Over-saturation on iPlayer UHD

[mike_m]

This isn’t strictly a Freeview question – my apologies!

Last year I recorded the BBC series ‘English’ , but didn’t get round to watching it till last week, when we found that one episode failed to record – so we watched that episode on iPlayer. Having been blown away by the show’s superb photography when played on an HDR FoxT2, we were massively disappointed with how it looked on iPlayer – highly over-saturated with colours bleeding everywhere. I checked all the colour settings on the TV for both inputs, and they were as normal – and other iPlayer programmes seem to be fine. However, one thing I noticed was that on iPlayer, ‘English’ was labelled as UHD, and there seemed to be no option to watch in ordinary HD.

Has anyone else had this problem with UHD on iPlayer?

 

[Rodders53]

What is being used to display iPlayer in UHD on what TV. It's likely relevant. *

Check the TV per input picture settings on it... they may need tweaking.
While watching UHD content from iPlayer.
UHD has High Dynamic Range (HDR) of brightness and a wide colour gamut also compared to broadcast 1080i Standard Dynamic Range (SDR). BBC uses Hybrid Log Gamma rather than Dolby Vision or HDR10/10+ other streaming services may favour for UHD HDR.

The photos taken probably do neither picture justice on my laptop screen.

* Roku for instance has/had a 'bug' of using the wrong colours space https://community.roku.com/t5/Solvi...ontent-color-space-error-4K-Ultra/td-p/758136

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/help/questions/features/uhd-connected-tv/#/Notification has a list of UHD programmes to watch on iPlayer. See if they have the same issue or are OK?

 

[Black Hole]

I'm not sure it's the case here, but a typical cause on over-saturation is when broadcast TV is displayed with "cinema" setting on the TV. DVDs use a limited gamut, which gets extended to the the full range by the cinema setting, resulting in over-saturation and solarisation for broadcast (which uses the full gamut).

 

[mike_m]

I'm not sure it's the case here, but a typical cause on over-saturation is when broadcast TV is displayed with "cinema" setting on the TV. DVDs use a limited gamut, which gets extended to the the full range by the cinema setting, resulting in over-saturation and solarisation for broadcast (which uses the full gamut).

As you say, I don't think that's the issue in this case, as I've don't use the Cinema setting - all my settings are pretty neutral. I find we don't watch DVDs much now, except for re-runs of old TV favourites occasionally, so nearly everything we watch is terrestrial on Freeview (mostly recorded on the hummys) or streamed TV for catch-up, Netflix, Amazon etc. I have to say that there haven't been any problems with picture set-up until now - I find that all the pictures - whether streamed TV, live broadcast programmes, or played back from a recording - all look pretty much identical. (By the way, I worked in the television industry for 35 years, and in my particular field (CGI effects and animation) we dealt with colour space issues on a daily basis, so I'm familiar with what a properly calibrated TV image should look like).

Anyway, I'll do some further investigation and see if it's the same with other streamed UHD programmes - I guess this is the first one I've come across.

 

[Black Hole]

By the way, I worked in the television industry for 35 years, and in my particular field (CGI effects and animation) we dealt with colour space issues on a daily basis, so I'm familiar with what a properly calibrated TV image should look like

Fair enough; I can't read minds at this distance.

 

[mike_m]

Fair enough; I can't read minds at this distance.

Sorry, that probably came across as over-defensive - not what I intended! Just saying that I'm not a total numpty as far as the look of a TV image goes. However, I confess I'm at a loss when it comes to how modern broadcasters and streaming platforms approach colour space - I've been out of the business for a few years now.

Back in the days of pre-digital PAL broadcast, I was continually having explain to directors (who were used to film's colour space) why their beautiful images looked so poor on TV. Once, doing a commercial for Sony UK, I was even hauled in front of their PR director to explain why their company logo's Pantone colour couldn't be replicated exactly on a TV. I said it was because it wasn't in the PAL colour space, and the discussion became rather heated. Eventually I pointed at the Sony Trinitron monitor in the edit suite and said "Well it's your bloody monitor that can't display the bloody colour!" and stormed out. I think we lost the job.

 

[prpr]

I think we lost the job.

But I bet they were awfully nice about it.

 

[Owen Smith]

Last year I recorded the BBC series ‘English’ , but didn’t get round to watching it till last week, when we found that one episode failed to record – so we watched that episode on iPlayer. Having been blown away by the show’s superb photography when played on an HDR FoxT2, we were massively disappointed with how it looked on iPlayer

I agree The English looked superb in HD from the HDR Fox T2, the photography was sumptuous.

