Software Update Makes HDR Content 'Unwatchable' On Roku TVs (arstechnica.com) 28
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An update to Roku OS has resulted in colors looking washed out in HDR content viewed on Roku apps, like Disney+. Complaints started surfacing on Roku's community forum a week ago. On May 1, a company representative posted that Roku was "investigating the Disney Plus HDR content that was washed out after the recent update." However, based on user feedback, it seems that HDR on additional Roku apps, including Apple TV+ and Netflix, are also affected. Roku's representative has been asking users to share their experiences so that Roku can dig deeper into the problem. [...]
Roku hasn't provided a list of affected devices, but users have named multiple TCL TV models, at least one Hisense, and one Sharp TV as being impacted. We haven't seen any reports of Roku streaming sticks being affected. One forum user claimed that plugging a Roku streaming stick into a Roku TV circumvented the problem. Forum user Squinky said the washed-out colors were only on Disney+. However, other users have reported seeing the problem across other apps, including Max and Fandango. [...] Users have noted that common troubleshooting efforts, like restarting and factory resetting their TVs and checking for software updates, haven't fixed the problem.
The problems appear to stem from the Roku OS 14.5 update, which was issued at the end of April. According to the release notes, the update is available for all Roku TV models from 2014 on, except for models 65R648, 75R648, and 75U800GMR. Roku streaming sticks also received the update. Per Roku, the software update includes "various performance optimizations, bug fixes, and improvements to security, stability." Other additions include a "new personalized row of content within the Live TV Guide" and upgrades to Roku OS' daily trivia, voice control, and discovery capabilities. "I'm surprised more people aren't complaining because it makes a ton of shows simply unwatchable. Was looking forward to Andor, and Tuesday night [was] ruined," posted forum user noob99999, who said the problem was happening on "multiple apps," including Amazon Prime Video. "I hope the post about imminent app updates are correct because in the past, Roku has taken forever to correct issues."
Roku hasn't provided a list of affected devices, but users have named multiple TCL TV models, at least one Hisense, and one Sharp TV as being impacted. We haven't seen any reports of Roku streaming sticks being affected. One forum user claimed that plugging a Roku streaming stick into a Roku TV circumvented the problem. Forum user Squinky said the washed-out colors were only on Disney+. However, other users have reported seeing the problem across other apps, including Max and Fandango. [...] Users have noted that common troubleshooting efforts, like restarting and factory resetting their TVs and checking for software updates, haven't fixed the problem.
The problems appear to stem from the Roku OS 14.5 update, which was issued at the end of April. According to the release notes, the update is available for all Roku TV models from 2014 on, except for models 65R648, 75R648, and 75U800GMR. Roku streaming sticks also received the update. Per Roku, the software update includes "various performance optimizations, bug fixes, and improvements to security, stability." Other additions include a "new personalized row of content within the Live TV Guide" and upgrades to Roku OS' daily trivia, voice control, and discovery capabilities. "I'm surprised more people aren't complaining because it makes a ton of shows simply unwatchable. Was looking forward to Andor, and Tuesday night [was] ruined," posted forum user noob99999, who said the problem was happening on "multiple apps," including Amazon Prime Video. "I hope the post about imminent app updates are correct because in the past, Roku has taken forever to correct issues."
Enshittification in progress (Score:2)
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Technologies come and go, but good ol'-fashioned pirate ships weather any storm.
Longstanding issue (Score:3)
My Roku 4K TV has been around almost 8 years now, and the HDR has never been right. A few apps might get close to watchable status, but the vast majority all of them produce results similar to what is shown in the article.
I used to disable HDR in the secret menu, but a year or so ago I got tired of doing that and just bought a cheaper, non HDR Roku stick to use. Just an odd thing you think would have been caught before shipping, or at least get resolved over time, but still has not.
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Yeah, I've got one of those Black Friday bargain 55" Hisense TVs and HDR on it has always looked like absolute ass. Like you, I ended up just turning off HDR support in the hidden menu. I think the issue with cheaper TVs, though, is that the actual LCD panels physically lack the bit depth capability to do true HDR, so it's entirely a case of software attempting to fake it - badly.
I'd guess that what's going on here is probably a software display profile intended for TVs with these sort of super-cheap pane
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My lower cost TV (LG 43UT80) has 10 bit color, it will do that much HDR. I've played the test video on it in 30 bpp mode, and seen that it makes a difference in gradients. But my video card is NVidia, and I run X11, and you can't have 30 bpp with that combo. I mean, you can, but it doesn't work for shit. Apparently it works OK with AMD, but some applications still crap themselves. This might be what finally gets me to use Wayland, but apparently that doesn't work well with NVidia either, so that is for a fu
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I think I saw a 98" set at Costco for less than $700 and when you think about a company buying or building a panel, building the boards (with the absolute cheapest scalers and image processors), assembling all that plastic, packaging, overseas shipping, trucking to the store and they still sell this gigantic thing at a profit for that price god knows the corners cut to get it on the shelf.
