ATV4 color banding issues

[Fzang]

Since the new tvOS makes liberal use of blur I notice banding a lot on my TV. It's a low end Philips from about 3 years ago. I haven't had much desire to change the TV as the image quality seems to have more or less stagnated, and newer sets seem to be competing on bogus features.

Is my TV showing its age and price, or is this an inherent problem with the ATV blur feature? Tried all the different HDMI options on the ATV but it didn't seem to make a difference.

 

[benjitek]

Not sure where the knowledge of ATV and 'blur' are coming from, but mine is crystal clear -- no blurring (or 'banding') whatsoever...

 

[myhaksown]

Since the new tvOS makes liberal use of blur I notice banding a lot on my TV. It's a low end Philips from about 3 years ago. I haven't had much desire to change the TV as the image quality seems to have more or less stagnated, and newer sets seem to be competing on bogus features.

Is my TV showing its age and price, or is this an inherent problem with the ATV blur feature? Tried all the different HDMI options on the ATV but it didn't seem to make a difference.

So if I understand correctly, you're talking about the blur that Apple uses to create what should be gorgeous backgrounds but instead they are showing disgusting banded backgrounds. If that's the case then it would be with your TV. Cheap TV's don't have very good contrast ratios and so they don't really work well with blurs that create mild gradients (or gradients in general). I'm not sure if this will help but many TVs have a feature called dynamic contrast. Turn that off or adjust the setting and see if that works. The banding isn't an Apple TV issue. Some brands that would look better are Vizio, Samsung (yes I said it), and Sony (omg the Bravias are gorgeous). Hope this helps :/

 

[Fzang]

Hmm I guess you're right. I should probably be on the lookout for a new TV.

 

[Fzang]

Edit: double post

 

[macduke]

Yeah it's definitely the TV. Part of what I do for a living is web design and I'm always testing on crappy old monitors for accessibility reasons to make sure contrast and everything are ok. You wouldn't believe how horrible some displays are! Sometimes banding can be caused by improper color calibration too. You might try adjusting your controls for that too. But it's likely your TV just doesn't have the gamut to smoothly transition. The blur works fine on iOS devices (and largely Macs unless plugged into a crappy external) because those displays are chosen and calibrated by Apple. Something you could do is try connecting an iPhone or iPad via HDMI (if you or someone you know has an adapter) to see how the blurs look on there. I bet they don't look great.