Question about HDR quality and choice of Device

    Hi

    I dicovered LibreElec months ago and installed it successfully on an old Nuc8i3BEK (intel). Everythings works perfectly i can play 4K HDR file on my LG OLED C5. However I was wondering if would have the best HDR quality using this old device ? I've read on reddit that playing HDR content directly with LG native player produce better quality, how ?

    Also what is the difference of using this NUC to play a 4K UHD BD Remux in HDR and using a good bluray player like panasonic UB820 with same UHD media but on physical disk ? Lets say we use same TV, the HDR will look better on the panasonic BD player ?


    Sorry if these are dumb questions.


    Regards,

    • Best Answer
    Quote from martinp

    I've read on reddit that playing HDR content directly with LG native player produce better quality, how ?

    Upstream Linux supports static formats like HDR and HDR10, not dynamic formats like HDR10+ and DV, so other player apps running on other OS e.g. Android with vendor kernel that includes magic closed-source binaries for DV support, or a good physical media Blu-ray player that similarly supports dynamic HDR types; should/could in theory give better results than e.g. LE running on an old NUC that does not.

    Quote from martinp

    Also what is the difference of using this NUC to play a 4K UHD BD Remux in HDR and using a good bluray player like panasonic UB820 with same UHD media but on physical disk ?

    Some users will insist they can absolutely tell the difference and there is a multi-billion dollar industry designed to relieve them of $$ in the pursuit of "bit perfect" quality. That said, the entire concept of "bit-perfect" doesn't exist for video due to how original media encodes a suggestion of how to show things that is then interpreted by an imperfect display device, e.g. no TV in the market actually supports 10,000 nits brightness, so even if the source media is perfect the output that you see is always some kind of best-efforts compromise.

    Ripping media to anything other than ISO results in format conversion and this is always a lossy process. Most users are happy with some quality loss for the convenience of having their media in a software format, and with HEVC and AV1 offering smaller filesizes than H264 and particularly ISO, for a "perceptually similar" level of quality, most users are happy to avoid the need for many TB of HDD space. I do find it amusing that the "bit-perfect" crowd found on Reddit and Android forums espouse on how perfect their system is when logs show their source media to be some remux torrent with totally unknown encoding.

    Most users are just happy with the HDR logo lights up and the display and colours are brighter and things generally look better than a boring old SDR movie. Most users over the age of 40-years are also subject to some level of macular degeneration.

    "Don't believe everything you read on the Internet" -- Abraham Lincoln

    /shrug

    Thank you for your answer.

    After searches, it seems that these premium devices have some video processing/treatment technologies that affect how content is presented to TV rather than simply passing the data through.

    Perhaps that is why many users tell that it look noticeably better than same ISO/BD Remux on RPi or NUC devices even if we keep the same TV .

    Manufacturers who make hardware constantly add features to "improve" output, both to improve the viewing experience, but also to ensure the marketing department has something to support claims of their device giving the best experience. Some viewers claim these features do improve their experience and <insert_name_of_latest_device> is the best thing invented since sliced bread. Others seek to watch movies "as the director intended" and claim the same features detract from the experience. Reddit provides a free service to fuel all sides of the "what device/distro/player-app/settings works best" debate by selling advertising placement to the marketing departments of manufacturers and retailers.

    IMHO dedicated BR/DVD/SACD/CD hardware usually gives the best result. However my kids destroy BR/DVD disks by leaving them wrong-side-down on the floor and never place watched things in the correct box, so I still rip everything and accept the lossy format conversion to mitigate those problems. I use general purpose settings when ripping. I do occasionally re-rip with tweaked settings if the results aren't so great. I still choose to watch certain films on proper hardware sometimes. The amount of 4K/UHD media that I purchase and rip vs. stream from a subscription service (media reformatted to suit streaming and look okay on more devices) or record from a broadcast (media reformatted to squeeze into broadcast constraints) continues to decline though.