The complication of getting a proper 4K signal to a TV from you console is a problem.

lowhighkang_LHK · Aug 29, 2018

Maybe not for you, maybe not for me. But when you consider how many people don't even know how simple it is to disable overscan on their TV - its pretty shocking to think how many people with Xbox One X's and PS4 Pro's who have them connected to a 4k TV are just outputting at 1080p.

On my Sony Bravia XBR for example, I had to:

1) Make sure my console was connected to HDMI port 2 or 3 (not 1, or 4 - no, for some reason that's no good)
2) Go to Home
3) Go to Settings
4) Go to External Inputs
5) Go to Enhanced HDMI
6) Go to Confirm Enhanced Signal
7) Go back to my PS4 Pro, and select 2160p output.

And I think my PS4 Pro had a small little notification where it said, proper 4k signal is not being sent - thank god I noticed that notification right, cus if not - fuck me I'd be playing shit in 1080p this whole time.

Not sure what the Xbox One X does to notify players when there is something wrong with the connection...hopefully somebody can tell me.

But when I look around and see just how scared, or lazy, or obtuse people are when it comes to technology - where the prospect of even googling things - are too much for them, gets you thinking how many people aren't even getting a proper 4k signal.

But hey, even if they don't set it up right they'll still get unintentional super sampling right? ...right?

Mooksoup · Aug 29, 2018

Yeah i agree absolutely, just had a similar experience after picking up a 4k Sony TV last week.

With HDR too, it wasn't intuitive on how it needed to be set up to work.
I could tell it was oddly washed out at first, and something wasn't right, but figuring out what i had to do to fix it, both in the console and TV, which colour setting (YUV420 or RGB) was right, and which number HDMI port i needed to be using, if the HDMI cable i was using was correct .. was a headache.

I'm ok reading through guides and forums to figure it out.. but i know a lot of friends just wouldn't know where to start or want to deal with it (and ask me to do it...)

lowhighkang_LHK · Aug 29, 2018

Mooksoup said:
Yeah i agree absolutely, just had a similar experience after picking up a 4k Sony TV last week.

With HDR too, it wasn't intuitive on how it needed to be set up to work.
I could tell it was oddly washed out at first, and something wasn't right, but figuring out what i had to do to fix it, both in the console and TV, which colour setting (YUV420 or RGB) was right, and which number HDMI port i needed to be using, if the HDMI cable i was using was correct .. was a headache.

I'm ok reading through guides and forums to figure it out.. but i know a lot of friends just wouldn't know where to start or want to deal with it (and ask me to do it...)

I always thought the whole benefit of HDMI is sort of the automatic communication between display and device. So they can set that shit up automatically.

Really curious to see if a study was done on the percentage of people with 4k capable of devices and displays not even getting a 4k output.

BTW, did your Pro or Xbox One X give you a notification if something was wrong? Not sure if there is a way to troubleshoot.

Or did you have your PC connected to your TV?

Powerofthecloud · Aug 29, 2018

If there was some book of instructions that would probably help so much.

jstevenson · Aug 29, 2018

Yeah I agree that the workflows of many TVs needing you to activate a setting for that port in menus, as well as the TV possibly requiring specific ports is a weird weird issue.

Further the fact that some older HDMI cables aren't compliant is an extra fun wrinkle for folks that aren't hyper-informed on new displays.

Shauni · Aug 29, 2018

jstevenson said:
Yeah I agree that the workflows of many TVs needing you to activate a setting for that port in menus, as well as the TV possibly requiring specific ports is a weird weird issue.

Further the fact that some older HDMI cables aren't compliant is an extra fun wrinkle for folks that aren't hyper-informed on new displays.

Oh, are some HDMI cables not usable with 4K? I didn't know that. Is there a way to know if they are or not?

Deleted member 12790 · Aug 29, 2018

along the same lines, I have a Samsung 4K tv, when I plugged in my PC, the input labeled itself "Computer" and that was that. However, by labeling itself "computer," it disabled the "game mode" option. There was absolutely no way to enable game mode on that input, until I manually renamed it to "Xbox." Apparently, the TV firmware is set to only let the game mode option be toggleable if the name of the input is a game console. Which is stupid, because game mode is merely post processing. ALL inputs, regardless of their name, should be able to enable game mode.

It took me a LOT of googling to figure this out.

jstevenson · Aug 29, 2018

Shauni said:
Oh, are some HDMI cables not usable with 4K? I didn't know that. Is there a way to know if they are or not?

some older cables do not have the bandwidth to support 4K / HDR / 60 or even 30hz signals. Depends on what all you are sending through the cable.

