[Feature Request] EDID Emulation

Discussion in 'HDD Media player(RTD 1619DR)' started by bobocher, Sep 14, 2020.

  1. bobocher

    bobocher New Member

    From reading the forum I know a number of cases where EDID provided by TVs were causing issues. Having a way to alter EDID would allow users to solve such issues.

    In my particular case I want to activate LLDV for my projector. There are very large forum topics on avsforum and avforums about how to achieve this. It’s needed to provide a modified EDID to the player. This is currently achieved with a HDFury device. Unfortunately these devices are very expensive (cost more than Z9X).

    Maybe Zidoo team could implement a general solution for all EDID issues - let the user to upload to Z9X a manually prepared EDID as a file. Ideally we could upload multiple such files and select one from Z9X UI. When selected the custom EDID file overrides EDID from HDMI channel.

    This idea was shortly discussed in the big Z9X topic but I believe it deserves it’s own topic to get more attention. I’m asking potential users of the feature to post here for the Zidoo team to get an idea of how much the feature is wanted.
     
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  2. kenneth2281

    kenneth2281 New Member

    i will also want this to be made i am the owner of a JVC projektor so it will be usefull for me so i dont have to buy a scaler
     
  3. boxerfan

    boxerfan Active Member

    This is a fantastic feature where user can specify/configure/upload a custom EDID for Zidoo media player that will override what the TV/Projector/AVR reports.
    This will help solve my problem where the Zidoo detects my 4K TV incorrectly as FHD TV.
    I am sure many Zidoo owners will love this feature.
     
  4. DaMacFunkin

    DaMacFunkin Active Member

    I’m sure people with projectors would love thus feature, personally IF the correct flags are sent with the correct colorspace I wouldn’t have a need for it, and notice I said IF.
     
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  5. afss

    afss Active Member

    This would be a fantastic feature !! as a projetor owner it would be quite helpful, and I am sure the whole projector community would love it !! I have an HDFury device but to be frank is a pain in the a.. The HDfury device makes HDMI handshaking to slowdown considerably and sometimes it even fails completely. I would very much like to remove it from the chain, keeping only the Zidoo player with this emmulation feature.
     
  6. skelton

    skelton Member

    Can someone explain further exactly how this would benefit projector owners? I have a Sony 4K HDR projector myself and i am curious to know what this EDID emulation and LLDV is all about.
     
  7. bobocher

    bobocher New Member

    There is a lot of info about LLDV in the Z9X topic. I explain shortly.

    Z9X has a graphic engine developed by Dolby called VS10. This engine produces best picture when paired with a Dolby Vision capable TV. In the first version of Dolby Vision (for short DV) the viewing device (TV) got a Dolby Vision signal from the player and needed to process it properly. Later Dolby developed a second version of DV (called Low Latency Dolby Vision or LLDV) where all the processing is performed by the player. No extra decoding is required on TV, any HDR capable TV would work. However because this is Dolby the TV still needs a Dolby license. The TV informs the player that it supports LLDV using EDID via HDMI channel. Only when the player knows that the TV supports LLDV the player activates internal LLDV processing.

    There are special devices from HDFury company, which are connected into HDMI chain between TV and player. That device then modifies the EDID from TV and adds flags telling the player that the TV does support LLDV. After that the whole Dolby processing in the player starts to work as if the TV would have native LLDV support. The picture magically improves significantly.

    There are currently no projectors with native LLDV support but using a HDFury device any projector with basic HDR support can be turned into a Dolby Vision capable one.

    The advantage for projectors owners is that with LLDV the HDR content (even HDR10, not necessary DV) is tone mapped by the player (I believe it's adjusted to 1000 nits) making it looking much better on projectors. Only JVC N-series projectors with their built-in tone mapping don't need this, all others do.

    Unfortunately HDFury devices are very expensive ($350).

    Now back to Z9X. It has Dolby Vision engine. That engine can be used even with basic HDR devices. However it produces much better results when it works in LLDV mode. This mode is activated when TV reports that it supports LLDV. We now asking Zidoo team to give us a way to activate LLDV mode directly on Z9X without need to buy extra HDFury devices.

    One way to do that would be to implement EDID emulation, where user could provide a prepared EDID file. Another possibility would be to extend UI with a setting to activate LLDV without the need to provide an emulation file; a few additional settings may be required in this case. For example EDID also provides data about maximum display brightness (in nits). This data is possibly used by LLDV engine.

    I personally would buy Z9X for that feature alone. Currently I use Fire TV 4K with Kodi and don't see much reasons to upgrade to Z9X if I can't use it's best graphic rendering mode.
     
  8. snapo6

    snapo6 Member

    Perfect clarified, thnx
     
  9. Markswift2003

    Markswift2003 Well-Known Member SUPER Administrator Beta test group Contributor

    The target nits (min/max) is set by the EDID as is the Colour Space and both are definitely used by the VS10 engine. LLDV's native colour space is a Dolby proprietary space called IPT which is close, but exactly different to DCI-P3, so you need to change that to either P3 or more usefully, BT.2020

    So the EDID you create needs to have a Dovi string that defines the XY primaries for your chosen colour space (if you stick at IPT the colours will be out) and the min/max nits.

    There's a reason HDFury devices cost what they do so the only way this has an icicle's chance in hell of being implemented is with EDID emulation and inputting a pre-prepared EDID, but even then I think we're well beyond the remit of a media player.

    It's a nice idea though, and I'd certainly be willing to help in the implementation. I've got a few ideas....

