2018 Panasonic OLED Model Numbers. Bait and Switch?

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Paul1977

5047 posts

Uber Geek

#2049835 5-Jul-2018 14:36

@Dingbatt

Just to update you (in case it sways you one way or the other):

I contacted Amazon to try to sort why I couldn't get 4K HDR, it basically came down to the content just being very difficult to find, but I discovered something else.

While I had read that Amazon was supporting both Dolby Vision and HDR10+, it appears that they may have dropped Dolby Vision. None of the titles I tried came up as Dolby Vision (just regular HDR), and the technical support person I chatted with said Dolby Vision wasn't available.

Take it with a grain of salt, as I have only tried a couple of titles on Amazon and the technical support person I chatted with probably isn't very high up in the chain.

Netflix is still strictly Dolby Vision for now.

mobiusnz

457 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2049842 5-Jul-2018 14:59

Paul1977:

I have to say, that the OLED blacks leave the Plasma in the dust (coming from a 55" Panasonic VT50).

Also, good quality 1080p content upscales really well and honestly looks fantastic.

I'm getting gadget lust - Its amazing how many people look at me funny when I say I have a plasma. Then I explain that I wanted movies to look like they were intended not super bright cartoons.

Matt Beechey Mobius Network Solutions

Quidam

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2050026 5-Jul-2018 18:37

Paul1977:

@Dingbatt

Just to update you (in case it sways you one way or the other):

I contacted Amazon to try to sort why I couldn't get 4K HDR, it basically came down to the content just being very difficult to find, but I discovered something else.

While I had read that Amazon was supporting both Dolby Vision and HDR10+, it appears that they may have dropped Dolby Vision. None of the titles I tried came up as Dolby Vision (just regular HDR), and the technical support person I chatted with said Dolby Vision wasn't available.

Take it with a grain of salt, as I have only tried a couple of titles on Amazon and the technical support person I chatted with probably isn't very high up in the chain.

Netflix is still strictly Dolby Vision for now.

Thanks for doing this Paul, it peaked my interest to get a bit more understanding about HDR and streaming services. I checked the Netflix help section and they had a great explanation regarding their HDR support. They support both Dolby Vision and HDR 10 (which they just call HDR. I would assume that if your TV supports Dolby Vision then it defaults to that (or maybe you select it, not sure, maybe you can tell me) otherwise it just defaults to HDR 10 (assuming your TV supports that, which pretty much all HDR TV's do).

I suspect the same is true for Amazon Prime, except with them it is either HDR10+ or HDR10.

I have no clue as to how much of a step-up Dynamic HDR formats are over the plain vanilla static HDR, I guess it is going to vary depending on how well it has been implemented for any particular video. In theory Dynamic HDR sounds a lot more flexible in terms of using it to achieve maximum effect, but I did read a review on the UHD version of A Quiet Place, and they could not actually see any difference worth noting between Dolby Vision and HDR10, so I'm starting to think it is not something worth losing sleep over.

Linking to the review if anyone is curious

https://www.avsforum.com/quiet-place-ultra-hd-blu-ray-review/

EDIT: Cut and Paste list of TV manufacturers Netflix lists as supporting Dolby Vision and HDR:

Dolby Vision

LG
Roku TV
Sony
Vizio

HDR

LG
Hisense
Panasonic
Philips
Roku TV
Samsung
Sharp
Sony
Toshiba

"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)

Paul1977

5047 posts

Uber Geek

#2050061 5-Jul-2018 19:57

Quidam:

Thanks for doing this Paul, it peaked my interest to get a bit more understanding about HDR and streaming services. I checked the Netflix help section and they had a great explanation regarding their HDR support. They support both Dolby Vision and HDR 10 (which they just call HDR. I would assume that if your TV supports Dolby Vision then it defaults to that (or maybe you select it, not sure, maybe you can tell me) otherwise it just defaults to HDR 10 (assuming your TV supports that, which pretty much all HDR TV's do).

I suspect the same is true for Amazon Prime, except with them it is either HDR10+ or HDR10.

I have no clue as to how much of a step-up Dynamic HDR formats are over the plain vanilla static HDR, I guess it is going to vary depending on how well it has been implemented for any particular video. In theory Dynamic HDR sounds a lot more flexible in terms of using it to achieve maximum effect, but I did read a review on the UHD version of A Quiet Place, and they could not actually see any difference worth noting between Dolby Vision and HDR10, so I'm starting to think it is not something worth losing sleep over.