Generally speaking, good quality new cables (these can be inexpensive, just not el cheapo) will be fine. But worth noting for 4K/HDR playback devices

Tetrinski · Aug 29, 2018

This also shows how the improvement from 1080p to 4K is barely noticeable, as opposed to the jump to HD, which was huge in my opinion. Same with HDR, which depends a lot on what you are watching; it can make make a huge difference (Planet Earth is insane with a good TV), but with a lot of stuff it's hard to tell if you are watching HDR.

Shauni · Aug 29, 2018

jstevenson said:
some older cables do not have the bandwidth to support 4K / HDR / 60 or even 30hz signals. Depends on what all you are sending through the cable.

Generally speaking, good quality new cables (these can be inexpensive, just not el cheapo) will be fine. But worth noting for 4K/HDR playback devices

Would anything that came recently with a device (Switch, PS4 Pro, newer Roku, etc) be compatible most likely?

Deleted member 12790 · Aug 29, 2018

Tetrinski said:
This also shows how the improvement from 1080p to 4K is barely noticeable, as opposed to the jump to HD, which was huge in my opinion.

Absolute nonsense. And there were plenty of people watching 480i content on their 1080p TVs because they couldn't notice it. All this shows is that the trend of people not knowing what they are watching continues. Been happening ever since the days of Beta vs VHS.

Venom · Aug 29, 2018

Shauni said:
Would anything that came recently with a device (Switch, PS4 Pro, newer Roku, etc) be compatible most likely?

PS4 Pro packed HDMI cable is compliant yes and recommended in the manual.

Shauni · Aug 29, 2018

Venom said:
PS4 Pro packed HDMI cable is compliant yes and recommended in the manual.

Oh shit, I mix and match my HDMI cables all the time lol

Skies · Aug 29, 2018

I agree 100% OP.

To this day PS4 Pro HDR doesn't play nice with my (SONY!) 4K TV. Sometimes HDR works perfectly, then sometimes my Pro won't display an image at all. It's a known problem with this TV, and a hard reset usually corrects the issue, but I doubt the average person would have the patience or know how to deal with such a thing.

Thiago · Aug 29, 2018

My PS4 Pro sent me this notification when I bought my 4K Bravia as well.

But then I had to Google to discover that I needed to enable "enhanced HDMI" on the TV settings.

ApeEscaper · Aug 29, 2018

Krejlooc said:
along the same lines, I have a Samsung 4K tv, when I plugged in my PC, the input labeled itself "Computer" and that was that. However, by labeling itself "computer," it disabled the "game mode" option. There was absolutely no way to enable game mode on that input, until I manually renamed it to "Xbox." Apparently, the TV firmware is set to only let the game mode option be toggleable if the name of the input is a game console. Which is stupid, because game mode is merely post processing. ALL inputs, regardless of their name, should be able to enable game mode.

It took me a LOT of googling to figure this out.

When it detects it as Computer iirc you don't need Game Mode it's essentially the same thing no post processing etc since it knows it needs lowest input lag for mouse for example, read this awhile ago in some TV forums when I had to do some research on it

Noobcraft · Aug 29, 2018

With the Xbox in the video settings section it tells you all the specs of the output (supports 4k, 60fps, HDR10, etc.) so as long as you know what your TV *should* support it's fairly easy to set up/identify problems. Annoyingly, my TV wouldn't default to HDMI 2.0 automatically for my One X so I had to set that in the TV's menu.

There's definitely room for improvement on the 4K/HDR setup side of things for TV manufacturers.

Rats · Aug 29, 2018

I'm on my second 4K Sony TV and yeah, both of them required flipping a switch that literally could not be any more buried in the settings. It's such an obtuse method of accessing one of the product's biggest selling points.

Deleted member 12790 · Aug 29, 2018

apeAsnake said:
When it detects it as Computer iirc you don't need Game Mode it's essentially the same thing no post processing etc since it knows it needs lowest input lag for mouse for example, read this awhile ago in some TV forums when I had to do some research on it

I did my own test, using a light rig I have created, and it was absolutely doing post processing on the image. It was clear as night and day. In fact, that's how I noticed it, i could feel the lag.

And that isn't even logically consistent. It ALSO names my Playstation and Xbox consoles when they are plugged in, yet those consoles have a game mode toggle. Under the same logic, it shouldn't even have a toggle for those systems, because obviously you want to use game mode for a game machine.

