Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
"Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" was recently released on 4K UltraHD Blu-ray with a lossless Dolby Atmos soundtrack, with a bitrate of 3558 Kilobytes per second, which translates into 3.558 Megabytes, which means one would need internet bandwidth of 28.464 Mbps internet speed just for lossless audio.
This is wrong, the audio rate is already measured in bits, not bytes. You said it yourself, the "bitrate". So it would be exactly as it's listed, it would take 3.558 Mbps (Megabits) of internet bandwidth to stream the lossless Atmos track in such a scenario.

A lossy iTunes equivalent would take 768 Kbps, or 0.768 Mbps of bandwidth, so in this case it would require roughly 4.6x the bandwidth it does today on the audio side to go lossless for this particular title.
 
I find that HDR content looks dimmer and less vivid on every single service I use.

I have fiddled with my TV settings to no avail, so I really hope that these content services allow users the option to turn HDR on of off. I HATE that it is automatic.
This is almost surely because the TV you are using isn't really capable of properly producing an HDR image. Many manufacturers sell TVs that offer "HDR" support, but in reality, it's in name only and the panel itself isn't capable enough to display the HDR image correctly. For these TVs, HDR support really just means it can read the hdr signal format, and display something on screen. For these TVs to properly display an HDR signal on their more limited panels, they'd need to have very capable dynamic tone-mapping abilities, so the signal can be properly adjusted on the fly to within spec of what the TV is able to display. These TV's almost always don't have such features, because like the panel itself, implementing it is fairly costly.

Dolby Vision is supposed to be the solution to this on lower-end TVs, and it works fairly well from what I've seen on lower end panels that implement it, but it obviously doesn't help with HDR10 content or if the TV doesn't support Dolby Vision. The resulting Dolby Vision picture on lower-end TVs is usually fairly good (at a minimum not worse than SDR), but in all honesty it usually doesn't really look that much different than SDR in the first place, again due to panel limitations.

The correct solution to this would be to get TV manufacturers to stop adding HDR signal support to TVs that don't really have the capabilities to display it, but that won't happen.

Alternatively, If you have an Apple TV 4K, you would probably be best setting the main display mode to SDR in the settings, and disabling the match dynamic range option if it's enabled. That will force streaming services to stream in 4K SDR if available, or fall back to 1080p SDR if not available.
 
This is almost surely because the TV you are using isn't really capable of properly producing an HDR image. Many manufacturers sell TVs that offer "HDR" support, but in reality, it's in name only and the panel itself isn't capable enough to display the HDR image correctly. For these TVs, HDR support really just means it can read the hdr signal format, and display something on screen. For these TVs to properly display an HDR signal on their more limited panels, they'd need to have very capable dynamic tone-mapping abilities, so the signal can be properly adjusted on the fly to within spec of what the TV is able to display. These TV's almost always don't have such features, because like the panel itself, implementing it is fairly costly.

Dolby Vision is supposed to be the solution to this on lower-end TVs, and it works fairly well from what I've seen on lower end panels that implement it, but it obviously doesn't help with HDR10 content or if the TV doesn't support Dolby Vision. The resulting Dolby Vision picture on lower-end TVs is usually fairly good (at a minimum not worse than SDR), but in all honesty it usually doesn't really look that much different than SDR in the first place, again due to panel limitations.

The correct solution to this would be to get TV manufacturers to stop adding HDR signal support to TVs that don't really have the capabilities to display it, but that won't happen.

Alternatively, If you have an Apple TV 4K, you would probably be best setting the main display mode to SDR in the settings, and disabling the match dynamic range option if it's enabled. That will force streaming services to stream in 4K SDR if available, or fall back to 1080p SDR if not available.
It's a shame, as my TV is a pretty new Sony XBR900H that supposedly supports all of these modes.

I have tried my FireStick 4K and the built in Android OS but have been unsuccessful in getting the settings to not output in HDR.

Perhaps now I have a reason to get an Apple TV...
 
It's a shame, as my TV is a pretty new Sony XBR900H that supposedly supports all of these modes.

I have tried my FireStick 4K and the built in Android OS but have been unsuccessful in getting the settings to not output in HDR.

Perhaps now I have a reason to get an Apple TV...
The X900H should be able to put out at least a decent HDR image, it's contrast ratio isn't the greatest, but it can still get decently bright. RTINGS recommends the following for it though "If you find HDR content too dim, you can make it brighter by using the 'Vivid' Picture Mode, with Local Dimming, X-tended Dynamic Range, and Advanced Contrast Enhancer all set to 'High'. These settings result in a much brighter image, as you can see in this EOTF." from the HDR brightness section of their review here: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x900h

If you find that still doesn't help enough, I highly recommend the Apple TV 4K it's definitely the best streaming device on the market when in comes to video handling/thoroughness of available options.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Darth Tulhu
Hulu is such junk. The quality always looks SD. Pausing a stream just freezes it, the ad's are terrible. Weird how Apple is cross promoting with a brand that gives zero cares about quality.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.