NO!!!! I can confirm that iPad 3 never did this. It might be related to the firmware or the display technology used in iPad 4 and newer. This is a "feature" probably to conserve battery or something else...
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iPad I believe the iPad 4 has a serious display flaw.
- Thread starter WilliamG
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NO!!!! I can confirm that iPad 3 never did this. It might be related to the firmware or the display technology used in iPad 4 and newer. This is a "feature" probably to conserve battery or something else...
You're wrong, tried it on mine 3 times nothing, the video played beautifully, no distorted icons.How many would be acceptable to you for me to sample? 100? Well, 100 out of more than a million isn't really a good sample, either.
All I have is what I have. And yes, I still believe this affects all iPad 4 devices. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
The icons aren't an issue anymore on the Air 2. (Can't speak for the Air/iPad 4 anymore).
The reason this is not an issue is because the contrast change is much quicker than before with the more powerful air and air 2. I have even seen it blown out on my air 2 for about a half a second but I really don't care anymore.
I'm not even slightly bothered by the contrast change on the home screen after quitting a show (and never have been. It's when the black levels change during movies/TV shows that still annoys the crap out of me on the iPad Air 2.
So the iPad has a 1% battery malfunction? But I just heard today that MacBooks have an insured battery.
I'm not sure why they have it change the contrast. Maybe they should just unlock the option to change our display settings like Samsung phones. I like accurate colors and the iPad is just a touch too blue.
Color temperature can vary greatly from unit to unit. The black level pumping doesn't seem to, from my testing, and it's just plain annoying.
Has anyone who is familiar with this issue tested it on the new iPad mini 4?
According to https://twitter.com/DisplayMate/status/645941697537572865, the iPad mini 4 got a much improved screen in terms of color gamut and screen reflectance. Perhaps there's a chance it improved or completely removed this blacks level pumping issue?
If it's not improved in iPad mini 4, I'm more likely to justify not upgrading this year.
According to https://twitter.com/DisplayMate/status/645941697537572865, the iPad mini 4 got a much improved screen in terms of color gamut and screen reflectance. Perhaps there's a chance it improved or completely removed this blacks level pumping issue?
If it's not improved in iPad mini 4, I'm more likely to justify not upgrading this year.
I can confirm that this is also very noticeable on the iPhone 6. I've tested this on display models and on my own iPhone 6, and on a friends iPhone 6. All have the same issue.
Best "test" video is this one:
Video has to be full screen (best in landscape), without any controls overlapping the video. You really start to notice that the contrast drops when the white levels change in the waves and in the logo in the bottom left. (Especially starting from 0:27).
This contrast-drop occurs in the safari web-video-player, and thus also in the YouTube app.
This does not happen in other apps, like the photo's app when watching a self-shot video.
Really glad that I'm not the only one noticing this. Everyone I show is like "wow, never noticed it before" but it's annoyingly obvious for me every time it happens.
Best "test" video is this one:
Video has to be full screen (best in landscape), without any controls overlapping the video. You really start to notice that the contrast drops when the white levels change in the waves and in the logo in the bottom left. (Especially starting from 0:27).
This contrast-drop occurs in the safari web-video-player, and thus also in the YouTube app.
This does not happen in other apps, like the photo's app when watching a self-shot video.
Really glad that I'm not the only one noticing this. Everyone I show is like "wow, never noticed it before" but it's annoyingly obvious for me every time it happens.
My iPad Air 2 doesn't have an issue with that video. I watched it several times with no noticeable ill effects. Now, my iPad 4 had the issue your second video is showing, but I no longer have that iPad because of it (not the icons, problem specifically [which is the side effect of this], but the fluctuating contrast during movies). The Air 2 still has it to a lesser degree, and it's still annoying. Just not in this video.
Interesting you're experiencing a more severe version of the problem on your 6.
I started seeing this immediately when I got my iPhone 6 Plus. It's exactly like the pointless dynamic contrast / dynamic backlight function that's found on newer LCD TVs. It exists in order to fake actual contrast, but all it does is degrade the accuracy of video levels. When I start with TV calibrations, it's the very first thing that gets turned off.
I don't think I've seen this on my old iPhone 4S, but it's definitely noticeable on the 6 Plus. I even checked it out at the Apple Store, and using an old CBS Evening News podcast, I was easily able to reproduce the effect on iPhones, iPads, and even iPods.
Load the video in this link, scrub to about 12:35, and let it play. With the controls hidden, watch what happens when it gets to 12:43.
http://castroller.com/podcasts/VideoCbsEvening/3905303
I don't think I've seen this on my old iPhone 4S, but it's definitely noticeable on the 6 Plus. I even checked it out at the Apple Store, and using an old CBS Evening News podcast, I was easily able to reproduce the effect on iPhones, iPads, and even iPods.
Load the video in this link, scrub to about 12:35, and let it play. With the controls hidden, watch what happens when it gets to 12:43.
http://castroller.com/podcasts/VideoCbsEvening/3905303
Sorry to resurrect again, an old thread. Looks like a bit of an epic. Anyway, just viewed the above and there's a definite problem watching that video on my iPad Air 2. Here's exactly what's I think is happening, and why it isn't going away unless a stink is made about it. It isn't a bug, glitch or flaw, and it isn't meant to be a cosmetic enhancement. Maybe knowing the following will make it more tolerable...