Anthony Hopkins · Aug 29, 2018

I press the information button on my TV and it says its 3840x2160p so im good.

RF Switch · Aug 29, 2018

anyone who is actively seeking out a good 4K HDR tv for their X or Pro is not having this issue. The people with a "cheap" 4K HDR set usually don't care about the difference from my experience. I'll come over say did you do this they will say no and then I'll fix it and they will go wow and then be like yeah yeah I see a difference, but they don't.

Edit: I do agree it should be more visible

see5harp · Aug 29, 2018

The only thing that I really was annoyed with was having to enable 4K in the TV settings along with plugging into HDMI 2. Why wouldn't every single HDMI input be able to handle the 4K signal? The first time I plugged my xbox one x into my TV I was in the XBOX menus and sooo confused why my TV couldn't handle most of the options.

EDIT: to the above poster, no. This is an issue with even $1300 Sony televisions.

Railgun · Aug 29, 2018

Xbox has this screen to let users know if their Xbox one x isn't setup properly. There's dozens of posts every single day on the Xbox One subreddit asking how to fix these not working so at least it makes people aware that something needs to be fixed.

Deleted member 26104 · Aug 29, 2018

Had no problem with my X on my LG OLED. Plugged it in, went to Xbox settings, chose 4K, done.

Rayder · Aug 29, 2018

I didn't have an issue setting up my Samsung TV for 4K HDR, but I have that annoying issue where the TV will go to a blank screen (sound too) for a couple seconds somewhere between the first 1-15 minutes of booting up my PS4 Pro. It never does it more than once after the initial power on, but it ALWAYS does it that one time EVERY time. Freaking maddening, especially when you're in the middle of something intense. Otherwise though, after it does it, I can then play for hours on end without it ever doing that again.

I have never found where anyone can agree about why that happens. Things that other people said works made no difference for me. Changed from the pack-in HDMI cable to a 4K certified one, flipped some recommended settings in both the PS4 and the TV.......no change. Does it EVERY FREAKING TIME! WTF?

ItIsOkBro · Aug 29, 2018

TehPotentialz said:
Had no problem with my X on my LG OLED. Plugged it in, went to Xbox settings, chose 4K, done.

so you did not enable HDMI ultra deep color

WillyFive · Aug 29, 2018

Tetrinski said:
This also shows how the improvement from 1080p to 4K is barely noticeable, as opposed to the jump to HD, which was huge in my opinion. Same with HDR, which depends a lot on what you are watching; it can make make a huge difference (Planet Earth is insane with a good TV), but with a lot of stuff it's hard to tell if you are watching HDR.

The jump from 480i to HD is not noticeable to most people either. I imagine the amount of people who are watching SD video on their HDTVs without realizing it must be in the majority, from my experience.

lowhighkang_LHK · Aug 29, 2018

Tetrinski said:
This also shows how the improvement from 1080p to 4K is barely noticeable, as opposed to the jump to HD, which was huge in my opinion. Same with HDR, which depends a lot on what you are watching; it can make make a huge difference (Planet Earth is insane with a good TV), but with a lot of stuff it's hard to tell if you are watching HDR.

But sometimes its hard to tell if people have nothing to base it on. If you've never played a game at proper 4k before, you just don't know how good it's supposed to look until you have a reference point.

nogoodnamesleft · Aug 29, 2018

ItIsOkBro said:
so you did not enable HDMI ultra deep color

Thats for HDR though. OP states "4k"

DarkChronic · Aug 29, 2018

I just ordered my first 4K TV tonight...definitely worrying, but I plan on watching a ton of Youtube videos to make sure I have everything set up correctly.

TitanicFall · Aug 29, 2018

Reading my TV's manual and leaving the PS4 Pro on auto works fine for me.

K' Dash · Aug 29, 2018

I had to thinker with my TV for 2 hours to get 4K@60Hz working with HDR.

It was a pain in the ass, how is this shit not plug and play?

Macross · Aug 29, 2018

I'm pretty tech savvy, but it took me a good while to understand the configurations and to get my output looking great.

The hdmi standard is a confusing mess. Do you use YUV or not... well that depends on the bits the TV puts out and then if your cable is the right version to support the resolution and refresh rate and your bit output. It doesn't help that scum bag chord companies sell 4k hdmi cables that actually can't put out higher bit 4k signals, just lower ones. I shouldn't need a damn chart to check what cable I need...

Then you have the stupid ass software. Your signal is 4k hdr capable, but hey, it doesn't mean it is doing that. Your TV will flat out lie to your face.

