YouTube HDR... finally

[Kuschelmonschter]

YouTube HDR content is finally available!

You will find a playlist here. However, these clips will be played as SDR on Sonys for now.

With youtube-dl you can find vp9.2 encodings for those clips:

330          webm       256x144    144p60  156k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 2.38MiB
331          webm       426x240    240p60  256k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 3.87MiB
332          webm       640x360    360p60  485k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 7.35MiB
333          webm       854x480    480p60  909k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 13.83MiB
334          webm       1280x720   720p60 1991k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 28.18MiB
335          webm       1920x1080  1080p60 3201k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 49.70MiB
336          webm       2560x1440  1440p60 11166k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 170.23MiB
337          webm       3840x2160  2160p60 20122k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 335.45MiB

Those are webm however which the native Video app won't play.

We will see whether we will get support for it soon, even for the early 2016 models with the old MediaTek SoC from last year. At least Sony promised that back at CES:

Spoiler

YouTube will also start streaming in HDR quality later this year, using a new VP9-Profile 2 codec that brings HDR support to Google’s VP9 video format. Sony’s Motoi Kawamura, Head of TV Product Planning for Sony Europe, confirmed to FlatpanelsHD that the 2016 models will support VP9-Profile 2 and be capable of streaming YouTube in HDR. We saw a demo at CES and it looked very good.

Source

[mobilyuk]

Thanks, I'll give that a go and let you know.

When HDR is detected and you change picture settings, will those settings
remain for HDR streams only?

[mobilyuk]

Success! Managed to get 4k HDR working. I had 480p set under quality settings on the phone which is why it didn't work.

Pretty annoying that you have to set picture settings under a different mode for HDR otherwise you end up with a mess when you play non HDR material.

Thanks for all the help!

[Kuschelmonschter]

I downloaded the VP9.2/Opus streams of The World in HDR via youtube-dl:

youtube-dl -F https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO01J-M3g0U
...
251          webm       audio only DASH audio  140k , opus @160k, 2.37MiB
...
337          webm       3840x2160  2160p60 HDR 28926k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 523.83MiB
...
youtube-dl -f 337+251 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO01J-M3g0U

Playing it back inside Kodi results in proper color space (BT.2020). When playing it back via Chromecast, color space is still wrong though (BT.709). No clue why that is. Kodi isn't doing anything special here.

[stormyuk]

With the latest firmware on the XE9005 the results are still the same for me.

Playing any 60fps video via the Youtube app on the TV results in dropped frames. No HDR is present on videos played directly within Youtube. If I cast the video from the Moto phone HDR is present (although you need to manually select the settings) but again its dropped frames all over the place. 30fps stuff is fine.

[Kuschelmonschter]

Latest Android TV YouTube app does quite a good job in playing back 60p here. It does exhibit slight occasional stuttering, but nothing compared to the YouTube 2.0 beginnings where this content was basically unwatchable. YouTube 1.x was better in that regard, also using way less CPU time when playing back video.

The two biggest issues for me are:

- 60p over Chromecast exhibits severe suttering

- wrong color space (BT.709 instead of BT.2020) set for VP9.2 HDR content over Chromecast

[stormyuk]

Yeh I always thought subjectively the 60p over Chromecast with HDR was much worse than the 60p natively on the TV without HDR.

Are you still on the XE TV or are you on a later model now?

[Kuschelmonschter]

Currently on an XF90 which is still based on ATV2 though.

[stormyuk]

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@Kuschelmonschter wrote:

Currently on an XF90 which is still based on ATV2 though.

---

Yeh, thought so, would assume this performs better than then XE with Youtube and such or is it the exact same mediatek hardware and so the same?

[Kuschelmonschter]

Think it is all the same. AIDA64 still says that it is a MediaTek MT5891 with same amount of RAM and everything.

[Jecht_Sin]

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@Kuschelmonschter wrote:

The two biggest issues for me are:

- 60p over Chromecast exhibits severe suttering

- wrong color space (BT.709 instead of BT.2020) set for VP9.2 HDR content over Chromecast

---

Yeah, same here. I have to manually force BT.2020 when streaming via Google cast from my phone. The app still doesn't play HDR content at all. Smart YouTube does, but also with the BT.2020 issue. Basically it looks better in SDR (vp9) compared to HDR (vp9.2) without changing the color space..