Philips PUS7304 HDR not working, can any owners confirm HDR is working for you?

neocodex

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Based on these threads:


There seems to be several of 7304 (and some other models) owners that are affected by this.

HDR looks much dimmer, and with washed out colors compared to SDR.

No firmware update or NVM update helped to resolve this.

There is also this bizarre case, where a user fixed this problem by updating their NVM, so it's probably not normal for this to be happening?


As for myself I have also updated firmware and NVM to the newest (0.61), and HDR still looks like this:

55pus7304_hatal%C4%B1-jpeg.1227541
 
I updated my 43PUS7304 to NVM 0.61 yesterday cause I experienced the same issue. Dolby Vision was better, HDR10 is the culprit. Updating the NVM HDR improved visibly but was still nothing compared to SDR and HDR on my 50PUS9002.

What fixed it for me is picking HDR personal, setting the color slider to 70 and setting the HDR plus to maximum and all other BS off (Ultra resolution, the motion stuff, sharpness to 1, light sensor off etc).

Now the image is good and comparable to SDR. However, the HDR pop and high contrast is still missing. Before the Warm color temperature left an obvious yellow wash over everything.

I have an IPS panel. What does your 7304 have? The VA versions of this TV might have better HDR due to having better black levels. In other words, a larger difference between bright and black, the thing you need for good HDR.

When loading up the Mehanik HDR10 test suite and performing the black level test the TV maxes out on black on bar 84, while it should do this on bar 74. No setting on the TV improves this so my guess is that HDR will never pop as it does and should simply because black isn't black enough.
 
I updated my 43PUS7304 to NVM 0.61 yesterday cause I experienced the same issue. Dolby Vision was better, HDR10 is the culprit. Updating the NVM HDR improved visibly but was still nothing compared to SDR and HDR on my 50PUS9002.

What fixed it for me is picking HDR personal, setting the color slider to 70 and setting the HDR plus to maximum and all other BS off (Ultra resolution, the motion stuff, sharpness to 1, light sensor off etc).

Now the image is good and comparable to SDR. However, the HDR pop and high contrast is still missing. Before the Warm color temperature left an obvious yellow wash over everything.

I have an IPS panel. What does your 7304 have? The VA versions of this TV might have better HDR due to having better black levels. In other words, a larger difference between bright and black, the thing you need for good HDR.

When loading up the Mehanik HDR10 test suite and performing the black level test the TV maxes out on black on bar 84, while it should do this on bar 74. No setting on the TV improves this so my guess is that HDR will never pop as it does and should simply because black isn't black enough.


Exactly the same for me. Check my response in Philips 7304 thread, went into more details there. It's basically how it is. It's a VA panel. These TVs simply can't do better HDR, there's also banding issues and artifacting that come with this being an 8bit panel and so on. It's a big meh, and I'll probably be sticking mostly to SDR.

And it's not because your panel is IPS or because of the black levels, believe me it doesn't look good even on VA. Maybe you have even better color reproduction and less artifacting than me, it's not even the blacks that would be a problem (well at least on VA). It's too dim, additional banding and artifacting. It's probably because of how Philips does the tone mapping, HDR is dimmer even on their OLED model.
 
Exactly the same for me. Check my response in Philips 7304 thread, went into more details there. It's basically how it is. It's a VA panel. These TVs simply can't do better HDR, there's also banding issues and artifacting that come with this being an 8bit panel and so on. It's a big meh, and I'll probably be sticking mostly to SDR.

And it's not because your panel is IPS or because of the black levels, believe me it doesn't look good even on VA. Maybe you have even better color reproduction and less artifacting than me, it's not even the blacks that would be a problem (well at least on VA). It's too dim, additional banding and artifacting. It's probably because of how Philips does the tone mapping, HDR is dimmer even on their OLED model.

My 55POS9002 is perfect, in HDR and SDR so I can't agree with dim HDR on the OLED models using the P5 chip that is also in the 7304.

You are right that the HDR is too dim on the 7304 series though. But to me this is due to the black levels. Eyes see the difference between white and black well. The bigger the difference between black and white the bigger the contrast. This is where HDR can shine as white can get super bright with black staying black. This is why OLED screens have great HDR reproduction. Black stays black while white gets pushed really bright. This TV however cannot push the white up far enough as when it does the black level rises with it. Philips compensates this with the tone mapping as all HDR info needs to be squeezed in between the peak brightness and peak blackness. This is where the 7304 falters. Before I installed NVM 0.61 all HDR10 sources looked like there was a grey filter applied over the image.

NVM 0.61 improved the situation a bucket load. The tone mapping still kept the image dull, this makes sense with a screen with a low dark - bright bandwith. However to compensate for the tone mapping I use HDR plus set to maximum for HDR content. This setting pushes black and white more aggressively into the bandwith of black and white that the screen has, the same applies to all colors. The difference between bright and black becomes greater therefor, giving the appearance of better HDR reproduction. This makes HDR usable for me. It also makes the colors pop more and it gets rid of the wash of grey I was seeing.

To me its like having bad speakers in a car, with a flat equalizer the music sounds dull and flat. Turning on Loudness gives the appearance of better sound, the audio bandwith of the speaker doesn't change, only your perception of the music coming out does.

Bottom line, if you want real HDR get an OLED. On the 7304 change the settings :D
 
Last edited:
can you send a link to download the latest NVM firmware? I have a 43PUS6704/12 with same defects on HDR contents...
 
How / where di you guys obtain the NVM 0.61 files?
I'm experiencing the same behavior on my 55PUS7304/12, so would like to see if this magical NVM upgrade really does the trick for me as well :)

Cheers

My 55POS9002 is perfect, in HDR and SDR so I can't agree with dim HDR on the OLED models using the P5 chip that is also in the 7304.

You are right that the HDR is too dim on the 7304 series though. But to me this is due to the black levels. Eyes see the difference between white and black well. The bigger the difference between black and white the bigger the contrast. This is where HDR can shine as white can get super bright with black staying black. This is why OLED screens have great HDR reproduction. Black stays black while white gets pushed really bright. This TV however cannot push the white up far enough as when it does the black level rises with it. Philips compensates this with the tone mapping as all HDR info needs to be squeezed in between the peak brightness and peak blackness. This is where the 7304 falters. Before I installed NVM 0.61 all HDR10 sources looked like there was a grey filter applied over the image.

NVM 0.61 improved the situation a bucket load. The tone mapping still kept the image dull, this makes sense with a screen with a low dark - bright bandwith. However to compensate for the tone mapping I use HDR plus set to maximum for HDR content. This setting pushes black and white more aggressively into the bandwith of black and white that the screen has, the same applies to all colors. The difference between bright and black becomes greater therefor, giving the appearance of better HDR reproduction. This makes HDR usable for me. It also makes the colors pop more and it gets rid of the wash of grey I was seeing.

To me its like having bad speakers in a car, with a flat equalizer the music sounds dull and flat. Turning on Loudness gives the appearance of better sound, the audio bandwith of the speaker doesn't change, only your perception of the music coming out does.

Bottom line, if you want real HDR get an OLED. On the 7304 change the settings :D
 

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