My moment of face slap was figuring out that despite having my pro and 4k TV setup and reporting correct output on both the TV and pro, my games were not using it. Turns out that once I actually start a game the TV used other settings, and I almost fell out of my chair when I switched them back to the correct settings with the game running and suddenly the picture was gorgeous.

HDR is awesome and if you don't see it, maybe you too need to spend a few days researching the magical shit fest of hdmi so you can see it too.

jstevenson · Aug 29, 2018

I do agree that in general, the 4K to 1080P jump, for TV/movies, isn't that gigantic compared to going from CRT 480i TVs (or worse) to suddenly fixed-pixel 720p/1080i displays.

the combined jump of 4K and Dolby Vision though, combined with displays that can showcase that, absolutely crushes the 1080p TVs and blu-rays we had.

I think for the first time in the home viewing environment you can really get true cinema look... it's especially noticeable on good 4K film scans/masters. Just really incredible stuff. I haven't had a day where I regret my OLED and 4K UHD player, and it's brought a lot of joy in watching movies again because in many cases it feels like seeing them through whole new eyes,

scottbeowulf · Aug 29, 2018

Completely agree. When I set up my 4k I was stumped for almost an hour till I switched to HDMI 2 instead of 1. It's like all the settings were just created by engineers and never looked at by anyone else. I've always set up my parents TV's. I can't imagine an older person trying to do it.

Glass · Aug 29, 2018

Watching this thread for when my PS4 pro arrives next Friday, hopefully my TV knows what to do.

ItIsOkBro · Aug 29, 2018

nogoodnamesleft said:
Thats for HDR though. OP states "4k"

hdmi enhanced, hdmi ultra deep, hdmi uhd, it all does the same thing. that op had to turn on enhanced hmdi eould mean he'd have to turn on the equivalent setting on an lg.

shiftplusone · Aug 30, 2018

It's basically plug and play?

I hooked everything to my receiver, then my receiver to my TV. Checked the TV settings and the console settings and it was basically all set to 4k with HDR where available

Mooksoup · Aug 30, 2018

lowhighkang_LHK said:
I always thought the whole benefit of HDMI is sort of the automatic communication between display and device. So they can set that shit up automatically.

Really curious to see if a study was done on the percentage of people with 4k capable of devices and displays not even getting a 4k output.

BTW, did your Pro or Xbox One X give you a notification if something was wrong? Not sure if there is a way to troubleshoot.

Or did you have your PC connected to your TV?

For the resolution yeah the Pro warned me when trying to launch Horizon that my setting were not set up correctly to allow 4k, and gave me a link to the video settings page. SO i knew something was wrong, just was unclear what i was doing wrong.

I don't think i saw any warnings about the HDR now working, other than it just looked washed out.
All solvable problems, just needing me to go through step by step to fix it... just not really intuitive.

The HDMI cable thing, i knew the cable that came with the Pro would have been fine.... but i had just moved house and really all those HDMI cables got tossed in boxes together... exactly which nondescript black HDMI cable was which, and which standard... who knows.
Again... my own fault and something i could fix if it was a problem, but not easy plug and play for the average consumer they want to sell to.

Deleted member 26104 · Aug 30, 2018

ItIsOkBro said:
so you did not enable HDMI ultra deep color

That's HDR, not 4K. I've got mine all set up properly and calibrated. I thought the topic was just about the 4K resolution.

ItIsOkBro said:
hdmi enhanced, hdmi ultra deep, hdmi uhd, it all does the same thing. that op had to turn on enhanced hmdi eould mean he'd have to turn on the equivalent setting on an lg.

They're not the same thing. 1 is resolution, the other is HDR. There's nothing to "turn on" on the TV to get 4K resolution, you just need to feed it a 4K input.

molnizzle · Aug 30, 2018

shiftplusone said:
It's basically plug and play?

I hooked everything to my receiver, then my receiver to my TV. Checked the TV settings and the console settings and it was basically all set to 4k with HDR where available

Some TV's aren't, that's the problem.

Even new ones. For my TCL 6-Series, I had to go in and manually set the HDMI ports that connect to my Xbox and PS4 to 2.0b. If left to "auto" they default to HDMI 1.4, which can't output a 4K HDR signal. For people not in the know with their TV's, it can be a pain.

