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Thank for clarification. I summarise: HDR on Intel and AMD systems seem to be possible but require a whole lot of patches, not only to Kodi itself. I don't see any evidence that all those patches will hit their base repos any time soon.
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chewitt
Team-Kodi Member
Posts: 139
Right now there are pieces missing in the kernel. Pieces missing in mesa. Pieces missing in Windowing systems. Pieces missing in FFMpeg. Pieces missing in Kodi. One of the main blockages is for "Linux graphics" personages to agree on how colourspace and colorimetry are communicated between userspace which sees the media being played, and the kernel which can see the internal and output capabilities of hardware; both the display device (e.g. TV panel) and the decoding and rendering pipeline. There are passionate arguments for everything beind done automagically in the kernel, and equally for the kernel to be more subservient to userspace which has better visibility on the media requirements. TV manufacturers have done a good job of dumbing down their messaging on HDR for consumers who want the latest tech, leading to general ignorance on how insanely complicated the task actually is. HDR is not about "just passing through" some extra data and picking a 4K resolution/refresh-rate. HDR support is about evaluating the large number of variables presented by TVs that don't support all colourspaces and display hardware that lacks certain colourspace and colorimetry options, and player apps that don't recognise certain formats, and media designed for proprietary license schemes: and then picking the least-worst compromise to present something nice-looking to the user (while ensuring HDR mode is triggered on the TV else it's not believed to be HDR). All devices that "support HDR" today are choosing compromises that hopefully get the best from their hardware. Kodi will get there too, but aiming to support HDR on a very wide range of hardware and OS options inherently complicates an already complicated challenge. Hopefully there's a good result from that RedHat sponsored meeting next month, because until there's a common technical direction for everyone to start working towards, Linux HDR support won't mature.