SDR to HDR Upscaling on Apple TV 4K

Hi,

I recently purchased Infuse 5 for my new Apple TV 4K. So far, I’m really enjoying it, but also find myself having some issues with picture quality.

My Apple TV is set to output in 4K HDR (60Hz, 4:2:2 chroma), and hence when SDR content is played, the Apple TV “upscales” it to HDR. When I play back 1080p SDR files in Infuse, they look very grey and washed out. This doesn’t happen when I play the file with my Apple TV set to 4K SDR (60Hz, 4:4:4 chroma).

I know that the dull, grey image issue with upscaling is a common one for the Apple TV 4K, with plenty of folk complaining about this on various A/V forums. However, it seems that certain apps on the Apple TV mitigate this issue quite well - notably, Netflix. For instance, if I play an episode of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” on Infuse with HDR upscaling, and the same episode on Netflix, the Netflix version looks almost identical to SDR.

Therefore, my question is this: is there something Firecore can do to Infuse, such that upscaled SDR content isn’t washed out? Netflix are doing something, and it seems to be working quite well - can other apps implement the same APIs or behaviour?

Many thanks!
-Sean

1 Like

Yes, this is something we’re looking into to see if we can improve.

It will likely depend on us first adding native HDR support, which is currently in progress.

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