High dynamic range, or HDR, video is great. Well, until it isn’t. Sometimes you just want to turn it off entirely for one reason or another, so, it has been frustrating for many people that Fire TVs have only had the option to force HDR on all the time or let the device decide when to turn it on with an adaptive option. That has finally changed with the Fire TV Stick 4K Max because it’s now the first Fire TV model to include a third “Disable HDR” option. The device is running the newest version of Fire OS that I’ve seen yet, v7.2.5.5, so there is hope that this new HDR option will trickle down to older Fire TV models with a future update.
@AFTVnews
AFTVnews
The Cube(2) is currently on FireOS 7.2.4.2 (PS7242/2896)
— is that secondary number “2896” signify a security update patch or hot fix? Notice that primary number “7242” won’t change, and if it did then the OS had a major change, but every fews months the secondary number will be changed and my assumption is that a security patch was pushed to the device.
No, it is not a security patch number. More like a hotfix number. Think of the second number as a “sub-version” value to differentiate different builds of the main update indicated by the first number. So it’s like v7.2.4.2-A and v7.2.4.2-B and v7.2.4.2-C etc… but instead of A, B, C, it’s a 4 digit number.
Huge news, and it’s made an immediate impact with my 2015 LG OLED. Watching animated Disney+ movies (or really dark movies with HDR) completely washed out the picture and made the colors totally inaccurate. I got mine today, turned off HDR and immediately watched the intro to Beauty and the Beast where it was horrible before. Complete night and day difference, so I would certainly tell anyone with a 5+ year old OLED that doesn’t have HDR 10 to get this and turn it off!
Adam, did the disney+ feed still say it was pushing the hdr to you? Did you have Atmos feed with it, or did it fall to 5.1 audio?
I bought the 4K Max mainly for disabling the HDR. After setting everything up, no it doesn’t work for Disney+. When the disable HDR in the fire tv stick is set, in Disney+ the source will only be given as Full HD and not 4K…
Please check… and obviously this is not what I need, well in order to get a Full HD, a non 4K fire tv stick is already sufficient!
Hopefully for more people to see this post and comment upon.
Good thing though, disabling of HDR works for YouTube. Thus I am not saying that it’s the problem with the 4K Max, but rather it could be related to the Disney+ app itself, could someone confirm this findings?
Disclaimer: What I meant by when it works, I meant it will do a proper 4K without HDR. Don’t get confused then when the source is thus became Full HD without you knowing.. :) Plus one could observe on your router downstream speed real-time, to know is it a Full HD or 4K steaming through.
it’s not a 4k max problem, it’s related to disney+
for some strange reason, 4k streams are available only with hdr on…
idk why but up to 1080p there are hdr and sdr, in 4k only hdr
I guess Tone Mapping doesn’t work for you when watching HDR content on SDR TV?
Do you think that the fire tv cube 2 will receive the 7.2.5.5 update and when do you think this could happen?
It seems that Fire TV Stick 4k Max doesn’t do tone mapping for HDR content when playing on SDR TV :(
If I try to play e.g. https://4kmedia.org/the-world-in-hdr-uhd-4k-demo/ on SDR TV with Kodi the colors are washed out. People report the same issue in other programs and suggest that tone mapping is not working. Otherwise a great device, but this may be a show stopper in some cases if your TV is not HDR.
Maybe someone will help! i use 4k max
and I have the same problem with displaying color on SDTV.
Vimu player helps me! turn off HDR on the stick and set the display to 10 bits, and in Vimu select engin2 + tunneling! will work))
Maybe someone will help! i use 4k max
and I have the same problem with displaying color on SDTV.
Vimu player helps me! turn off HDR on the stick and set the display to 10 bits, and in Vimu select engin v.2 + tunneling! will work))
Ok so I have the same problem, HDR not well managed on my Monitor, colors all washed mainly with the Netflix app, and I can’t turning HDR off on the Fire Stick setting, even if I choose output to be only 8 bits. I have 3 different Fire Stick models, an old one, a new one with Alexa remote, and a 4K model not Max (OS 6291 (NS3291/4110). I don’t want to invest in a new 4K Max just for a simple HDR OFF settings. Hope Amazon will react as I guess I’m not the only one using Fire Stick on Gaming Monitor…
Hi, can someone confirm whether the 4k Max firestick is able to turn off HDR for Netflix? And if your experience is with Samsung TV then please mention that too! Thanks!
It is not able to, but you don’t need this. Neflix chooses a stream depending on your TV capabilities and it likely has non-HDR version for each of its videos.
The problem is if you have your own HDR content, which you want to stream from somewhere e.g. with Kodi to a non-HDR TV.
Fire TV Stick 4K MAX does not do tone mapping no matter the settings (tone mapping does not work when playing videos with Plex, Kodi and many other app… colors are washed out). It is useless with a non HDR TV. However, cheaper Fire TV Stick 4 (non-MAX) does it perfectly well. Do not waste you money with the MAX version.
Why would I need tone mapping? If HDR is disabled then it’s SDR, where tone mapping isn’t needed right?
You need tonemapping because you’re trying to play HDR content on an SDR device. Even if you disable HDR, that doesn’t change the data that’s embedded inside your content, only the setting of the device. So your color are still gonna be washed out because you’re now in SDR settings trying to play HDR content. Tone mapping is the device’s way to convert the HDR data to SDR so it plays correctly on your TV.