    But there's a lot going on at the moment and stuff like this would need to wait for that to get sorted....
     
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  10. Markswift2003

    Markswift2003 Well-Known Member SUPER Administrator Beta test group Contributor

    Wasn't going to get involved with this conversation, but I just can't help myself.... it's too interesting ;)
     
  11. bobocher

    bobocher New Member

    Appreciate your feedback! It's great to have an expert on board who can help with the feature.

    While most of Zidoo developers working hard on polishing Z9X, I hope they have someone on their team who could look into this feature as a change after bug fixing ;).

    Z9X could become the number one player for the whole projector community. I really hope for this to happen.
     
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  12. Markswift2003

    Markswift2003 Well-Known Member SUPER Administrator Beta test group Contributor

    Not sure about expert - I just spent the last few days unbricking my test device with the help of someone who knows a damn site more about Realtek SOCs than I do, but as I say, this stuff is really interesting.

    We're not at the polishing stage yet, but I reckon we're a week or two away from finishing major bug killing.
     
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  13. skelton

    skelton Member

    Very interesting information there @bobocher , thanks for the easy to understand explanation. It does sound like something we as projector owners would greatly benefit from and i will look into this Hdfury device you talked about. I am currently looking at getting an external video processor like Lumagen or maybe madVR Envy to do the tone mapping for HDR content but i haven't decided which one to go with yet. To have the excellent tone mapping from one of those processors combined with this LLDV capability in my projector i think can produce some really great image!

    Would be nice if Zidoo can add this at some point but it's good knowing there is already a device that can do it.

    Anyone with a Sony 4K HDR projector here on the forum that have tried it already and can share some impressions?
     
  14. Markswift2003

    Markswift2003 Well-Known Member SUPER Administrator Beta test group Contributor

    A Lumagen or Envy is a completely different proposition again and certainly in a different league to what we're talking about here - if you had such a VP you certainly wouldn't want to feed it an LLDV output from VS10!!
     
  15. mirror

    mirror Well-Known Member SUPER Administrator Zidoo TECH Supporter

    Looks like a good idea, It seems that I have to let our R & D colleagues evaluate it
     
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  16. Markswift2003

    Markswift2003 Well-Known Member SUPER Administrator Beta test group Contributor

    If you need any info on how the Dolby block in the EDID hangs together or example EDIDs etc let me know...
     
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  17. skelton

    skelton Member

    Ok, got it. I think i will wait to get an external VP like the lumagen or envy but i am interested in the HDFury device to try this LLDV thing and see what it's all about. I have all my UHD disks ripped with MakeMKV but not with DV, only HDR10 rips.
    Will i still benefit anything in picture quality playing my HDR10 rips if i get the HDFury to trick my Sony 4K projector into a LLDV display or does this only work for Dolby Vision content?
    If it also works for HDR10 only material, how big is the difference and is it mainly the colors that gets more saturated or does it also gives deeper blacks and brighter highlights?
     
  18. Markswift2003

    Markswift2003 Well-Known Member SUPER Administrator Beta test group Contributor

    Once you've tricked the Zidoo to output LLDV with an appropriate EDID, it will output all content in LLDV - DV, HDR10, HDR10+, SDR.

    But here's the thing - HDR in whatever flavour is not about more saturation or deeper blacks.

    HDR is about greyscale, it's the wider colour gamuts (P3 or BT2020 vs BT709) that expand the colour range. It's about specular highlights beyond diffuse white, a finer gradation of luma and therefore chroma (although technically that's down to bit depth, it's just that HDR is generally associated with 10 and 12-bit material) and the use of PQ (perceptual quantiser) gamma over standard power gamma for a more natural image.

    So if you have an HDR grade that looks say "brighter" or "more colourful" then it's been handled wrong either in post or presentation. If you look at a histogram of correctly mastered HDR content you see that the levels are pretty much the same as SDR up to diffuse white (100nits) and the only substantial difference is the presence of specular highlights beyond that up to a theoretical 10,000nits. And even then the overall APL (average picture level) should be roughly the same as the SDR grade but you get an increase in contrast range and highlight levels.

    With that in mind, the implementation of in the Zidoo is probably the best I've seen, certainly subjectively. Whether an SDR, HDR10 or Dolby grade, the colours look natural and highlights are well represented - unlike other implementations I've seen it doesn't look like someone's switched your TV into Showroom Mode!

    This is in stark contrast to, for example, the Realtek implementation of SDR to HDR which looks horribly overbaked.

    Although in the early days, despite helping HDFury in a small way (I wrote the 1000nit BT2020 LLDV EDID for them) I was rather unconvinced in the merits of this "hack" (hate that word!) in real world presentation - but with this implementation it now gives projector owners an even playing field for SDR, HDR10(+) and even DV within the limitations of projection.
     
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  19. Markswift2003

    Markswift2003 Well-Known Member SUPER Administrator Beta test group Contributor

    Sorry - I'll get off my soap box now... :D
     
  20. skelton

    skelton Member

    Thanks @Markswift2003 for your explanations, it helps and i am still just learning more about this new way of improving the HDR experience.

    So let me get this straight and please correct me if i am wrong,

    - I get the Vertex 2 and place it between my Z10 Pro and my soundbar HDMI input. Or should the Vertex sit between Sony projector and soundbar output instead?

    - I select the LLDV output mode on the Z10. Can i leave it this way no matter what content i playback (SDR, HDR10 or DV)?

    - I leave all the HDR settings in my projector in auto mode or do i need to change anything special to make this work?
     

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