...though at the same time, they probably have no idea what they're missing. So perhaps it's not much of an issue.

nogoodnamesleft · Aug 30, 2018

ItIsOkBro said:
hdmi enhanced, hdmi ultra deep, hdmi uhd, it all does the same thing. that op had to turn on enhanced hmdi eould mean he'd have to turn on the equivalent setting on an lg.

Really? To get 4k into my c7 all I had to do was turn on my console and set it to 2160p. Didn't need hdmi deep colour

HDR was a different story

ItIsOkBro · Aug 30, 2018

TehPotentialz said:
That's HDR, not 4K. I've got mine all set up properly and calibrated. I thought the topic was just about the 4K resolution.

They're not the same thing. 1 is resolution, the other is HDR. There's nothing to "turn on" on the TV to get 4K resolution, you just need to feed it a 4K input.

these settings, called different things by different manufacturers, all do the same thing. it allows the hdmi port to recieve a full bandwidth signal. the end result is hdr will work but it's not an hdr switch and it's not a 4k switch. why it is acting like a 4k switch for op, i don't know. but he'd also need to turn on "enhanced hdmi" for hdr. you would need to turn on ultra deep color for 4k@60fps 4:4:4, and that's not hdr.

ManaByte · Aug 30, 2018

I have my Xbox One X, UHD BD Player, Apple TV 4K, and Fire TV Cube (for voice control) all going through a Sony 4K HDR receiver while the PS4 Pro has to be connected directly to the TV since it wouldn't pass a signal through the Sony receiver. But all are relatively easy to set up since I made sure the receiver inputs AND TV imputs were set to Enhanced.

Also Amazon's Basic HDMI cables work fine for 4K and HDR. Have everything running with those since they're cheap to buy in bulk.

Tetrinski · Aug 30, 2018

Krejlooc said:
Absolute nonsense. And there were plenty of people watching 480i content on their 1080p TVs because they couldn't notice it. All this shows is that the trend of people not knowing what they are watching continues. Been happening ever since the days of Beta vs VHS.

Nah, even side by side at the store there's isn't a huge improvement. It looks crisper, but unless your screen is huge (over 65 inches) a lot of the time it's not that notizable.

Deleted member 12790 · Aug 30, 2018

Tetrinski said:
Nah, even side by side at the store there's isn't a huge improvement. It looks crisper, but unless your screen is huge (over 65 inches) a lot of the time it's not that notizable.

Yes it is. Source: my eyes.

Tetrinski · Aug 30, 2018

Krejlooc said:
Yes it is. Source: my eyes.

Dude, even Digital Foundry disagrees with you. CNET as well. In a screen under 60 it is hard to tell a lot of the time.

ss_lemonade · Aug 30, 2018

apeAsnake said:
When it detects it as Computer iirc you don't need Game Mode it's essentially the same thing no post processing etc since it knows it needs lowest input lag for mouse for example, read this awhile ago in some TV forums when I had to do some research on it

That isn't the case with my Samsung TV (KS9000). PC mode has slightly higher input lag and colors are also slightly off in SDR (more so in HDR). I had to force my TV to disable auto detection so that plugging a PC would not force engage PC mode. I doubt everyday people would even know how to do that, especially when I only found out about how to disable auto detection through a forum post and how it's done in an obscure way via a remote key combo with no feedback at all.

Curufinwe · Aug 30, 2018

I just got a replacement X1X that had been plugged into a 1080p TV at the MS store, and when I plugged it in to my Sony X900E a prompt came up asking if I wanted to switch to displaying in 4K.

Only HDMI 2 and 3 output in 4K, so I have my PS4 Pro and X1X plugged into them.

Zafir · Aug 30, 2018

Krejlooc said:
along the same lines, I have a Samsung 4K tv, when I plugged in my PC, the input labeled itself "Computer" and that was that. However, by labeling itself "computer," it disabled the "game mode" option. There was absolutely no way to enable game mode on that input, until I manually renamed it to "Xbox." Apparently, the TV firmware is set to only let the game mode option be toggleable if the name of the input is a game console. Which is stupid, because game mode is merely post processing. ALL inputs, regardless of their name, should be able to enable game mode.

It took me a LOT of googling to figure this out.

Not only lag, but when I was messing with my Samsung TV when I first got it last year, I noticed you couldn't even get HDR if it was set to computer too. Like you can enable it through Windows but it'll just look rubbish because the display isn't making use of it.

I don't think I had to name it to a console or anything though, I just manually changed the name to PC or something and used the game console preset which allowed me to get game mode for it.

Either way, you really should not have to go to this trouble.

The complication of getting a proper 4K signal to a TV from you console is a problem.

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