PS4 Pro experiences

[DuckThor Evil]

That's a lot.

You may want to see what CES brings with the 2017 models before committing that kind of money on a product that is undergoing changes.

I personally don't believe there will be anything major coming and this TV pretty much has everything I want, low input lag, pretty good HDR and the size is good for movies and at least the 55" I saw had very good picture quality in my eyes. I know it's not perfect. And yes it's a quite a bit of money, but for the size it's a pretty good deal and you can bet that the new models will cost a lot more at this size. This thing launched at around close to €7000 over here in April and the same model (with different number) is going for $6000 at Amazon right now. Something is always around the corner and this won't be my last set either.

 

[wco81]

For movies, HDR is being refined and there should be a revision to HDMI.

And now with HDR, they're pushing displays capable of brighter displays.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I feel like this is already bright enough. It is quite bright. It also has the Samsung one connect system so you can upgrade the separate input box, if something better becomes available. I personally feel this tech is already good enough for now and again the prices on new models at this size will be way more expensive for quite some time.

 

[wco81]

You may be right for that size.

I'm thinking of getting a 65" to replace a 50" plasma. But I'll have to figure out if I can use the same mount and so on.

 

[Jogi]

FWIW, we were able to get about a 46% supersample for HoloBall on PS4 Pro, roughly maintaining the same framerate as the normal PS4 (90fps-ish).

The effect is subtle, but everything is much crisper and nicer overall.

Bit of offtopic but do you have any insight why most of PSVR games have kind of dark grey blacks levels (raised blacklevel -> mura effect really visible, Rush of blood is one example) and only some games manage to get inky OLED black levels without any mura noise.

 

[orangpelupa]

even in theatre mode its only true black around the vrtual screen.

anyway, maybe they did that as a workaround for some other OLED problem? like additional lag when strobing it completely on/off ?

 

[Jogi]

even in theatre mode its only true black around the vrtual screen.

anyway, maybe they did that as a workaround for some other OLED problem? like additional lag when strobing it completely on/off ?

In those games that have true black level I did not notice any side effects.. for example in VR worlds there is some loading screen that has black background and blueish floating particles all around. Mayby is is 90hz vs 120hz thing, mayby not.. it is stil very annoying in dark games.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Bit of offtopic but do you have any insight why most of PSVR games have kind of dark grey blacks levels (raised blacklevel -> mura effect really visible, Rush of blood is one example) and only some games manage to get inky OLED black levels without any mura noise.

I speculated in another thread that all current VR headsets suffer from this due to traditional game development which targets LCD TVs. As it is not really possible to attain true black on a LCD TV, black is given a value of 16 rather than 0 (the vast majority of LCD TVs have difficulty differentiating between black levels below that). That has likely carried over into the development process of most VR games. Hence while OLED should be able to resolve a black level of 0 (or close to it), the software (game or whatever) is using 16 for the lowest level of black.

Hence the vast majority of TVs are set to only display 16-235 rather than RGBs full 0-255. And is also why if you set the XBO output to full RGB you'll see black crush on the vast majority of TVs as anything in the range of 0-16 is treated as the same level of black.

That's the most likely explanation as I highly doubt Sony would limit output to the VR headset to limited RGB (16-235) if it can handle full RGB.

Regards,
SB

 

[novcze]

I speculated in another thread that all current VR headsets suffer from this due to traditional game development which targets LCD TVs. As it is not really possible to attain true black on a LCD TV, black is given a value of 16 rather than 0 (the vast majority of LCD TVs have difficulty differentiating between black levels below that). That has likely carried over into the development process of most VR games. Hence while OLED should be able to resolve a black level of 0 (or close to it), the software (game or whatever) is using 16 for the lowest level of black.

Hence the vast majority of TVs are set to only display 16-235 rather than RGBs full 0-255. And is also why if you set the XBO output to full RGB you'll see black crush on the vast majority of TVs as anything in the range of 0-16 is treated as the same level of black.

That's the most likely explanation as I highly doubt Sony would limit output to the VR headset to limited RGB (16-235) if it can handle full RGB.

Regards,
SB

I don't have any experience with PSVR but these black level problems look like user issues or Sony forget to mention what output have to be set on the PS4, most TV's can be set to accept full or limited range without any problems, PS4 output can be set to full or limited without any problems. Games have final output in full RGB (if we ignore HDR), level translation is done after rendering (on OS level, IMO). Problem is usually when user have no idea what these settings do.

