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Hands-On With the Apple TV's New Color Balance Calibration Feature

Picked up a Samsung QN90 75" panel this week, and it made a decent difference. It was more saturated in Cinema mode than with the tuning, but the colors look more accurate and I'm pretty happy with it. I was surprised they use the front facing camera which is arguably the worst camera on the iphone 12 pro.
 
Does anyone know if the video is sped up or is the calibration real time?

after 3-4 minutes nothing changes on my screen.
 
skc176 said:
I have my AppleTV set to 4K SDR and match content set to on. Menu's etc in Dolby Vision & HDR look blown out and over bright. After doing a some research, I came to the conclusion that AppleTV needs to be in SDR with match content.

Besides, most of content I have is in SDR and playing that in HDR or DV makes it look horrible.
Click to expand...
4K SDR is what I've ready everywhere, too. Dolby Vision or HDR will still be activated for content that has it, respectively.
 
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AstroRob said:
The process seems a bit buggy. It failed several times (TV never brought up the calibration screen after prompting the phone into calibration mode).

After restarting the ATV and the iPhone then it finally brought up the calibration image, but the calibration failed and only worked on the second try. I think the phone needs to be VERY close to the screen (1"-2").

Result was subtle (a slight shift towards warmer tones). Unfortunately the preview of the effect showed ONLY ONE sample scene (a beach flyover, not the Golden Gate Bridge from the PR), making it hard to evaluate the general impact on a more typical TV moment.

I'm sure there will be no impact on Snyder's Justice League since there is no color left! ;-)
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I'll have to restart the phone too. I tried 3-5 times, even restarted my ATV HD, but no dice. The calibration text was on the TV and my iPhone 11 Pro with iOS 14.5 just said Preparing.
 
skc176 said:
I have my AppleTV set to 4K SDR and match content set to on. Menu's etc in Dolby Vision & HDR look blown out and over bright. After doing a some research, I came to the conclusion that AppleTV needs to be in SDR with match content.

Besides, most of content I have is in SDR and playing that in HDR or DV makes it look horrible.
Click to expand...
This was the case years ago when the product first launched. Not for a long time now.
 
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crees! said:
Doesn’t work for me. Says “Preparing…” and eventually times out. If I choose Retry it says to hold the phone front facing to the TV, but the TV just sits on the initial “Adjust Color Balance” instruction screen.
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Same exact situation for me. One other person restarted their iPhone AND ATV. I've only restarted the latter. May give it another try tonight. I was stoked on the feature but bummed it hasn't worked so far.
 
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I leave the Apple TV on SDR and then only have match range on. Matching frame rate introduces latency issues with AirPods.
 
Lemon Olive said:
This was the case years ago when the product first launched. Not for a long time now.
Click to expand...
I seem to replying to only your threads!

The Match Content settings came in tvOS 11 (I think), before that everything was in HDR/DV. Now I find Home Screen/Menus are washed out and too bright when AppleTV is set to HDR/DV and that's with tvOS 14.5. Once I set the AppleTV to SDR Menu's etc look perfect. Match content is on in either case, so once playing content, the content looks fine.
 
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If you can't get it to work and your lights are on, try them with lights in the room off.
My results are the same as others, has a warmer tone to it.

I have a entry level TV in the bed room so I'm fine with using A.TV's setting on it.
It took me just over 20 minutes of repeated failed attempts before I decided to try it with the lights off.
Once I turned off the lights it worked 1st try.
 
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BF1M said:
Are you sure? Menus still look like trash in HDR/DV
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Mine too. I've set my AppleTV to SDR with Match Content on. Everything now plays as it should. SDR in SDR, HDR in HDR, DV in DV. Menu/Home Screen in SDR. Screensavers in SDR
 
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Phuz01 said:
Am I the only person who had a surprisingly positive experience with this feature? Yes, it took two attempts to work; the first time, I wasn't holding the phone close enough to the screen. But the ability to toggle between the two options allowed me to see which one I found to be preferable, and the color balance was much richer and more realistic.

I like the fact it calibrates the Apple TV and not my 8-year-old Samsung (I have an extensive 3D BluRay collection and will not move to a 4K monitor until it dies), and I went down a rabbit hole last night watching scenes from favorite films just to see how much better they looked.
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Chances are the fact that you have an 8 year old TV made a lot of difference. Eight years in technology is a LONG time! I suspect this ATV calibration feature likely makes way more improvements on older TVs and on lesser quality TVs that are not calibrated very well from the factory. Those of us with already well calibrated TVs aren’t seeing much, if any, improvement, which makes sense.
 
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w5jck said:
Chances are the fact that you have an 8 year old TV made a lot of difference. Eight years in technology is a LONG time! I suspect this ATV calibration feature likely makes way more improvements on older TVs and on lesser quality TVs that are not calibrated very well from the factory. Those of us with already well calibrated TVs aren’t seeing much, if any, improvement, which makes sense.
Click to expand...
Not the only one. My 11 year old LG plasma and 1 month old Hisense both had a slight change for the better. But a larger improvement when watching content.
 
Is there maybe meaning to the fact that these menus say “phone” as a generic instead of “iPhone” proper? Going back to the “Apple Phone” rumors maybe?
 
w5jck said:
Chances are the fact that you have an 8 year old TV made a lot of difference. Eight years in technology is a LONG time! I suspect this ATV calibration feature likely makes way more improvements on older TVs and on lesser quality TVs that are not calibrated very well from the factory. Those of us with already well calibrated TVs aren’t seeing much, if any, improvement, which makes sense.
Click to expand...
This is probably the case. My TV is around 9 years old and benefitted. Also, I discovered that somehow my Apple TV got set to 720p for the last few months. I thought it looked softer but assumed it was my older TV 🤷🏽‍♂️*derp*

So this feature had an additional benefit for me as well. I’m back in 1080p baby!😅
 
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skc176 said:
I seem to replying to only your threads!

The Match Content settings came in tvOS 11 (I think), before that everything was in HDR/DV. Now I find Home Screen/Menus are washed out and too bright when AppleTV is set to HDR/DV and that's with tvOS 14.5. Once I set the AppleTV to SDR Menu's etc look perfect. Match content is on in either case, so once playing content, the content looks fine.
Click to expand...
I have 2 Dolby Vision TVs and the menus are nearly identical with DV on or off. They are not washed out like they were in the beginning. Maybe the fixes Apple made did not fix your TV.

Surely you and others realize that this is not normal. Apple's default for the Apple TV is Dolby Vision ON. They would not intentionally have it this way if the menus typically looked like garbage. They don't. At least not on relatively decent TVs.
 
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