The mystery of the washed out hdmi colours

So when you see this title you might think that I forgot, or didn't know to put "Output dynamic range" to full in nvcpl. This is not the case, I even tested with madvrs full range tool. Let me explain the issue, the symptoms and what I have attempted to remedy the situation. Hopefully you will have a fix for me.

I'm currently on 382.05 on a fresh win 8. (This has also happened to me on win 7). I use Potplayer with madvr and lavfilters and render with Nvidia Cuvid. It looks just great. Whenever I install 388.31, the colors, only on hdmi, not on my dvi-d or displayport monitors they appear washed out, even if I set 'Full range' and/or use madvrs tool (madLevelsTweaker.exe). I'm not sure if its on the desktop, I don't really care how it looks there, but the colours are really washed out in potplayer. I have tried de- reinstallig (the working 382.05) drivers with ddu. DDU btw doesn't reset all settings, as if I set 'display scaling' to monitor it stays until I manually change it even if I use DDU. Maybe this is just some setting not being reset. I have also not changed anything in pot/lav/madvr over reinstalls, so these settings should not affect this issue (I double checked every time I had this to make sure).

Tl;dr: Colours look washed out over hdmi when using some drivers, for example 388.31, and won't look good until os reinstall, despite a full deinstall using DDU and previously working driver.


Any ideas? I want to be able to upgrade drivers without fear it will fubar my movie setup.

 

On my Samsung monitor, there's an option to adjust the HDMI Black Levels (Standard/Full). Full gives you the full PC range. Perhaps that is what is happening with you?

 

Try setting video output range to full? You seem to have issues with video specifically and I've noticed that auto/app setting doesn't really work that well.

And yeah, also set full precisely on display if possible instead of auto since auto there usually don't work too well either.

 

I'm not changing anything on my tv between the installs of the drivers. This still makes me thing the driver is somehow at fault, especially since using ddu and then the original driver doesn't return the full range colour, even if full range is set.

Do you mean "Content type reported to the display:", in "Adjust desktop color setting"?

 

No, I mean the one on "adjust video color settings", advanced tab.

 

A

Ah good call, I have never used that, might be worth a try. I'll take an Image so I don't have to reinstall everything from scratch.

 

That only controls video playback. It doesn't control the signal sent to the screen.

 

I was using full-range set through the NVCP and 'normal' hdmi black level set on my Samsung HDTV for the longest time until recently when i switched the NVCP to limited range RGB and the HDTV to 'low' black level.

Both may seem to balance contrast levels, but there was signal dithering on the darkest black level if it wasnt using the right combination.

TV's expect limited range input to them and then some can adjust the black level with a setting in their menu's.

If this is a monitor and the limited setting in the NVCP produces grey blacks, then it is expecting full-range to be sent to it (which is what monitors usually expect anyways).

If you are seeing grey blacks even with the NVCP set to full-range, then the graphics card is treating full-range as limited range and the 'limited range setting even lower (like ~32-215), which is a quantization error and a miscommuncation with the display's EDID to the graphics driver.

Only time that happened for me was with an EDID override.

 

This is a tv, no edid override. Thanks for your input though.

 

Have you simply tried deleting the HDMI extension block?

That would force it to be DVI

 

What brand?

 

I don't understand how this would achieve anything. This TV is hdmi only.

It's a Panasonic, but since this only happens after having installed certain 'bad' drivers, I don't see the TV being at fault.

 

Because it would force windows to look at is as DVI.

Windows knows that your TV is a TV through the hdmi extension blocks.
It tells windows to use TV resolutions.

By deleting that extension block you basically have a PC monitor.

 

Drivers could've changed their behavior from the one which was avoiding the h/w issue to the one which doesn't. The sole fact that the behavior is different now doesn't mean that it's purely a driver's fault.

 

I've seen my Nvidia display settings > resolution options change from default to Nvidia controlled then switch itself from full range 0-255 to limited range 16-235 on upgrading. I use DDU every couple driver updates or on a major branch update.

Using an XB271HU @ 165Hz via DP 1.3 plugged into a 1080 Ti. It only happened once probably 2 or 3 months ago, so it's possible there is or was a bug somewhere that could cause that.

DDU (17.0.7.9) deletes EVERYTHING to do with the video driver selected so it is possible there is something new it is missing that has to do with 388.31. I'd mention it to Wagnard (DDU Dev) and see if it's possible. You can also try using Nvidia Inspector and setting/resetting settings with that.

Also, I always run DDU for Intel and AMD the first time because it can't hurt. I've seen it pick up stuff Windows put in there.

It might also be worth a shot to run Driver Store Explorer and remove the old versions of the driver https://github.com/lostindark/DriverStoreExplorer
then run device cleanup to remove duplicate device entries. (Easier to use version of Device Remover) http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/Device-Cleanup-Cmd.shtml

 

It's worth a shot. Next time I get this problem I'll try this, thanks.

I'll keep that in mind, thanks.

Nice tip on Driver store explorer, thanks. However DDU does not remove -everything-. Whenever I install win fresh (7/8/8.1 tested) Display scaling is always set to "Aspect ratio". On my work monitor I set it to scale on display, and that never gets reset. This makes me think there might be other things that don't get removed, even if I haven't actually seen this in action.

 

We take you have checked/recalibrated the TV thru potplayer or NVidia with something live "avs hd 709".

Regards

 

adjust the rgb level accordingly...

for example:

1) tv is set at normal hdmi level
2) nvidia is set at full rgb.

edit: also make your TV act like a monitor with using its PC mode. search for your brand in web.

 

Removing the extension block using CRU and restarting results in my 4K TV only showing 1080p resolution.

Yes, the GPU no longer reads the TV as a HDMI device, however it's useless as I cannot select 4K resolution even though it's there in CRU.

What's the advantage of doing this anyway? Would it result in lower input latency? Because that would be interesting if it works. My Sony KD-49X8000D already has great input latency in game mode with all motion settings turned OFF, would be even better if I can reduce the latency some more.

 

Presumably this could result in GPU seeing the TV as a DVI monitor and thus disabling limited range and such. This however means that something is broken if such edit is even needed for this.