 

[London Geezer]

It's definitely a software problem. the screen is more than capable of producing 'true' black, as it does very often.

 

[MrFox]

I speculated in another thread that all current VR headsets suffer from this due to traditional game development which targets LCD TVs. As it is not really possible to attain true black on a LCD TV, black is given a value of 16 rather than 0 (the vast majority of LCD TVs have difficulty differentiating between black levels below that). That has likely carried over into the development process of most VR games. Hence while OLED should be able to resolve a black level of 0 (or close to it), the software (game or whatever) is using 16 for the lowest level of black.

Hence the vast majority of TVs are set to only display 16-235 rather than RGBs full 0-255. And is also why if you set the XBO output to full RGB you'll see black crush on the vast majority of TVs as anything in the range of 0-16 is treated as the same level of black.

That's the most likely explanation as I highly doubt Sony would limit output to the VR headset to limited RGB (16-235) if it can handle full RGB.

Regards,
SB

Wow. No. It's just a calibration point, like an offset value. The HDTV standard 16-235 setup means 16 is pure black and 235 is pure white. It has nothing to do with development, it has nothing to do with display technology, it dates back to the 1940's transmission standards and it's an additional signal range to simplify calibration, It's called a blacker-than-black level because if you see any difference between 0 and 16 in that setup it means your display is badly calibrated.

The reason VR doesn't go full black is because OLED have a non-linear response time when it goes black. The pixels that reached black take slightly longer to rise back than grey-to-grey. It's what causes black smear in movement with VR headsets that allow true black. The solution is to avoid screen values of 0.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Wow. No. It's just a calibration point, like an offset value. The HDTV standard 16-235 setup means 16 is pure black and 235 is pure white. It has nothing to do with development, it has nothing to do with display technology, it dates back to the 1940's transmission standards and it's an additional signal range to simplify calibration, It's called a blacker-than-black level because if you see any difference between 0 and 16 in that setup it means your display is badly calibrated.

The reason VR doesn't go full black is because OLED have a non-linear response time when it goes black. The pixels that reached black take slightly longer to rise back than grey-to-grey. It's what causes black smear in movement with VR headsets that allow true black. The solution is to avoid screen values of 0.

Yes it is, here's a link that goes into better detail about it.

http://referencehometheater.com/2014/commentary/rgb-full-vs-limited/

TVs use a video range from 16-235. It considers levels below 16 to be black, and information above 235 is white. A calibrated TV will never display anything below 16 as anything other than black. Most will also treat everything over 235 as white since it should not exist in video content.

PCs are different and use a range from 0-255. There is no data below 0 or above 255 with an 8-bit video signal as there are only 256 possible values. In short, this is much simpler to understand as the TV concepts of Blacker-than-Black and Whiter-than-White do not exist.

RGB Full and RGB Limited exist because of this difference. TV programs and movies use the 16-235 range of values. Video games and PCs use the 0-255 range of values. Since TVs and PC Monitors use different scales, there has to be a way to convert between the two. Setting this RGB Full and Limited setting does that.

So games, as well as media are created with that in mind when considering the output video stream.

Although, you are also correct.

Q: Since video games use the Full RGB palette, shouldn’t I use Full RGB when playing video games and then Limited RGB for movies?

A: No. Most video games are designed using the Full RGB spectrum since they are designed on computers which use that. However, when you are playing a Full RGB game and your video game console is set to Limited, it takes this into account. The video levels are shifted from 0-255 down to 16-235 and the gamma curve is adjusted to match a TV as well. You aren’t losing anything as the system is accounting for this..

However,

Q: When I choose limited, I get a washed out image. When I choose full, shadows are crushed. Which is correct?

A: If you are on a TV, then Limited is still correct. The washed-out image is caused by your brightness setting being too high. You should use a calibration disc, like the free AVS 709 disc, World of Wonder, or Spears & Munsil, to set this correctly. Then your black levels will be correct in limited, you will see shadow details, and it won’t be washed out.
.

It sounds like many, but not all games on PSVR are being himited to 16-235 output rather than the full 0-255 output.