My understanding is that all HDR and HDR10 mean the same thing, and that Dolby Vision and HDR10+ adds dynamic meta-data to the HDR10.

The other one is HLG, which I don't really know anything about, but I think LG, Panasonic, and Sony all support it this year - so I didn't seem much point looking into it.

So if you watch Dolby Vision content on an LG C8 you get Dolby Vision, if you watch the same content on a FZ950 you get should get regular HDR10.

Conversely, if you watch HDR10+ content on an LG C8 you should get regular HDR10, but on an FZ950 you get HDR10+.

Presumably this is why when remuxing a Dolby Vision Blu-Ray, while you lose Dolby Vision, it retains HDR10.

On the C8 I haven't seen an option to enable/disable Dolby Vision, and in Netflix it just plays with Dolby Vision automatically. If I watch the same titles on the C8 via my Xbox One X (which doesn't support Dolby Vision) I get standard HDR10.

TVs didn't use to be this complicated did they?

Quidam

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2050116 5-Jul-2018 20:57

Paul1977:

My understanding is that all HDR and HDR10 mean the same thing, and that Dolby Vision and HDR10+ adds dynamic meta-data to the HDR10.

The other one is HLG, which I don't really know anything about, but I think LG, Panasonic, and Sony all support it this year - so I didn't seem much point looking into it.

So if you watch Dolby Vision content on an LG C8 you get Dolby Vision, if you watch the same content on a FZ950 you get should get regular HDR10.

Conversely, if you watch HDR10+ content on an LG C8 you should get regular HDR10, but on an FZ950 you get HDR10+.

Presumably this is why when remuxing a Dolby Vision Blu-Ray, while you lose Dolby Vision, it retains HDR10.

On the C8 I haven't seen an option to enable/disable Dolby Vision, and in Netflix it just plays with Dolby Vision automatically. If I watch the same titles on the C8 via my Xbox One X (which doesn't support Dolby Vision) I get standard HDR10.

TVs didn't use to be this complicated did they?

Love it. Without having done any leg work into the nuts and bolts of HDR, my guess is that Static HDR is base information/meta-data held within the video-stream encode itself, and the Dynamic HDR data is perhaps held in a separate media file. So perhaps when doing the remux, the Dolby Vision (and I assume HDR10+) would have to be explicitly selected and included into the mux, but I'm just spit-balling as I've never tried to mux an HDR disc, and won't be able to unless I get a 4K player for one of my PC's.

ps. referring to your earlier post about muxing 4K discs, my understanding is that some time ago a large number of ACCS 2.0 keys were leaked to the public domain, allowing for quite a large number of titles to have their copy protection removed. This file you refer to most likely details the encryption keys that have been discovered, and probably gets periodically updated as new ones become available. As far as I know, AACS 2.0 itself has not been broken, so unless a key for a given title is known, the discs remain secure. You have got think that it is only a matter of time though. Regardless, I personally hate having to handle physical media, and if given the choice, I'd much rather have the option (and right) to encode it to a NAS once I've bought the disc. Also, I would not remux, I'd transcode it down to a lower quality/bit-rate. I'm convinced about 50% of the file-size provides diminishing returns in terms of perceivable quality, almost at placebo levels. I maybe wrong though, and I fully appreciate some people would not accept any loss of quality, which is a completely reasonable position as it is a totally subjective topic. I also wonder just how long it would take to transcode a 4K movie, probably a horrifically long time, even with a monster cpu.

"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)

Paul1977

5047 posts

Uber Geek

#2050186 5-Jul-2018 22:26

Quidam:

Love it. Without having done any leg work into the nuts and bolts of HDR, my guess is that Static HDR is base information/meta-data held within the video-stream encode itself, and the Dynamic HDR data is perhaps held in a separate media file. So perhaps when doing the remux, the Dolby Vision (and I assume HDR10+) would have to be explicitly selected and included into the mux, but I'm just spit-balling as I've never tried to mux an HDR disc, and won't be able to unless I get a 4K player for one of my PC's.

