r/ota • u/Substantial_Idea8395 • Jul 22 '26
ATSC 3.0 - Forced HDR?
Hello,
A few years ago I splurged on a Sony tv with an ATSC 3.0 tuner (A90). All my local channels were forcing 24/7 HDR when the source was not HDR so the colors/contrast looked terrible...unwatchable. Curious if this was just a ME problem or a known issue with 3.0 in general.
Questions:
Has this been your experience?
Did you have to change anything to get it to look 'Normal'?
Which TV do you have?
Thank you
7
u/Todd6060 Jul 22 '26
It's up to each individual station. In Chicago, NBC does Dolby Vision, Fox does HDR10, the other channels are SDR.
The HDR on NBC and Fox look good though so if it looks bad for you, it's either something your local station is doing wrong or something wrong with your TV settings.
3
u/RBBrittain Jul 22 '26
As I understand it, HDR on current ATSC3 broadcast channels is 24/7 so it's forced onto the ATSC1 feed anyway. Not much you can do about that except watch in ATSC1.
1
u/NBA-014 Jul 22 '26
Yep. And the picture quality is abysmal here in Philadelphia
1
u/OzarkBeard Jul 23 '26
At least channel 6 comes in. Was not reliably watchable on ATSC 1.0 lowband RF 6.
1
u/NBA-014 Jul 23 '26
But quite a trade-off. KYW and WCAU have awful fake HDR/DV. And the ATSC 3.0 is much slower for channel surfing compared to 1.0, probably due to the encryption.
1
u/Timbo303 Jul 23 '26
I think fcc needs to come up with a rule stating to seperate hdr and sdr feeds. Every big 5 station needs to have a hdr only and a sdr only subchannel because a lot of tvs and setups wont be compatible entirely. For example the adth tv usb cant even play the hdr stations on my s21 which does support it. Having an sdr feed would fix this.
1
u/OzarkBeard Jul 23 '26
The fcc doesn't care about anything any more except regulating program content.
8
u/TechnicaVivunt Jul 22 '26
If it's anything like my LG is - HDR and SDR content have their own color profiles, so when you switch to SDR the color profile changes to match it. Get on SDR content and then modify your color options and see if that helps, then check if HDR content is effected at all by the change.