Recommended Settings and other useful stuff for RTD 1619DR Players

Sometimes we have kept old habits in terms of video settings and I think it is to Mark's credit that he changed his opinion and shared it.

It is certain that this would be a sensitive debate if there were to be one because there are people who have a narrow mind and are reluctant to admit new facts following the evolution of the video material which is more and more efficient

 

Because everyone's setup and preferences are different, it's up to the individual to decide how best to apply the settings.

I'm more than happy to help anybody understand what the impact of changing each setting is but at the end of the day it's up to each individual user to decide what suits them and their particular setup the best.

The first post in this thread is offered as a starting point and hopefully it will allow everyone to gather information to best decide how to set up their box - and again, if not, I'm more than happy to help when necessary.

As a rule of thumb, setting auto resolution is sensible, but for reasons stated as the thread has progressed, it may not suit everyone and there are equally valid reasons for either so you have to decide on balance which will be better for your setup.

I personally now prefer to use only auto frame rate only and a big part of that decision is that I have a projector that takes about 15s to resync the HDMI input, however it's most certainly not a case of "one size fits all" and a broad brush approach still dictates that the starting point should be as per the first thread and then let experience and knowledge dictate your final decision.

The alternative is just to set everything to Auto or default and let the box do the thinking for you, yielding good, but maybe less than ideal, results.

 

Personally since the beginning (14 months) I set the output to 2160p 23.976 RGB and that's how I have the best visual results on my Samsung and my EPSON laser !!
It's like the VS10 at the beginning it's flattering but then we realize that the image is 'digital' ....... so at home the HDR is in 'auto' and my image is superb and very 'movie theater' !
This is of course only my opinion on MY installation.

 

I understand. I use the Switch frame rate and resolution. The resync of course it is present, but it does not last long (3-5sec). I have a projector (native 1080p),s o maybe it takes a little longer, but i use it quite rarely. Regardless, i might give it a try "Frame Rate Only"

 

Always worth a try.

 

Something odd I've noticed with my Z9X is that I have to mismatch the HDMI range with the TV's black level to get proper black levels (TV is an LG CX):

TV/Z9X:

auto/auto = crushed blacks
high/16-235 = proper black levels
low/0-255 = proper black levels

The strange thing here is, high on the LG CX is full rgb and low is limited. I confirmed it with the black clipping pattern from here https://www.avsforum.com/threads/avs-hd-709-blu-ray-mp4-calibration.948496/

Anyone notice something similar?

 

Now that most definitely shouldn't happen with that TV!

The patterns you are using are Rec.709 which is fine for SDR. Try with these HDR patterns:

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/hdr10-test-patterns-set.2943380/

 

My understanding was that with HDR, there is only full and the RGB space distinction doesn't exist, is that not the case?

 

No that's not the case at all. HDR content is encoded in the (limited) luminance range 64 to 940 (equivalent to 16 - 235 in old 8-bit parlance) purely because it's generally 10-bit (not because it's HDR) as opposed to 0 - 1024 (0-255)..

Not really sure what you mean by "RGB space distinction doesn't exist".

 

I was under the impression that HDR content is always played back in RGB full or 0-255 mode. The LG CX doesn't allow you to choose between full or limited when in HDR mode, only in SDR, and I assumed that was the reason why.

 

HDR has no bearing on chroma subsampling,

The vast majority of content (certainly disc and streaming content) is encoded in 4:2:0, which means for every 8 pixels the full luma signal is transferred but there are only 2 chroma levels.

They are also encoded in the limited luma range of 16-235 for 8-bit or 64-940 for 10-bit which is standard for video.

RGB and 4:4:4 is effectively uncompressed and includes the full luma signal and full chroma signal for each of these 8 pixels but it would be unfeasable to encode at that level due to file size.

4:2:2 is a compromise between uncompressed 4:4:4 with full 8 luma levels and 4 chroma levels.

The signal being output depends on how you set the box but it has to be within the constraints of the HDMI spec.

You can choose RGB for certain bit depths and resolutions (dependent on HDMI spec) but my recommendations are in this sticky on the first page.

 

That's what I'm using, just with the HDMI range is where I noticed this odd behavior. Tho I can report now that a reboot of the Z9X has fixed the issue, TV set to limited and a HDMI range of 16-235 in the Z9X produces proper black levels.

 

I have one question, I am from Zagreb Croatia, and Zidoo is now showing me these srt subtitles with the country Czech ext. srt why doesn't it show Croatia or just ext srt where I made a mistake in the settings

 

If I choose 4:2:2 on z9x, does it mean z9x will upsampling original 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 and then TV upsampling from 4:2:2 to 4:4:4?

 

Technically yes, although at the screen the signal is RGB (which is essentially the same as 4:4:4 except it's not encoded as YCrCb - what we used to call colour difference signals) but there's nothing to gain in doing that.

The content is 4:2:0 and so however you upsample it (unless an expensive video processor is involved) you still have the same pixel mapping.

4:2:2 is unique in that it has the same bitrate at 12-bit as it does at 8-bit but that can cause issue at 4K60 where the bitrate is the full 17.8Gbps and can stress the HDMI chain. At 4K30 it's great - only 8.9Gbps which is HDMI 1.4 territory, but in older iterations of the Realtek chips there used to be an 8-bit bottleneck in 4:2:2 12-bit so you'd see chroma banding.

The HDMI spec doesn't allow 4:2:0 at 4K30 but it does at 4K60.

Also the content is 10-bit at 4K so to get to the closest (and in the case of 4K, exact) format that the content is encoded I always advocate 10-bit 4:4:4 at 4K30 and 10-bit 4:2:0 at 4K60.

(10-bit 4:2:2 is not a legal HDMI mode so cannot be used)

This is different to Dolby Vision by the way, where you have no control how that is transferred: 8-bit RGB (HDMI tunnelled) for TV Led and 12-bit 4:2:2 for Player Led.

 

Hey, this is a bug that sometimes occurs with the player in some languages. Some time ago I wrote about it on the forum. The player incorrectly recognizes some of the subtitles encoded in mkv files (languages relatively less commonly used). I may suggest that you post this to @mirror. Eventually someone might have a closer look at it.

 

Can z9x decode DD+ and output to multi channel PCM? I have an old receiver which seems having DD+ compatibility issue.

 

I'm afraid not, but DD+ should be backwards compatible with older DD receivers...

 

Not always the case unfortunately Mark - I had a Yamaha YSP-2500 a few years ago which was simply brilliant, alas it couldn’t do DD+ and went really shrill/electronic trying to play it

 

From google, it looks like DD+ specification was updated at some point. older receivers may have problem unless DSP firmware is updated. My receiver can do TrueHD and DTS HD MA without problem. Just DD+ has problem.