Cropped Dolby Vision with grey bars

I’ve noticed on my LG OLED C1 with the Z9X Pro that especially the black bars in Dolby Vision aren’t black, but more like a dark grey tone. Also tested it on the G1. In general it looks like Dolby Vision is just above black/a little too bright, but it’s only annoying for the grey bars. It’s the same for every Movie (DB Profile 8) and a Video I have. SDR and HDR10 are unaffected.

On the Apple TV and internally it looks fine. I have the Cinema Preset on the TV activated but with brighter Dolby Vision modes like Standard it only gets worse. I also followed the recommended settings for the new players, HDR on auto. With the HDMI cable directly into the TV or soundbar it doesn’t make a difference.

I have pictures to show it at a completely black scene. One close up and one with the whole TV. It doesn’t look that dramatic in real and I only can see it when it’s completely dark.

 

Confirmed. With cropped DV contents, the black bars are grey.

 

Will check this out tonight after dark!

Can you both confirm this only happens with cropped video.

There was a similar issue with the Z9X in the early days - cropped video is an overlay on a background layer and that background must be set to black 64.

I created some exagerated graphics at the time to describe it.

 

Hi @Markswift2003 I raised this a couple of weeks back on the Z2000Pro thread when I was having this, and other DV related issues. You recommend a factory reset which I did and thankfully it resolved the other DV issues but I still have raised blacks on video background as described above.

 

To confirm, only on cropped content?

 

Yes Mark, full screen DV looks fine but the black bars on cropped content are grey.

 

Great, so it’s the background layer and not the video… that’s easier!

 

Thanks for the replies. Could also test it now. It can go full black.

 

Confirmed Dolby Vision cropped video Z9x Pro with fw 1.048 or 1.052 black bars are grey
File: mkv
DV profile: 8
TV: LG 48c1

 

Ok, I've confirmed this and I've created a 2.40:1 test file from an existing 1.78:1 Dolby Vision black clip test pattern to send to the devs. The issue is very clear with this test pattern. You might have to turn brightness up on your monitor to see this:



This is an exaggerated version with brightness turned up so you can better see the effect:




It looks like the background layer is set to about 80-85 instead of 64.

One thing I can see is, forgetting this background layer, that the actual black clip in SDR, HDR10 and Dolby Vision is nigh on perfect down to 64 which is an improvement over previous models.

 

I've changed the name of the thread to better describe it.

 

It seems the issue is not restricted to Dolby Vision, it happens in other modes too:



I can't test TV Led as I don't have a TV Led display but I assume in Dolby Vision VS10 Engine (Output DV) the results are the same as LLDV - ie cropped SDR, HDR10 and DV content all have a raised background layer?

 

Yep that's right. i just tested cropped DV TV-led or LLDV and HDR10 both are suffer from grey bar ..., but SDR was fine.

 

DV TV Led has the same issues, but for me HDR10 is fine. I agree with everything else. Dolby Vision VS10 Engine (Output DV) doesn’t work for me, it just activates Dolby Vision but the screen stays black.

 

If you turn Black Level (Brightness) on your TV you'll see the bars on HDR10 too (except for VS10 SDR Output).

 

I hope DEV will fix these issue in the next firmware released.

 

Is there any update on this? Same issue with Z9X but on a LG C3. As far as I remember this problem was not on my smaller Panasonic OLED but it's really distracting on a 77 inch size and it seems to screw with the colours as well.

 

The issue was fixed on the Z9X (1619DR) a couple of years ago.

 

I read that as well but I had to lower black levels from 50 to 45 in the LG with cropped content containing HDR10 or Dolby Vision metadata. Full screen there seems to be no issue.

 

Hi, I am having same problem with Z2600 and LG C9 TV. I am on latest firmware. What is the fix to get cropping bars as true black? Seems to be only with DV content