Solving playback issues

[Scolli23]

Last year roku messed up football games, they are in HDR. We were able to turn off hdr in the secret settings. Now roku took away secret settings access. Fix this problem picture sucks! 

[RokuEmmanuel-D · Accepted solution]

Thanks for posting here in the Roku Community, @Scolli23!

We understand you want to turn off the HDR resolution on your Roku. Rest assured, we're here to help you look into this and get you back on streaming that suits your preference. 

Firstly, we have to identify where you are trying to watch these shows. Is it inside The Roku Channel or on a specific channel? If it's in a particular channel, please tell us which channel has this display resolution? 

In the meantime, you can change the display settings on your Roku to see if it makes any difference. You may follow the steps provided below: 

1. Press Home on your Roku remote
2. Scroll and select Settings
3. Select Display type
4. Select one of the available display types and press OK   on your remote
5. Your screen may go black for a few seconds while the display setting is changed.

   6. When an image is shown, select Yes, I can see it and press OK on your remote

    7. Your screen will return to the Display type menu
    8. A check will appear next to the new display setting

For more information, you may visit this support article: How to change the display type on your Roku streaming player.

Please get back to us and let us know if it works. 

All the best,
Emman

[Emissary35]

In my opinion you never want HDR on, it ruins the picture. Go into the picture settings and just put it on 4K TV instead. This will disable any HDR playback and give you a max of 4K only in SDR which is what you want.

[atc98092]

HDR should only be enabled if the content contains HDR metadata. Having HDR turned on with SDR content can look inaccurate, and having HDR off with HDR content makes the image dull and washed out. I don't know if the Roku 4K TVs have the same HDR Always On option in the advanced display settings, but if it is there and turned on make sure it's disabled. 

[Scolli23]

This happened on first nfl game in 2023. I searched and the solution was, secret menu in roku. Now that is no longer available, and no other way to disable HDR! So frustrating.

be nice if roku at least would explain why they will not allow users to disable hdr.

[atc98092]

You can disable HDR on a Roku player, because you can change the video resolution setting to 4K without HDR. But you don't have that option with any TV (Roku or otherwise).

Hidden menus have never been designed for public use, and features added or removed is strictly at the discretion of Roku. Did you check for the setting I mentioned under Settings/System/Advanced settings for HDR always on? Again, I don't know if the TVs have that setting, but if it's there make sure it's turned off.

[Scolli23]

Again. It is on a roku tv *ROKU TV.    Peacock channel. Football games only have the HDR issue. No settings in roku or peacock for hdr!!! Roku removed the hdr settings in last update.

[Emissary35]

@atc98092 

"HDR should only be enabled if the content contains HDR metadata. Having HDR turned on with SDR content can look inaccurate, and having HDR off with HDR content makes the image dull and washed out."

That's simply not true in my experience. Even having HDR turned on with HDR content can make the image look like garbage. Yet playing those some programs with HDR off makes it look just fine. HDR seems to take away the crispness and color of the image, as soon as you disable it the image looks fantastic. There should always be a way to completely disable HDR as well as 4K if you don't want to be forced into those resolutions.

I despise HDR and to me 4K is almost indistinguishable from 1080p not looking much better. A good quality 1080p image is always enough to satisfy me, it looks clear and has no issues. But I know a lot of people are absolutely obsessed with the highest resolution possible and it just isn't always the best viewing experience.

[atc98092]

I guess it's dependent on the content. There's no question that 4K/HDR can look outstanding. One example is the original Blade Runner. I originally only had a DVD copy. so not even HD. But when I ripped my UHD copy and watched it on my LG, it was shocking how well a movie from the early 80s could look. Much of the vividness of that movie would be lost with HDR disabled. 

[Chuckie1950]

There is no Display type option on my 55 inch QLED Roku TV. After several frustrating calls with ROKU technicians, they finally understood the problem and promised that a software update would fix it. That was a couple months ago. In the meantime, they suggested fiddling with the picture settings which only resulted in either a still too dark picture or a too light picture both with washed out colors. The only "work around" for me was to use a Roku Express 4K+ instead of the Roku platform built into the TV. The Express has the Display type option. Using either HDR option still resulted in a washed out dark picture. However, setting it to 4K TV fixed it. I set the TV picture settings to STANDARD and BRIGHTER for all inputs. Keep in mind that it doesn't matter which the streaming service is offering a program in HDR 10+. The problem happened for me with 3 different services.

This experience leads me to believe that the ROKU TV is clearly not set up to handle HDR properly. Why they would default to it without having the TV able to process it and offer no options to correct it? Why offer a feature that doesn't work?