Discussions

[Wanderer]

Using the built-in Roku apps, HDR and Dolby videos are extremely dark to the point of unwatchable for dark scenes and completely washed out colors on well lit scenes. Tried every possible brightness, contrast and gamma settings. Disney+ Dolby Vision is the worst and Amazon Prime isn’t much better. YouTube HDR videos are okay, but, not as bright as SDR 4K videos. 

I compared the Avengers (UHD, SDR) in Amazon Prime against the HDR version in Dolby as a reference. HDR version was dull and dark even on sun-lit scenes.

I tried disabling HDR and looks like that secret menu is gone now. Have seen similar issues reported by customers on other forums. Contacted TCL support and they have asked for photo samples. Will send it over, but, I strongly suspect it is a software issue. During the dark HDR video streaming, the * menu is insanely bright and the preview pop up picture when you navigate using FF or RW button looks fantastic.

Could anyone throw some light on this?

[cuside]

Experiencing a similar problem

HDR videos are dark and colors are less saturated.  It's like watching TV with sunglasses on.

Dolby Vision actually looks good, but I can only get Dolby Vision to engage with the Vudu app.  

[jdmac29]

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@Wanderer wrote:

Using the built-in Roku apps, HDR and Dolby videos are extremely dark to the point of unwatchable for dark scenes and completely washed out colors on well lit scenes. Tried every possible brightness, contrast and gamma settings. Disney+ Dolby Vision is the worst and Amazon Prime isn’t much better. YouTube HDR videos are okay, but, not as bright as SDR 4K videos. 

I compared the Avengers (UHD, SDR) in Amazon Prime against the HDR version in Dolby as a reference. HDR version was dull and dark even on sun-lit scenes.

I tried disabling HDR and looks like that secret menu is gone now. Have seen similar issues reported by customers on other forums. Contacted TCL support and they have asked for photo samples. Will send it over, but, I strongly suspect it is a software issue. During the dark HDR video streaming, the * menu is insanely bright and the preview pop up picture when you navigate using FF or RW button looks fantastic.

Could anyone throw some light on this?

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Have you changed local contrast from high to medium? That helped a lot when I was watching some of the Star Wars movies on D+. 

[jrisberg]

This solved the dark HDR problem on my TCL 50S525:

- Play an HDR-enabled movie in an app such as YouTube or Plex, then pause it.

- Press * on your Roku remote and set the Picture Mode to "Normal HDR"

- Scroll down to "Picture Settings" and choose "Reset 'Normal' Settings"

- Open the Roku app on your phone and select the Devices menu at the bottom.

-Click the three-dot menu on the appropriate Roku device (in my case the TCL Roku TV) and choose "Expert Picture Settings."

- Make sure Picture Mode shows "Hdr Normal."

- Under "Gamma" choose 1.8. The change should be immediate on your TV screen.

- Ignore the rest of the options on that screen. You're done with the app.

Hope this helps folks.

[marchie]

Yep, same problem here.  HDR content displays very dark.  Switching the Gamma to 1.8 (via the phone app) helps some, but it's still bad.  Wish I could turn off HDR.  Non-HDR looks way better on this TV.  

[daz1138]

Thanks for this. My Hisense 58R6+ Suddenly started showing me a very dark picture. It started on after the 9.4 update. The picture on Amazon Prime content was fine then suddenly got Very Bright so I stopped and restarted the program then everything was dark on both Amazon and Netflix - Disney+ was fine. Just changing the Gamma setting to 2.0 corrected everything. Thanks.