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Hands-On With the Apple TV's New Color Balance Calibration Feature
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It doesn’t change the settings on the TV at all. Not possible. It changes the settings on the ATV, so it has no effect on what you watch from another source.
Dolby Vision isn't something that works properly unless both the TV and the Source support it. It takes both of them, otherwise you are not seeing DV.
I tried it with 3 of my TVs.
Nice feature for those that don't want to bother with calibrating or chasing settings.
- ~6 year old, fairly cheap Samsung LCD - Noticeable difference.
- LG B7 OLED - Barely perceptible difference.
- ~10 year old Panasonic Plasma - Even less of a difference.
Nice feature for those that don't want to bother with calibrating or chasing settings.
Explain why then. And while you're at it tell Apple, since this what they prompt you to do.
I’m not going to explain why to you. Others have already done so but you don’t want to hear it. But while I’m at it I’ll tell you the reason Apple defaults to Dolby Vision. Because some TVs are slow switching between SDR and HDR. That’s it. SDR content and menus be damned. That’s all Apple cares about. Anybody with eyes can tell it’s wrong. Apple doesn’t care.
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If you hate warm/warm2 color settings (aka the piss filter), you'll have no use for this feature, that is all it did for mine, warmed up the picture 10% or so. When I changed my LG CX OLED TV settings to warm and re-ran the test, no perceptible change in picture. Yes, I know, the "pros" may disagree with this and you should always use warm, I prefer my own settings on my OLED though, to each their own.
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100% spot on. This is the same Apple that launched the Apple TV 4K without the "Match Content" feature, they are not the best source when it comes to TV, they want everything to be forced to one standard, hence the setting, they don't want a "1 second black screen of death" interruption as your TV changes to an HDR format and back, it is as simple as that, they don't think it as clean as always being in that format thus preventing the need to switch and get that black screen.
Apple TV 4K no longer forces you to watch everything in HDR
Video purists rejoice: Apple's expensive 4K streamer provides the option to turn off automatic HDR conversion.
www.cnet.com
It’s the reason why they have a Dolby Vision setting in the first place. Other streaming boxes don’t need Dolby Vision turned on. They just output SDR/HDR/Dolby Vision as needed when needed. The Apple TV doesn’t automatically turn on Match Content when forced Dolby Vision is set. They can’t make their Home Screen, menus and apps in Dolby Vision because not all TVs have Dolby Vision. All this because they don’t like the delay in switching between formats.100% spot on. This is the same Apple that launched the Apple TV 4K without the "Match Content" feature, they are not the best source when it comes to TV, they want everything to be forced to one standard, hence the setting, they don't want a "1 second black screen of death" interruption as your TV changes to an HDR format and back, it is as simple as that, they don't think it as clean as always being in that format thus preventing the need to switch and get that black screen.
Apple TV 4K no longer forces you to watch everything in HDR
Video purists rejoice: Apple's expensive 4K streamer provides the option to turn off automatic HDR conversion.
I’ve seen it mentioned, so I’m sure you’ve already seen it as well. But to reiterate, if an app doesn’t support HDR, it will incorrectly display the content in DV/HDR if the ATV is set to those defaults. Even with match content on. The only way to avoid that is to default to SDR and allow apps that support HDR to trigger it when necessary.
Change it to movie, cinema, expert or the like. Do you have any dynamic features active?
So my TV (TCL Series 6) has Dolby Vision. But not all Apple TV content comes with Dolby Vision. Here's what I did:
-- Set the Apple TV to UHD
-- Ran Color Calibration. It made some minor changes
-- Set the Apple TV to "Match Content"
Now movies with Dolby Vision use that encoding, others use HD.
Can an expert weigh in on this?
-- Set the Apple TV to UHD
-- Ran Color Calibration. It made some minor changes
-- Set the Apple TV to "Match Content"
Now movies with Dolby Vision use that encoding, others use HD.
Can an expert weigh in on this?
I have a TCL 6 Series 625 and I also have a TCL 6 Series 635. Set the Apple TV to 4K SDR. Also under Match Content turn on Match Dynamic Range and Match Frame Rate. Match Frame Rate is important for the 635 because it’s a 120Hz panel so movies at 24Hz will be output at 24Hz with no judder. If you don’t turn on Match Frame rate the Apple TV will take a 24Hz movie and output it to the TV at 60Hz. With these settings SDR content will play in SDR and HDR/Dolby Vision content will play in HDR/Dolby Vision accordingly. 24Hz movies will play at 24Hz and 30Hz television shows will play at 60Hz.
but...but... Steve Jobs says Macs just work?!
Welcome to Tim's world. Apple is the new Microso.........(BSoD)
Calibration worked like a charm for me. Took me less than 1 min. Mine is a 65” LG Oled
However, the result was a yellowish tinge just like how Apple likes to put a yellowish tinge on iPhones. Not saying it’s bad, but I didn’t like it.
Reset back and am just glad that it is easy to get back the original colour
However, the result was a yellowish tinge just like how Apple likes to put a yellowish tinge on iPhones. Not saying it’s bad, but I didn’t like it.
Reset back and am just glad that it is easy to get back the original colour
i think airplay compresses image quality. so i would think not?
Please stop drinking Apple kool aid and educate yourself, and don't spread false information here. Apple cares about the menus and screensavers looking WOW in Dolby Vision. If you are enabling DV as your default setting, all your non-DV looks like crap. If you can't tell a difference, then please stop talking.
Also, if Apple cares so much about video quality, why haven't they fixed the raised blacks on OLED TVs when DV is enabled?
It wasn’t just OLEDs. My TCL QLED used to show raised blacks in DV on the ATV 4K. Funny thing was the Apple TV app running running on the TV’s Roku operating system didn’t show raised blacks playing the same DV movies. Apple has since fixed it for QLEDs anyway.
HDTVTest's Vincent Teoh did a proper review of this (
). TL;DW - It's not very good. Apple have the poatential to make it great, he goes into how they could do that too. And it's a proper review not "things look good", "things look warm"
All it really needs is a lightning LUT, proper gamma/greyscale and reading EDID informationt to get the spectral info. It may mean keeping the phone on the screen for 60 seconds but it's worth it and would be a game changer!
All it really needs is a lightning LUT, proper gamma/greyscale and reading EDID informationt to get the spectral info. It may mean keeping the phone on the screen for 60 seconds but it's worth it and would be a game changer!
Random side note: I have a 2020 SE, but my wife has an 11. Was not able to do the color calibration, I assume, because my iCloud account is signed into the TV. The TV wouldn't recognize that her phone was near.
Wish this could be done with any device and not just a personal phone - but, oh well!
Wish this could be done with any device and not just a personal phone - but, oh well!
Yes, Color Balance does support projectors. It requires getting close up and putting the phone at a slight angle, as one other reader suggested. In my case (Sony VPL-HW40ES), the end results was significantly more red than default but not hugely different from original. After testing the calibration, I went back to original as the red was too much. One would have to test more projectors or set up one's own projector with a very bad colour balance and see if Apple Color Balance brought it back in line to find out if calibrating a projector with Apple Color Balance works properly. The whole Sony VPL-HW series has excellent calibration from the factory, as well as a very rich set of profiles and built-in tools to improve calibration.
The difference is fairly slight. This is just basic color balance with no luminance or shadow or blacks correction. The worse your television or projector to start with, the more Apple's Color Balance feature will improve your picture. Some televisions suffer from a terribly green or blue color balance out of the box. Anyone who has such a television will substantially benefit from Apple Color Balance.