I personally have over 50 UHD BR discs with HDR in my collection. I do not own a dedicated BR player, I do everything on my PC. And my PC is definitely not SGX compliant, as if that matters. I will say that I've had challenges with HDR, it's kind of a convoluted mess. Personally, I find it frustrating when I can play a UHD calibration disc with HDR material that is draw droppingly gorgeous, but then I play an HDR movie and the tone mapping is noticeably off. Part of the problem is likely my projector, which while it "supports" HDR, has such a limited dynamic range that you can't really call it HDR. Tone mapping is helpful to shift a movie's dynamic range to better match your display device, and that's where software like MadVR and MPC/JRiver come in handy. So while beautiful playback is possible, it still greatly irks me that for some reason it's necessary to do this, even when the UHD calibration disc looks perfect with no special tricks. It seems to me that if these movies simply used the same settings that the calibration disc uses, all would be perfect (at least for me...).
Anyway, that's a long way of saying that UHD BR with HDR playback on a PC is certainly possible, but several pieces of software are required - one to remove playback restrictions, a quality player with both HDR and plugin support, and a tone mapping plugin to calibrate the image to your display device. Now, if you accomplish all this, you basically have the equivalent of a $10k-$20k video player, and there are many here who would say the effort is definitely worth it. Personally, I'm a busy busy guy, and while I've dipped my toes into this HDR mess, for the most part I've been too distracted to ever reach that promised land.
I will also say that the situation has become worse over the past year. One of the major players in playback restriction removal, perhaps the biggest one of them all, abruptly closed up shop to avoid legal action. This foxy tool is the one I used for decades, so its departure has hit me hard. I know an alternative has risen to take its place, but I've yet to try it myself, so no idea if it actually works, nor have I moved on to any other solutions.
Ironically, I've basically stopped growing my collection. I was buying several movies a month, but now that PC playback is more challenging, and since I've been too busy to figure out a new solution, I've put my buying habits on hold. I sure hope the movie industry is happy. I was never a pirate, I was simply peculiar in how I liked to store and playback my legally purchased movies. All this protection nonsense hasn't affected piracy at all from what I can tell, but it has certainly driven away this paying customer.
somerandomuser wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2024 6:10 pm This is what I still sort of don't get, if Leawo is able to make a product capable of UHD BR playback, why not also offer HDR playback?
I've looked at their website, reading up on their free player offering, and I can find no mention of HDR support at all. Perhaps they've never programmed that capability. I have no idea. I've certainly never heard of Leawo before you swung by. The small group of My Movies/CMC users that hang out here are mostly videophile junkies, and I don't believe any of them use Leawo either, which probably means it's free for a reason.
But free can be good. MPC is a good example of this. MPC is open source, and they've added a ton of capabilities to it, including a plugin solution so that you can extend the capabilities far beyond the open source core. Probably the biggest problem with MPC is that it lacks UHD BR menus.
If you're willing to pay, then JRiver MC is probably one of the more popular options around here. I've tried it a few times, and for some reason I have ongoing playback issues with it. It might be because I've only ever tried the free trial version, as the aficionados around here that love it have all purchased a license. Those that are using JRiver seem to find that getting HDR to work is a bit easier vs. MPC, so maybe that alone is worth the price of admission. Plus, it has UHD BR menus, which is pretty big. I should probably just go ahead and buy it.
Anyway, like I said at the beginning, there are other solutions to the playback restriction. Sorry to tease you, I won't be posting names here. Continued searching may reward you with even more options. But essentially, any tool that removes restrictions is good, as then you can use the player of your choice. Good luck!