It's always the meme but it is truly impressive how, well, "efficient" the TV industry has become. Like i bet with it's
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LG here, WebOS, never allowed to connect to a network, never will be so long as I own it. Too bad, because I'm slightly curious about the UX, but I heard they crammed ads into every hole of these models and I don't want to see any.
I wish I knew why they think it's a good idea to shit up products after you buy them. Is it just to make you think it might be a good idea to try another brand? That's where Apex and Visio came from!
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Yes, I dumped Roku got GoogleTV because of this.
Not surprising, people are blind (Score:3)
My pet peeve is people uploading content with obviously incorrect aspect ratio to platforms such as YouTube, and the mass of people who watch it without realizing anything is wrong.
With that in mind, it doesn't surprise me at all that people think that "washed out" colors are normal, or just don't understand what they are looking at.
User based QA (Score:3)
It's mind-boggling a multi billion dollar company can fail so horribly at QA and then ask their user base to help.
"Roku's representative has been asking users to share their experiences"
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Their entire business model lately seems to be making sure the market is spammed with cheap smart TVs running their OS. All things being equal, I'd rather have a "dumb" TV, but due to whatever shenanigans Roku has going on behind the scenes, a Roku TV usually ends up being cheaper.
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It's usually a good idea to just hold off on updates for a week or two at least, to see if they are botched.
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To be fair, the entire HDR standards issue is an insane clusterfuck. I've yet to see it right outside of a single appliance that is self designed, self programmed and self managed. Want to fire up the Disney+ app on the Samsung TV which supports HDR natively? Perfect. Want to setup your PS5 with HDR - utter clusterfuck which needs to be custom tuned for each individual game and setup differently for each TV. Want to (god forbid) attached a HDR monitor to a Windows PC? Oh colour management fails to work and
This is literally the best scenario (Score:3)
This is the best scenario I can think of for doing stupid things with your TV. Be glad it wasn't a malicious intent 3rd party taking over your TV's software and simply making it hard to watch.
Honestly...buy the extra disposible stick/streambar whatever. If it gets compromised or no longer works you throw it away. If you hook your damn TV to the internet...it really is just a matter of time and then your entire TV becomes useless (best case) or one of many in a giant botnet (most likely case).
DOGE diddit! (Score:1)
"The colors were too woke, so we de-wokified them like Fox Jesus wanted us to. Thank You, -DOGE"
HDR is mostly pointless (Score:3)
From the descriptions my guess the HDR mode switch isn't being sent to the TV for some reason and so it is displaying HDR content in SDR color space resulting in washed out colors. Anyone with this problem should be able to visually see mode switch ..most TVs have separate settings (brightness, contrast...etc) for HDR vs SDR.
Also remember having to adjust the factory profiles to get HDR content to look right on my display... but then I gave up on HDR. Personally I think it is mostly a scam... There is often a visible difference and people think it looks nice yet this is mostly due to cranked up saturation/backlighting/energy that happens when the HDR profile is activated.
Re: HDR is mostly pointless (Score:2)
Yep, definitely looks like HDR content rendered as SDR.
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Personally I think it is mostly a scam...
Something being implemented incorrectly doesn't make it a scam. HDR has very real benefit that we can technically make use of given the performance of a modern consumer gear. The SDR colour space simply isn't sufficient to keep up with modern display panels without introducing visual problems of their own.
As to why there are different settings? The answer is because there are different colour gamuts, and different gamma curves, and in some cases different localised max brightness vs average brightness capab
"Ruined" (Score:2)
"Was looking forward to Andor, and Tuesday night [was] ruined"
I guess... I would have just turned off HDR and watched it anyway. If I knew what "Andor" was... But then I lived through the era of your choice of 3 broadcast channels on crt tvs, vhs, beta, laserdisc... regular 1080p still looks great to me until you A/B the difference with HD. My whole evening wouldn't fall to pieces because my show could only be seen in decent fidelity.
Continuous updates (Score:3)
Which is why forced continuous updates should be made a criminal offence. It would probably be fair to say that for many (most?) of us a TV is a critical appliance. Breaking it at random because someone somewhere didn't give enough shit about testing is simply unacceptable.
Never buy a branded TV like Roku TV..... (Score:2)
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i still have no interest in buying a smart TV because a roku stick takes 2 seconds to replace if it gets out of date