BTW - typing on a keyboard after spilingh somewater onitishell. aswellastryinghtocorrect theoutpt.

Regards,
SB

 

[novcze]

Wow. No. It's just a calibration point, like an offset value. The HDTV standard 16-235 setup means 16 is pure black and 235 is pure white. It has nothing to do with development, it has nothing to do with display technology, it dates back to the 1940's transmission standards and it's an additional signal range to simplify calibration, It's called a blacker-than-black level because if you see any difference between 0 and 16 in that setup it means your display is badly calibrated.

true

The reason VR doesn't go full black is because OLED have a non-linear response time when it goes black. The pixels that reached black take slightly longer to rise back than grey-to-grey. It's what causes black smear in movement with VR headsets that allow true black. The solution is to avoid screen values of 0.

I didn't hear about problems with near black response time on OLED TVs or is it more pronounced on higher framerates VR sets operate at?

 

[novcze]

Yes it is, here's a link that goes into better detail about it.

http://referencehometheater.com/2014/commentary/rgb-full-vs-limited/

They are looking at it from hometheatre perspective, AV crowd will always advocate for calibrating for video levels since all movies are like that.

There is no reason why avoid full RGB on a capable TVs, when properly calibrated it will be better than limited because there is more levels between black and white (obviously).

 

[MrFox]

I didn't hear about problems with near black response time on OLED TVs or is it more pronounced on higher framerates VR sets operate at?

Yeah, it's always been there somehow on any display using a TFT backplane (i.e. both LCD and OLED), but the frame rate and the blanking time being so extreme, it makes it a problem appear in VR in a way that would never be visible on a normal TV. Also our eyes are following a seemingly static virtual object, which in fact is moving across the screen, so we're much more sensitive to any tiny variations to it, specially if the artifact is different between the left and right eyes. Like a tiny amount of aliasing is very annoying in VR.

There is a solution to help reach lower black levels without smear, by overdriving the panel based on the known response mismatch. It's an old trick that's been used in LCD panel drivers for many years now. It can cause severe artifacts and clamping/flashing, so I don't know how much it works for VR. It's also temperature dependent so it's kind of a mess to implement, maybe it's easier with oled.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yes it is, here's a link that goes into better detail about it.

So games, as well as media are created with that in mind when considering the output video stream.

Games are developed for 0-255 (or rather, with 0-255 range assets and no regard for output limitations) and let the engine/hardware worry about displaying it. When switching from limited to full RGB, the game uses the same assets; it's just the output mapping that's different. So just as setting your console to limited RGB and TV to full RGB results in grey 'blacks', so too on a VR headset. It sounds like a messed up full/limited RGB signal thingymajig to me. Games/PS4/breakout box are sending 16-235 range signals to a display trying to display 0-255.

 

[orangpelupa]

btw PSVR do able to properly detect limited and full RGB range.
you can switch it back and forth from PS4 menu and it will look the same.

on TV with only limited RGB support, it will look washed-out when you set PS4 to FULL. On some TV you can manually select FULL x LIMITED

 

[brunogm]

HDR displays have a strict standard where peak brigthness:
OLED > 540 nits blacklevel of 0.0005 nits
Other > 1000 nits blacklevel of 0.05 nits

So for OLED is almost impossible to have such low level of light in a normal darkroom, maybe for HMD.
Then, Cinema P3 content is mastered at 4000nits! And some blurayHDR is cheating the dolby hdr metadata that made some TV a software update hack, to allow correct adaptation between peak nits.

http://www.schubincafe.com/2016/09/01/hdr-the-bottom-line-by-mark-schubin/

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Here's a little heads-up for PS4 Pro owners with 4K HDR TVs:

The HDMI 2.0 spec doesn't seem to have the necessary bandwidth to drive 4K + RGB + HDR + 60 FPS.

This is why so many people seem to be having problems with the PS4 Pro on HDR + 4K.
The console has its default output to 60Hz, so it's always pushing those regardless of what the game is set up for.
So when the Pro is set to RGB and you try to start off some 4K+HDR content, the console will automatically downgrade to YUV420.
Some TVs do well with the sudden input change to YUV420. Others.. not so much, and you'll need to manually set the input to YUV in the TV.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

My TV is reporting 4:2:2 when I play in HDR-mode on PS4 Pro.