 

[mike_m]

What is being used to display iPlayer in UHD on what TV. It's likely relevant. *

It's a Samsung UE43AU8000 using its own iPlayer app, connected to the router via ethernet cable.

Check the TV per input picture settings on it... they may need tweaking.
While watching UHD content from iPlayer.
UHD has High Dynamic Range (HDR) of brightness and a wide colour gamut also compared to broadcast 1080i Standard Dynamic Range (SDR). BBC uses Hybrid Log Gamma rather than Dolby Vision or HDR10/10+ other streaming services may favour for UHD HDR.

I checked the settings for all the inputs, and I couldn't see any controls that might be apply in this case - to be honest, this TV (new in 2021) seems to have less picture controls than my older Samsung, although that could be my faulty memory! Of course I could play with the saturation level, but then I'd have to tweak the settings back for non-UHD shows (i.e.most of them).

Thanks for the info on colour gamuts - it does seem likely that the problem has to do with the HDR/SDR issue, though I don't understand whether it's the fault of the TV, the app, or iPlayer.

To be honest, I just wish there was a 'watch in HD' button on iPlayer, so we could avoid the whole UHD malarkey. Our tv isn't really big enough (and our eyesight not good enough!) to warrant 4K.

* Roku for instance has/had a 'bug' of using the wrong colours spacehttps://community.roku.com/t5/Solvi...ontent-color-space-error-4K-Ultra/td-p/758136

Yes, that's exactly the issue we have.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/help/questions/features/uhd-connected-tv/#/Notification has a list of UHD programmes to watch on iPlayer. See if they have the same issue or are OK?

That's useful - cheers. I see that 'The Gold' is in UHD on iPlayer, so I'll check it out.

 

[Rodders53]

I only did a little over 26 years in the broadcast industry taking redundancy early retirement in late 2006. So I am also well out of date on a detailed technical level as well.

I say to check picture settings while watching a UHD source 'cos some options only come up when the source suits.

Only UHD TV we have is in the bedroom and a cheap Hisense that doesn't have the dynamic brightness needed, but is on the BBC iPlayer UHD trial list. (Still using a Panny GT60 plasma in the lounge.) A quick 60 second look at The English on iPlayer revealed that my Hisense offers a series of preset UHD modes: Standard, Day, Night, Dynamic and Sports among them.
Dynamic mode was super saturated as one might expect. Others varied brightness and saturation levels. But I literally just had a 60 second play.

Do have a look on AVForums and/or DigitalSpy to see if other owners of your TV have similar issues. A quick Google only really found the Roku one for me.

 

[mike_m]

I checked out 'The Gold', and it has the same over-saturation issue compared with the HDR T2 recording.

After checking the TV's instruction manual thoroughly, it seems they do have a UHD setting ('Input Signal Plus') - but it only applies to signals from external devices that come in via one of the HDMI inputs. Of course the iPlayer signal comes via the ethernet connection, so it doesn't have the option.

 

[mike_m]

But I bet they were awfully nice about it.

Not as nice as John Cleese said they would be...

 

[Rodders53]

I checked out 'The Gold', and it has the same over-saturation issue compared with the HDR T2 recording.

After checking the TV's instruction manual thoroughly, it seems they do have a UHD setting ('Input Signal Plus') - but it only applies to signals from external devices that come in via one of the HDMI inputs. Of course the iPlayer signal comes via the ethernet connection, so it doesn't have the option.

On the Hisense I got to mine via the <Menu> button then <Settings Cog> which only offered the presets as far as I could see. But it was brief.
I seem to remember it was different options on a Netflix programme with Dolby Vision; but could be mistaken.

My Panny TV also has separate 'per input' settings for the APPS (inc iPlayer - HD quality max of course) and its' Freeview tuner..

Anyways if nothing can be found via your menus then a call to Samsung, their online community and or an enquiry to BBC iPlayer support might be in order?
https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/...ettings-unavailable-when-viewing-bbc-iplayer/ and
https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/tv/wimbledon-iplayer-uhd-red-saturation/td-p/5637191 may help? (or not)

Good Luck - there must be a solution out there... Even if that means a UHD or non-UHD streaming stick into the TV?

 

[mike_m]

Good Luck - there must be a solution out there... Even if that means a UHD or non-UHD streaming stick into the TV?

Thanks! I've sent a question to the BBC via the iPlayer website, so I'll see what they say.