The playback software is looking for the brightest pixels in the image. If the brightest pixels are only 50% brightness, then Apple figures it can save some power by dropping the backlight to 50% and simultaneously boosting the digital content of the image by 200%. In theory you wouldn't notice any difference. A 50% grey pixel, will still appear 50% grey: software will double it to 100% full white, and the half-dimmed backlight will effectively drop it back to 50% grey.
In theory that's fine, but if the image is changing, and some white pixels suddenly appear in the video, the iPad cannot display them. The backlight is only at 50%, so to display a white pixel, the software would have to set that pixel to 200%, which is impossible. Therefore a fully white pixel will appear no brighter than its grey neighbours. In fact anything brighter than mid grey cannot be displayed, so you see this effect in the whale video above - all the surf, which ought to be white, appears clamped to a mucky grey.
So at this point, iPad will bump up the backlight again, but slowly, and in the case of the whale video, by the time the backlight comes up, the surf is mostly gone, so it drops again. The rhythm in the video means the iPad is always on the back foot, doing the wrong thing.
It's likely also that Apple aren't looking for the absolute brightest pixel in the frame. They probably consider a few outliers to be reasonable casualties, so it might always be the case the very brightest few pixels are clamped to lower than they are supposed to be. Maybe it's the top 1% of pixels which are clamped, maybe it's the top 10%.
The reason the OP had trouble with black levels, and had more problems on older iPads is likely that the older software didn't do quite such a good job of synchronising the backlight and digital brightness changes. The backlights won't have a linear output curve, so getting a perfect match without wobbling the colours a little would be tricky. Perhaps also the older iPads could not ramp up the backlight brightness as quickly as newer ones.
So it's a power saving feature during movie playback. It's a little sneaky IMO. OLED could fix it. Raising a stink about it might get us an option to disable it.
Dynamic contrast is an evil, evil thing. Unfortunately it still exists on the iPad Air 2. I'm just dealing with it for now, but I hope our voices never die out because it annoys me almost daily when I watch movies in Plex etc.
I just got a new iPad Pro today, and it looks like Apple has finally addressed this issue. More testing is needed, but here's an EXPOSURE-LOCKED set of videos of this trailer in YouTube to easily see the problem on the Air 2, and how it doesn't happen on the Pro.
Here's the test video.
Just open it in YouTube, and pause straight away. Then just tap the screen to hide the menus etc, and then tap the screen to bring back the menus. You can see what happens on anything pre-iPad Pro...
iPad Air 2:
https://vid.me/JWzw
iPad Pro:
https://vid.me/e/sYTv
Here's the test video.
Just open it in YouTube, and pause straight away. Then just tap the screen to hide the menus etc, and then tap the screen to bring back the menus. You can see what happens on anything pre-iPad Pro...
iPad Air 2:
https://vid.me/JWzw
iPad Pro:
https://vid.me/e/sYTv
Quite frankly to the end user it makes no difference, no? If it's software we can't do anything about it either.
FYI, this issue is present on my iPhone 6s Plus as well, so don't watch the videos there.
I'm so glad you replied to this thread, then.
In any case, bottom line is if you want an iPad for watching movies, the iPad Pro is likely the only 9.7"-or-higher model out there that will work without this glaring issue (I haven't tested a mini 4, though... so it's possible that would work, too).
Yeah, we can't let this die, or else it will never get "fixed". And even still, it may not get fixed unless we can recruit more and more people into calling Apple and complaining about it and requesting an option to disable it. I just watched a couple videos on YouTube (footage transferred from 16mm B&W film) and kept wondering if the compete lack of detail in people's foreheads was the result of bad film to video transfer. I found myself repeatedly tapping the screen to bring up the controls, and as soon as the brighter controls popped up, so did 50% of the detail in the white areas of the the video image. Of course once the controls went away, the white areas reverted to an over-exposed and clipped looking mess.
This is on my iPhone 6 Plus, running iOS9.
I did call Apple Support about this a while back, and tried to get the rep to view the while video. Unfortunately, all the rep had was a first generation iPad, which doesn't exhibit this problem (feature).
I also went in to my local Clarendon Apple Store, and talked to the folks there about it. Nobody there had ever noticed it. Not even a guy who they claimed was a video professional! So, I gladly showed them. I was of course able to demonstrate the problem on every single i-Device in the store: iPods, iPhones, iPads. They all did the same thing.
The only thing the Apple Store employees could say, was "Wow, I see what you're talking about! I never noticed it before. You have a good eye!"
But of course, as to be expected, there was nothing they could do about it since they aren't the actual software engineers.
-sigh-
This is on my iPhone 6 Plus, running iOS9.
I did call Apple Support about this a while back, and tried to get the rep to view the while video. Unfortunately, all the rep had was a first generation iPad, which doesn't exhibit this problem (feature).
I also went in to my local Clarendon Apple Store, and talked to the folks there about it. Nobody there had ever noticed it. Not even a guy who they claimed was a video professional! So, I gladly showed them. I was of course able to demonstrate the problem on every single i-Device in the store: iPods, iPhones, iPads. They all did the same thing.
The only thing the Apple Store employees could say, was "Wow, I see what you're talking about! I never noticed it before. You have a good eye!"
But of course, as to be expected, there was nothing they could do about it since they aren't the actual software engineers.
-sigh-
it's encouraging to see that the 12,9 iPad Pro seemingly doesn't suffer from this issue. i have this issue on the Air 2 using Plex and it's extremely annoying. let's hope the 9,7 iPad Pro keeps gets the same treatment as its larger sibling, and that the new color-adjusting sensors won't **** it all up.