[adr3nal1n]

Hi,

I wanted to ask the Kodi team if there is a formal description of how best to use the Display Whitelist in Kodi 18 Leia? as there is currently nothing in the official wiki to cover this.

I have searched across and read numerous forum articles on the kodi forums, libreelec forums and coreelec forums and there is lots of opinion and experience being shared but no clear direction as to what should be best practice configuration and use of the Display whitelist.

Is there a definitive statement or guide on this from the kodi team please?

Thanks ever so much for any guidance.

[Klojum]

There are (late) changes and features for Kodi 18 Leia that not have been documented yet. As always, the Wiki is always the last to know as it is the type of work that is never finished, usually because of the shortage of man power. Things will be updated as much as possible when Kodi 18 Leia final gets out.

[DaVu]

I agree, the wiki needs an update for it and I see what I can do in the foreseeable future.

For the time being, let me explain it how I understood that setting.

If you open the whitelist menu, you will see some resolutions and Hz numbers mentioned. Hz can also be understood as "fps" (Frames per second). The list shows, what your TV/Monitor is capable of. Let's assume, we have a FullHD TV connected which is also capable to do different fps on its respective resolutions. So 24, 23.98, 30, 59.97, 60 for 1920*1080 for example and also 24, 23.98, 50, 60 for 1280*720 and 50, 60 for 720*576 (the list is somewhat huge ).

If you don't enable any of those settings, Kodi will pass everything it plays directly to the TV. That will mean if you play some SD Live-TV channel (which sometimes has 720*570 at 50fps) your TV will probably show 1080p instead (which will mean 1920*1080/50fps). So your TV does the upscaling then. If you enable 720*576/50fps at the whitelist, your TV will show 576p and there's absolutely no upscaling and the TV shows the native resolution the Live-TV channel has. That willl also result in a 576p Kodi GUI if you hit ESC during a live-tv playback.

If you have 720*576/50 disabled, but have 1920*1080/50 enabled and play some SD live-tv channel, Kodi will search if you have a matching resolution/fps whitelisted. As you don't have 576p whitelisted, Kodi will check the next higher one as long as it gets something that matches (in that case 1920*1080/50) and will use that to pass it to the TV. So in that case, Kodi does the upscaling.

I don't know the technical details why one should enable this or that if the TV is capable of doing nearly everything. That's something someone else who has written that code should explain. But in general it's all about what device does the upscaling job.

[DaVu]

Btw. this is the PR which introduced it: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/13274

It also contains some explanations.

There's also a change for users who update from Kodi 17.6 and aren't aware of that whitelist setting, to not change their experience: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/14701

[adr3nal1n]

Thanks very much DaVu for the detailed response and the link to the PR,

If I understand this correctly, is this the best way to summarise it?

• If "Settings/Player/Videos/Adjust display refresh rate" is enabled - AND - "Settings/System/Display/Whitelist" is empty = Then the users TV handles the upscaling.
  
• If "Settings/Player/Videos/Adjust display refresh rate" is enabled - AND - "Settings/System/Display/Whitelist" is populated with user selected Resolution and Framerate entries = Then the device Kodi is running on handles the decision for upscaling to the resolutions/framerates, choosing only from those the user has specified on the Whitelist.
  

If the above statements are correct, is their a recommended setting to achieve best upscale quality, or is it not that straightforwards? I ask because I have often read that the TV itself does the best job of upscaling.

Thanks again for any guidance.

[DaVu]

Be aware, that it wasn't me who wrote that code. So that's still all how "I" understood it.

point 1: yes
point 2: yes

Well, some TVs do a better job, some TVs don't. To give a general amswer like (you should do this and not that) is not possible. You have to think about 4k TVs for about 600€ and those for about 2500€ and I guess (and I'm also not the guy who says that everything which is expensive is better) that the real cheap TVs might be probably worse in their upscaling capabilities. I might be proven wrong. The only recommendation I can give in that case is, try it and see yourself. Play around with the settings, make screenshots, compare details and then find out what's the best for you.

[wsnipex]

no
If "Settings/Player/Videos/Adjust display refresh rate" is enabled - AND - "Settings/System/Display/Whitelist" is empty: kodi selects a default whitelist(= native display resolution) and scales video to this resolution. This behavior is the same as in kodi v17

[adr3nal1n]

Ah I see, thanks very much wsnipex for the clarification on this.

[obwiz]

Thanks very much DaVu for the detailed response and the link to the PR,

If I understand this correctly, is this the best way to summarise it?

• If "Settings/Player/Videos/Adjust display refresh rate" is enabled - AND - "Settings/System/Display/Whitelist" is empty = Then the users TV handles the upscaling.
  
• If "Settings/Player/Videos/Adjust display refresh rate" is enabled - AND - "Settings/System/Display/Whitelist" is populated with user selected Resolution and Framerate entries = Then the device Kodi is running on handles the decision for upscaling to the resolutions/framerates, choosing only from those the user has specified on the Whitelist.
  

If the above statements are correct, is their a recommended setting to achieve best upscale quality, or is it not that straightforwards? I ask because I have often read that the TV itself does the best job of upscaling.

Thanks again for any guidance.
 

Thank you for a simple explanation, confused the hell out of me till now!