ps. referring to your earlier post about muxing 4K discs, my understanding is that some time ago a large number of ACCS 2.0 keys were leaked to the public domain, allowing for quite a large number of titles to have their copy protection removed. This file you refer to most likely details the encryption keys that have been discovered, and probably gets periodically updated as new ones become available. As far as I know, AACS 2.0 itself has not been broken, so unless a key for a given title is known, the discs remain secure. You have got think that it is only a matter of time though. Regardless, I personally hate having to handle physical media, and if given the choice, I'd much rather have the option (and right) to encode it to a NAS once I've bought the disc. Also, I would not remux, I'd transcode it down to a lower quality/bit-rate. I'm convinced about 50% of the file-size provides diminishing returns in terms of perceivable quality, almost at placebo levels. I maybe wrong though, and I fully appreciate some people would not accept any loss of quality, which is a completely reasonable position as it is a totally subjective topic. I also wonder just how long it would take to transcode a 4K movie, probably a horrifically long time, even with a monster cpu.

I think the problem is that they simply can't decode (might be the wrong word) the Dolby Vision stream (or layer or whatever it is) as it is a closed standard and no one has figured out how to do it.

In regards to the file with the encryption keys, it appears every movie has it's own key as the file lists the movie next to each key - and some movies have more than one (for different regions maybe).

I'll stick to remuxing, it's just so much less work.

Quidam

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2050535 6-Jul-2018 14:50

Paul1977:

I think the problem is that they simply can't decode (might be the wrong word) the Dolby Vision stream (or layer or whatever it is) as it is a closed standard and no one has figured out how to do it.

In regards to the file with the encryption keys, it appears every movie has it's own key as the file lists the movie next to each key - and some movies have more than one (for different regions maybe).

I'll stick to remuxing, it's just so much less work.

I've started doing some leg-work on gaining a deeper understanding. I found a technical article that provides plenty of historical context of the development of 4K HDR/WCG (Wide Colour Gamut). It appears to go hand-in-hand with the HEVC (x265) codec. Turns out the specific encoder spec is called the "HEVC Main 10 Profile" designed specifically to encode Rec 2020 HDR content. Surprisingly they still use YCrCb 4:2:0 Chroma subsampling just like the original Blu Rays, the only change is the bit depth is now 10 vs 8, which makes sense given the Rec 2020 colour space probably requires 10 bits in order to cover it.

Anyway, seems almost certain HEVC Main 10 got shortened down to HDR 10, as a way to describe HEVC HDR encodes. As Dolby Vision came along later, it surely can't be directly integrated into the standard HEVC HDR encode, so is probably a separate layer of meta data that augments/offsets the existing static HDR information. I therefore think it most likely sits outside the main video stream as it's own stream of meta-data, and as you say, it is probably not documented as to how it can be properly extracted and remuxed given it is a closed standard.

Link to article: https://ngcodec.com/news/2015/11/16/fpgas-are-best-for-encoding-high-dynamic-range-hdr-content-with-hevch265

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Paul1977

5047 posts

Uber Geek

#2051744 8-Jul-2018 22:34

Quidam:

I've started doing some leg-work on gaining a deeper understanding. I found a technical article that provides plenty of historical context of the development of 4K HDR/WCG (Wide Colour Gamut). It appears to go hand-in-hand with the HEVC (x265) codec. Turns out the specific encoder spec is called the "HEVC Main 10 Profile" designed specifically to encode Rec 2020 HDR content. Surprisingly they still use YCrCb 4:2:0 Chroma subsampling just like the original Blu Rays, the only change is the bit depth is now 10 vs 8, which makes sense given the Rec 2020 colour space probably requires 10 bits in order to cover it.

Anyway, seems almost certain HEVC Main 10 got shortened down to HDR 10, as a way to describe HEVC HDR encodes. As Dolby Vision came along later, it surely can't be directly integrated into the standard HEVC HDR encode, so is probably a separate layer of meta data that augments/offsets the existing static HDR information. I therefore think it most likely sits outside the main video stream as it's own stream of meta-data, and as you say, it is probably not documented as to how it can be properly extracted and remuxed given it is a closed standard.

Link to article: https://ngcodec.com/news/2015/11/16/fpgas-are-best-for-encoding-high-dynamic-range-hdr-content-with-hevch265

That would certainly make sense.

It still leaves us in the unfortunate position of having to choose whether the convenience of a remux or re-encode to NAS is worth the trade-off of losing Dolby Vision. But it's probably only a matter of time before someone cracks it, and at that point I would think we could also see the possibility of converting the meta-data from HDR10+ to Dolby Vision and vice versa. It might be wishful thinking, but that would be cool.

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