Is what I would expect to be normal. When you say HDR is dark are you objectively comparing it with the same UHD HDR content via a different player route (i.e. comparing a UHD HDR BD player output vs Kod playing a UHD BD rip of the same disc on the same display) or just making a subjective comment (or worse comparing with an HD SDR version of the same content).
It's normal for HDR versions of movies to appear darker in PQ (i.e. HDR10) HDR than the same movie release in HD SDR (say comparing a UHD HDR BD with an HD SDR BD) because HDR PQ10 is based on SDR content brightness being at 100nits max (with HDR highlights etc. going >100 nits), whereas most people watch SDR content at display settings brighter than this (so the SDR content often hits 200 nits or more), and thus when PQ content keeps the SDR range of an HDR signal at 100nits 'it looks dark' is often the comment you hear (as people are watching SDR content pushed into the HDR range of their displays - as 100 nits is quite dark for normal viewing conditions).
I guess I'm asking whether you are saying for certain that HDR content is definitely incorrectly replayed - or you just feel it's too dark?
Thanks for your detailed response. It's quite interesting to learn that the settings isn't really changing anything in the signalling over HDMI, just compensating for devices that would "discard" any values below 16 and above 235 (which I presume was an issue with some HDTV's many moons ago...)
To answer your question above: Yes, I have compared versus a reference. My reference of choice is one of the latest episodes of Shogun. It was actually what caused me to investigate the issue in the first place.
In Episode 6 there is a darkened scene with a lot of candlelight - in fact, a lot of the show is shot in these settings. If the TV is set to limited this scene is barely recognizable except for the brightest of highlights, and even those look somewhat dull. I originally thought the show was trying to be extremely artistic and moody, so I compared against the Disney+ stream. Sure enough, the Disney+ stream had loads of detail in the backgrounds which was being "Crushed" when viewing through Kodi on the RPi. Thereafter I began troubleshooting and found the only setting which seemed to fix the issue - switching to Full range.
I then placed the same source file being played by Kodi onto a USB drive and inserted directly into the TV set. This yielded similar results to the Disney+ stream and obviously bypasses the Range Setting issue since there is no HDMI source device as a variable.
I can try post pictures later comparing the two for reference.
Only quoting that part, as most of the rest is not relevant on that matter.
To keep it simple.
The TV is not creating the same level of brightness/saturation/color on sdr content when that is displayed with hdr as it most likely supports only a low level hdr on sdr content (mostly happens on lcd/led screens, oleds are far better to get a good sdr on hdr picture).
So the problem with the washed out colors is normal and might be lessend by adjusting stuff like brightness when it is displayed (but would also affect hdr as you change it in that mode).
You might search the net if people might have posted settings guides for that TV which you might like to try.
BTW. Switching the color range to full was needed as hdr formats like dolby vision only work with the enhanced color space.
Display More
Interestingly enough the TV has different image profiles depending on the input that is being fed. It defaults to a "normal" profile (with pre-baked profiles in the settings such as Standard, Dynamic, Cinema Mode etc). but as soon as HDR content is fed to it, it switches into a "HDR" profile (With pre-baked options such as HDR standard, HDR dynamic etc).
Feed it Dolby Vision, and the profile is switched to "Dolby Vision" (with corresponding Dolby Vision Standard, Dolby Vision Bright etc). It even has seperate ones for HDR10+ and HLG.
And now I am pleased to say that I have found the solution. Although, rather embarrasingly, its a fault of the TV itself and not LE or Kodi.
I had the TV set to "Dot to Dot" mode in Aspect Ratio, which as I understand is the terminology for "Pixel Mapping", ignoring any Aspect Ratio corrections by the TV itself. Switching this back to 16:9 fixed the issue immediately. Taking noggin's advice and leaving Kodi in "Full" (i.e. Use Limited Colour Range set to OFF) and running a full reset of the display profiles for SDR content fixed the issue. I began reconstructing my orignal settings one by one (but leaving the TV in "Limited" mode) and finally came to the above realisation.
I can't for the life of my understand why this would be the case. However, it didn't take me long at all to find that I am not the only one who has expereinced such an issue:
https://www.avsforum.com/threads/sharps-dot-by-dot-pixel-mapping-is-very-faded-poor-quality-overscan-issue.2908114/
Thank you all for your help in the above. Maybe someone finds this thread helpful in future.
I'm off to kick myself now.