I'm wondering if the issue will turn out to be my low broadband speed (<10mbps). Even though we're only 60 miles from London, we're in an area that hasn't got fibre to the door - the last 2km is on old-fashioned copper. Normal HD streaming is fine at that speed, but I gather UHD needs 25 or more.
Since I don't get buffering on the UHD shows, I assume that iPlayer is smart enough to reduce the resolution so that it plays continuously - but it's unable to change the colour information.

 

[Rodders53]

If your broadband speed was really 10 Mbit/s you'd not be getting the UHD stream at all...

You'll need an internet connection of 24MBit/s for the full 3840 pixel Ultra HD experience, or 12MBit/s for 2560 pixel Ultra HD.

For normal iPlayer

High-quality BBC iPlayer programmes stream at up to 5 Mbps or megabits (5000 kbps) and our standard quality version is 1.5 Mbps (1500 kbps).

Are you still on ADSL? Or Fibre to the cabinet? Do run a wired Ookla speed test for recent accurate figures, as well as over wifi. You may have had improvements to speed due to other Openreach changes elsewhere? But even so... My copper line goes to a FTTC in the village but the phone exchange is in the next one over so ADSL for me would be <1 Mbit/s.

Are you wired ethernet or wifi to the TV?
(Not that any of the above should make a jot of difference to the picture brightness/saturation - just the number of pixels and degree of encoding artefacts seen as the connection speed drops.)

 

[xyz321]

Last year I recorded the BBC series ‘English’ , but didn’t get round to watching it till last week, when we found that one episode failed to record – so we watched that episode on iPlayer. Having been blown away by the show’s superb photography when played on an HDR FoxT2, we were massively disappointed with how it looked on iPlayer – highly over-saturated with colours bleeding everywhere.

Have you tried using the HDR-Fox-T2 to download one of the lower resolution options from iplayer?

 

[mike_m]

If your broadband speed was really 10 Mbit/s you'd not be getting the UHD stream at all...

Correct. Our speed varies from around 7 to 9 (8.6 today on Ookla).

Are you still on ADSL? Or Fibre to the cabinet? Do run a wired Ookla speed test for recent accurate figures, as well as over wifi. You may have had improvements to speed due to other Openreach changes elsewhere? But even so... My copper line goes to a FTTC in the village but the phone exchange is in the next one over so ADSL for me would be <1 Mbit/s.

Our contract is laughingly called 'Fibre2', but it's fibre to cabinet (which is 2km away) and then copper. A BT rep told us last month that they have no plans to upgrade to full fibre in our lane for the forseeable future. Gigaclear would install fibre at a cost if we needed it, but we don't. The thing is, we don't actually want UHD, and otherwise our broadband is plenty fast enough for our uses. My complaint is that we can't view iPlayer programmes streamed as UHD with the correct colour - what we need is a 'Watch in HD' setting on iPlayer.

Are you wired ethernet or wifi to the TV?
(Not that any of the above should make a jot of difference to the picture brightness/saturation - just the number of pixels and degree of encoding artefacts seen as the connection speed drops.)

Wired internet. There's no buffering on 'The Gold' or 'English', and no artifacts - the perceived resolution is at least as good as normal HD - so I'm assuming that iPlayer is limiting the resolution to whatever it can transmit fast enough - because that's a simple scaling process that can be done on the fly - but presumably the colour & luminance information is embedded in the data, and changing it would be non-trivial?

 

[mike_m]

Have you tried using the HDR-Fox-T2 to download one of the lower resolution options from iplayer?

I didn't think I could get streamed content into the Humax - how would I do that?

 

[MontysEvilTwin]

Install the Youtube-dl package and download the programme using the command line (Telnet) or also install the Qtube package and download through Webif. If using Telnet, it is best to open an abduco session first (install the abduco package) to keep the session live if the Telnet connection drops:

Lounge# abduco -A x                                                             
Lounge# youtube -F https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0d5w2r5/the-english-series-1-3-vultures-on-the-line?seriesId=p0d5vx96

The '-F' switch lists all available formats, which for standard iPlayer (HD) is 1280 x 720 at 50 fps. It will download this format by default: run the youtube command again without the '-F' switch.

 

[Rodders53]

Hmmm... that means IMHO the Samsung is playing silly beggars with the stream then and not auto changing to the correct colour space??

Have you checked for firmware updates on the TV? Does the 'Picture Clarity' work when in iPlayer on your TV (known issue for your model, link above)? Can you find any Auto setting for colour space (outside iPlayer) that might help when applied to your usual settings?

Qutube etc.,. sounds a bit of a learning curve but might well work for you?

Or can you connect a laptop by hdmi / cast an iPlayer stream to the TV from another device and bypass the Samsung iPlayer implementation?