built-in apps of AndroidTV). For SDR content, this means that the signal aTV now sends out its HDMI port must be transformed for the HDR decoding and rendering chain inside the display. If you check it on your own HDR telly, you will notice it. White levels and saturation are definitely lifted up.
PS About Dual and Single Layer DV streams you can read in their whitepaper.
I think I get your point. For one, I can not test DV decoding yet, my telly is still expecting DV support via firmware update sometime this year.
It can well be that for DV decoding, aTV may be able to properly create necessary metadata. I have no idea if A10X has enough oomph to create this metadata dynamically, or if it will also be static.
As HDR10 uses only static metadata, aTV must apparently use something and I do not know, what exactly.
This gives me idea - I can try to watch a SDR movie from some other source and manually enforce HDR10 mode on it.
That might show, that aTV is actually sending the SDR content out verbatim, just with HDR mode enabled on telly. At any rate, the SDR image looks not like director's "creative intent" in HDR mode. That means, it does not look the same as in SDR mode. For me, this defines it.
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Do you also experience, that CEC becomes non-functional while in Developer mode??
This doesn’t happen. You can see the desaturated colours clearly when playing sdr material in any of the hdr modes. The effect is similar to other devices like the shield tv when material is played back with the wrong colourspace. People are arguing that the Apple TV is doing something special. It’s not. It’s simply playing back content incorrectly. And the effect is easy to see. I’ll take some photos later but what you see is identical to the photos I took of the shield tv when playing back REC709 material in one of the REC2020 modes. I’ve posted them below. The top one is correct, the bottom one is a REC 709 file played at REC2020.
Now because the Apple TV involves switching modes to do the comparison, I could tweak my SDR settings to look like the HDR settings however my SDR settings are ISF calibrated and tweaking them for the Apple TV will throw them off for other sources. Besides...that would be pointless as the HDR settings are wrong for SDR material. Similarly if I tweak my HDR settings to match the SDR settings then HDR material will play back incorrectly. The ONLY way to get material to display correctly on the Apple TV is to manually switch between modes depending on content and there is nothing ‘elegant’ about that. Nor is there anything elegant in running the menus at 24fps which is what is required to play content at the correct framerate.
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Redeeming codes shouldn't impact it at all since Apple is promoting the free upgrade and everything in iTunes states/implies that you now own the 4k/hdr/dv versions. So if it's not delivering the 4k stream that's a serious problem because I for one purchased the new ATV 4k SPECIFICALLY for this benefit.
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Those weren't the points I was making and I do agree with your statement here. Keep in mind that DV includes an HDR10 base layer so DV mode in AppleTV should map hdr10 correctly but not the other way around (HDR10 in DV mode, as you are experiencing)...the problem with apple tv lies overall in how it applies fauxhdr to normal content and ALSO incorrectly maps hdr10. You should also make sure your tv settings are correct when in HDR10 mode as they will most likely not be identical to the hdr10 settings your tv has for apps installed directly through it...i was able to fix 50% of the issue by correcting some settings on the tv directly to adjust for the poor hdr10 mapping by the atv
Apple needs to fix its tonemapping in hdr10 and let go of applying hdr/dv to everything...only when needed
For most users it's probably a given that they are using their new ATV 4Ks with the default settings on their 4K/HDR TVs. If you are lucky enough to own one of the tested and reviewed TVs at rtings.com it's well worth the effort to tune your 4K/HDR TV based on the suggested tweaks offered by rtings.com. At the very least it's a good starting point. In my case I made the suggested adjustments and must say I am very, very happy with the resulting video.