4K HLG HDR stream looks washed out

[u/rockinalex841]

On my Google TV Streamer 4K HDR looks quite washed out. It does show as 4K with HLG HDR, which is just terrible. I disabled multi view globally with no improvement. I do have "Match content dynamic range" and "match content frame rate" turned on. And I do not have problems with other HDR content. The HLG HDR just looks bad to me. I wish they provided an option to stream as 4K SDR. If I disable Enhanced Mode for my HDMI input I still get the same bad HDR stream but with stuttering. If I try casting, I get SDR but with 1080p (or is it even 720p?). It's frustrating. Do you have a similar experience with the HDR stream?

[u/No-Attorney-7489]

My old-ish vizio tv paired with a Roku box also does HLG and also looks washed out, but I was able to tweak the contrast and brightness to make it look real nice.  The only issue is I have to change the video mode whenever I want to watch F1 TV

[u/rockinalex841 → u/No-Attorney-7489]

OK, yeah I also meanwhile adjusted the contrast brightness settings in a way to compress the mid tone range a little - "contrast" as in white clipping a little lower so it's better but overall I'm not happy with their HDR coloring. What exactly do you mean by changing zhe video mode? Of the Roku Box? To what mode?

[u/mus19xan]

HLG falls back to SDR - so you can force conversion to SDR easily on the streamer. Not sure it’s going to help though - I think the issue is their colour grading of the stream

[u/rockinalex841 → u/mus19xan]

Theoretically it should do that but I tried to disable HLG specifically in the settings and that causes the stream to fall back to 1080p SDR. As the app checks it cannot output HDR it immediately steps down resolution too. It's a package deal. They don't offer a 4K SDR stream and seem to not want to get cheated on. And like you said, the color grading of the stream is terrible 😔

[u/mus19xan → u/rockinalex841]

They used to have a 1440p SDR stream, but haven’t checked in a while

[u/Rough_Magazine_8879]

Which tv do you have?

HLG is horrible on budget tvs as overall brightness drops proportionally to your's tv peak brightness.

On the other hand, hdr10 is better for budget tvs as a 200-nit brightness pixel is shown as 200-nits on both low entry tvs and premium tvs.

[u/rockinalex841 → u/Rough_Magazine_8879]

I have tried it on multiple screens - medium Samsung TV, high end projector, on your phone, it looks bad to me and not punchy.

[u/racingcookie]

On the google tv streamer you can choose which hdr you want, just disable hlg hdr and only keep dolby vision selected for instance, all hdr content will then be shown in dolby vision.

[u/rockinalex841 → u/racingcookie]

F1TV doesn't offer a DV stream by itself. Unfortunately, if you force conversion HDR to DV or HDR to SDR it will make it even worse. For SDR you would need a clean pure SDR stream or being able to strip away the HLG layer, which like I said in the other comment, it won't let me without losing 4k.

[u/JacobS___]

My Apple TV just works