Sony 930E

[cmdrdredd]

I've been watching some Dolby Vision content on my Apple TV through Netflix, and I'm not sure if something is wrong with my Apple TV, the AVR-to-TV HDMI cable, or something else. The problem that I notice is that during scenes with dark colors in the corner, there seems to be this sort of flash of black blocks in the dark corners. Although, I've never been able to play any HDR content on the Apple TV without issues, so I don't know if this is just another problem. In typical HDR10 content, I get random black frames inserted, and upon rewinding to check again, they're not there.

I'm trying to figure out if the issue could be my HDMI cable as it's an active cable (Monoprice DynamicView 25-foot). It's their only cable that actively supports HDR and Dolby Vision, but there's nothing in the listing about it supporting Dynamic Metadata for Dolby Vision.

Maybe try one of the premium certified cables which are certified to pass the full 18Gbps. The black frames is definitely a dropped signal. I’ve had that until I changed the cables.

 

[Aikouka]

Maybe try one of the premium certified cables which are certified to pass the full 18Gbps. The black frames is definitely a dropped signal. I’ve had that until I changed the cables.

The problem is that I'm running my cables through the floor into the crawlspace and then back up into the wall to go to the TV. Overall, a good length for this is about 20 feet if I want it go directly from the receiver to the TV. (Gives me some length to let me pull things out if needed.) Well, 20 feet is pretty long for an 18Gbps HDMI cable and you'd need something that's well built to avoid poor performance. The problem is that these well-built cables are also pretty thick, which makes them hard to maneuver. Combine this with how my wall mount's bar is just below where the HDMI ports are, and I really need a cable that's pliable. The Redmere-based cable that I'm using is a bit thinner, which makes it work a lot better in that regard. To note, I tried to go with multiple high-performance cables with a wall jack between them, but that didn't work. I spoke to Blue Jeans Cable about it, and they recommended going with a single cable due to the distance and the jacks causing a problem.

Now, I wasn't totally sure if it was the cable, because I've seen weird things on my other TV (TCL P605) while using an Apple TV. I don't think it was to the extent of my 930e, and I don't have the weird Dolby Vision issues. Also, I don't see problems when using my Oppo UHD player, but I also saw that my Oppo was set to 4:2:0 instead of 4:2:2, so I changed that. I'm curious if that might cause some problems as that would increase bandwidth requirements.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The oppo UHD player is 10bit 4:2:0 only from 60hz sources. Either 60hz videos on the network or on a USB drive or a 60hz disc. I have it set to auto and 10bit which gives 10bit 4:4:4. You can set it to 12bit 4:2:2 as well.

Anyway it may be worth trying the Apple TV with a new cable right to the tv as a test. At least you can eliminate that possibility. I believe all output from the Apple TV is a 12bit signal. 12bit 4:2:2 is a lower bandwidth requirement than 10bit 4:4:4 by a small amount.

 

[Aikouka]

So, quite a bit has happened with the Sony TVs as of late. In March, Sony released the long-awaited Dolby Vision update, but there was a bit of a snag. Sony's firmware update implemented a version of Dolby Vision referred to as Profile 5 where the TV expected the source to perform the heavy lifting. In previous implementations from companies like LG or TCL, the TV would perform this processing.

This became a bit of an issue as no devices supported this Dolby Vision method, which meant that the only things that worked were the apps on the TV itself. If you've ever tried to use the sloth-level of slowness that is the Sony interface, you'd know why that's not a pleasant experience. Apple was actually really on the ball with this one, and they had it implemented in a tvOS 11.3 beta less than a week later. As of now, tvOS 11.3 is the current version, so that is available to all users.

Unfortunately, there were no UHD Blu-ray players that supported this method. Arguably, Oppo had the most capable players at that point with their UDP-203 and UDP-205 as they supported Dolby Vision on TVs from LG and TCL. At this point, a few more companies have Dolby Vision support such as LG and Philips; however, none of them have support for Sony TVs.

Earlier this week, Sony issued a firmware update for their UBP-X700 to add Dolby Vision. Unfortunately, it seems to have an issue where enabling it causes the player to always output Dolby Vision even if the content doesn't support it. So, you have to toggle it whenever it's necessary. This is somewhat similar to what Apple implemented initially where they'd always output HDR if you turned it on. Speaking of Sony, I'm a little bummed that the rumors of Sony deciding to add it to the UBP-X800 appear to be false.

Also, yesterday, Oppo released an update for their UBP-203 that adds Dolby Vision support for the Sony TVs. I've updated my player, but I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. However, from what I've read, the update is working well.

 

[Craig234]

Interesting to know. I still need to get mine connected to my router so I can have online content/updates.