[jjslegacy]

I have to say I have done a decent amount of testing and so far things look great. No real issues here that I have found. I only use the machine for playing uncompressed mkv bluray rips from makemkv so I don't have as much video variety but quality looks great and I am quite impressed.

Great works guys - no issues from all my testing. Thanks for the hard work!

I usually build openelec myself but adding all this in is beyond my current knowledge so I hope this gets into openelec master someday soon or I have some work to do

[ggp759]

Forgive my ignorance but is there a way to force kodi to output YCbCr( preferably BT.709). This option was giving a great picture quality on my old popcornhour C200. Thanks

[fritsch]

No. How should that work with a display driver that only does RGB?

[ggp759]

No. How should that work with a display driver that only does RGB?

Oh i see thanks for that. I have a question. Am using this dev build with the autostart.sh command for full RGB. My HDMI Black Level setting on Samsung TV is at Auto. I get crushed blacks. What is the best thing to do?

1) Set HDMI Black level setting on the TV to Normal( Full RGB) that fixes the problem and choose dithering in Kodi or

2)Leave the HDMI setting on the TV to Auto and choose Limited Range in Kodi?

Thanks again.

[Hufvudet]

Which option gives you crushed blacks? Not sure how you're tv works but if you set kodi to limited range you must force your tv to limited also.

[Hufvudet]

Neither of these routes below should give you crushed blacks. But it's important, at least on my Pana st60, that you don't trust auto settings for rgb, at least not when going limited:

- Full range with xrandr, tv and kodi + dithering enabled: Best option if I watch my own photos + movies. Super small compromise with movies but dithering takes care of artifacts from expansion.

- Full range xrandr, limited kodi + tv: best option if I only watch movies - purest color handling with no expansion. I enable dithering here also.

[ggp759]

Which option gives you crushed blacks? Not sure how you're tv works but if you set kodi to limited range you must force your tv to limited also.

Neither of these routes below should give you crushed blacks. But it's important, at least on my Pana st60, that you don't trust auto settings for rgb, at least not when going limited:

- Full range with xrandr, tv and kodi + dithering enabled: Best option if I watch my own photos + movies. Super small compromise with movies but dithering takes care of artifacts from expansion.

- Full range xrandr, limited kodi + tv: best option if I only watch movies - purest color handling with no expansion. I enable dithering here also.

Thanks for the replies. The reason as you said am getting crushed blacks is that i have my tv setting on auto. The 2 options i wrote are exactly the options you mention. I just could not decide which one was the best. I will take the second one now that you confirm it. Thanks again

[-zero-]

I just found an error in kodi-log because of missing upower.
Maybe it should be added to the Basic Installation.

[wwessel]

Neither of these routes below should give you crushed blacks. But it's important, at least on my Pana st60, that you don't trust auto settings for rgb, at least not when going limited:

- Full range with xrandr, tv and kodi + dithering enabled: Best option if I watch my own photos + movies. Super small compromise with movies but dithering takes care of artifacts from expansion.

- Full range xrandr, limited kodi + tv: best option if I only watch movies - purest color handling with no expansion. I enable dithering here also.

I tested these settings, too. On my TV the second one seems to be the best, since I'm watching movies only. But I can't see a difference between limited range with/without dithering.

@fritsch: Does dithering affect the output in limited range? The description says: Enable dithering when using full range...

[Hufvudet]

Neither of these routes below should give you crushed blacks. But it's important, at least on my Pana st60, that you don't trust auto settings for rgb, at least not when going limited:

- Full range with xrandr, tv and kodi + dithering enabled: Best option if I watch my own photos + movies. Super small compromise with movies but dithering takes care of artifacts from expansion.

- Full range xrandr, limited kodi + tv: best option if I only watch movies - purest color handling with no expansion. I enable dithering here also.

I tested these settings, too. On my TV the second one seems to be the best, since I'm watching movies only. But I can't see a difference between limited range with/without dithering.

@fritsch: Does dithering affect the output in limited range? The discription says: Enable dithering when using full range...

You shouldn't need to enable dithering when outputting limited range, in theory. But from what understand you might need it if you don't have a perfectly mastered source, which you very seldom have. From madshi on this (same thinking should apply to kodi):

It is true that with a prefect color neutral grayscale, letting madVR render to 16-235 means that madVR doesn't have to dither. However, even black & white movies are usually not 100% color neutral. They often have a slight color tint. And as soon as chroma is anything but exactly color neutral, madVR instantly has to dither. Which is the case for 99.99% of all movies out there. And once madVR dithers, it shouldn't matter too much whether you configure madVR to output PC or TV levels.

Yeah, sure, in theory having madVR output 16-235 should be slightly better. But in real life I don't think there's much of a difference between 16-235 and 0-255 output. Of course 16-235 allows the preservation of BTB/WTW, which might be a plus because some displays might be calibrated to show a tiny tiny bit of BTB/WTW or something.

With that said, you can definately see a difference with dithering on/off in full range. In limited range I've only found short passages in a few films where color transitioning appears smoother with dithering enabled. That's why I leave it on. It shouldn't hurt picture quality either way.

[DaVu]

IIRC Fritsch said, that dithering is not in use if you are on limited range

[Hufvudet]

is that true fritsch? in that case I take back my ramblings

And by "not in use" do you mean not useful or not even activated?

[movie78]

Hardware:Chromebox
System:Kodibuntu Helix 14.2
Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS
Linux Kernel: Kernel: Linux 3.19.0-031900-generic

Can i follow the steps from the first page to update my system or this doesn't apply to my system.

Thanks!

[DaVu]

And by "not in use" do you mean not useful or not even activated?

not even activated...but don´t blame if I´m wrrong . I think I just remember this as I talked to him on IRC

[noggin]

It is true that with a prefect color neutral grayscale, letting madVR render to 16-235 means that madVR doesn't have to dither. However, even black & white movies are usually not 100% color neutral. They often have a slight color tint. And as soon as chroma is anything but exactly color neutral, madVR instantly has to dither. Which is the case for 99.99% of all movies out there. And once madVR dithers, it shouldn't matter too much whether you configure madVR to output PC or TV levels.

Yeah, sure, in theory having madVR output 16-235 should be slightly better. But in real life I don't think there's much of a difference between 16-235 and 0-255 output. Of course 16-235 allows the preservation of BTB/WTW, which might be a plus because some displays might be calibrated to show a tiny tiny bit of BTB/WTW or something.

There are valid reasons to preserve BTB and WTW content even if your display doesn't show detail at those levels (it shouldn't display BTB - if it does your black level is set-up, though WTW is a slightly different matter) This is because BTB and WTW are there to preserve over/undershoots on transients. If you clip transients (which happens if you clip BTB and WTW and have >235 or <16 transients) you can introduce ringing, particularly if you then resample or similarly process the source image.

Not always an issue if you are connected directly to a pixel matched TV. But it can be an issue if are in a more complicated set-up than that.