[juanmablanco]

Are you shure of that? I ask because all LG models I know of can passthrough DTS, AC3, eAC3 and AAC - all with 5.1 channels (not higher) from HDMi input to optical output.
My CoreElec boxes are all connected to various LG TVs with HDMI cables, and 5.1 multichannel sound is fed from LG optical OUT to AV receivers. Kodi is set to Ch. no 2.0 and passthrough via HDMI, and LGs are set to output digital audio via Optical output...

I'm sure. I have a LG 55eg9a7v, and had it working that way with my Wetek Core, but the X series don't allow its passthrough, even with an original Bluray in a PS3. If audio is DTS you only hear sound scratches.
I even call LG support to ask if they were working to solve it via firmware, and told me it was not in their schedule and didn't think LG would do it.

So, no passthrough via SPDIF/Toslink... And the main reason to need optical output from any media player that will play DTS. Such a stupid issue in a very expensive TV...

[wrxtasy]

So, no passthrough via SPDIF/Toslink... And the main reason to need optical output from any media player that will play DTS. Such a stupid issue in a very expensive TV...

I would just set CoreELEC Kodi audio to:

- Audio output device = HDMI only
- 2.0 audio channels
- disable all DTS audio passthrough
- Enable DD / AC3 audio
- Enable DD / AC3 transcoding

DD audio surely is able to be passed thru a TV and output as 5.1 DD again over SPDIF/Toslink.

With lossy 5.1 DTS or even DD only audio I seriously doubt you would even hear a difference.

[Sholander]

I'm sure. I have a LG 55eg9a7v, and had it working that way with my Wetek Core, but the X series don't allow its passthrough, even with an original Bluray in a PS3. If audio is DTS you only hear sound scratches.
I even call LG support to ask if they were working to solve it via firmware, and told me it was not in their schedule and didn't think LG would do it.

So, no passthrough via SPDIF/Toslink... And the main reason to need optical output from any media player that will play DTS. Such a stupid issue in a very expensive TV...

I'm sad to hear that, it means that LG did not get DTS license for that TV. Similar to my old Panasonic that could not passthrough DTS via Toslink...

[juanmablanco]

Enable DD / AC3 transcoding

DD audio surely is able to be passed thru a TV and output as 5.1 DD again over SPDIF/Toslink.

Wow, as I always had Kodi to passthrough Dolby and DTS I didn't even think if Kodi could transcode DTS into Dolby. Many, many thanks @wrxtasy!!
I tried with a 1080p mkv and it worked great with the Wetek Core connected via HDMI to the CX.

I will try with a 4K HDR as soon as I have the N2+ to be sure it those kind of files are played well that way. Plex was unable to do it properly, but I suppose it was because is the server which transcodes and has to mix again video and audio to send it on the TV app, whereas in Kodi is the media player which does it and send via HDMI the original video and transcoded audio, without having to mix it in any container again.

You really saved my day! Thank you!

[juanmablanco]

I'm sad to hear that, it means that LG did not get DTS license for that TV. Similar to my old Panasonic that could not passthrough DTS via Toslink...

Yes, it's very sad they decided to do that. But what is more sad for me, is that I think they could allow this DTS passthrough via SPDIF/Toslink without that licence. I mean, I understand you need DTS licence to decode it and play it on the TV speakers. I could even understand if HDMI eARC needs license to passthrough it because it is bidirectional.

But not letting the audio bitstream to be send directly, without even touching it, to a Home Cinema via SPDIF output... I do think is an option they could allow with a simple firmware update, but the problem is they don't want to do it. They just don't care about customers (at least the few that claim for that option).

I already have the TV installed and the panel is great, I found a reasonable price in Blackfriday and if I can solve it with Kodi in the N2+, I will keep this TV. But I will undoubtedly have this "support from LG" in mind when I again look for a TV.

[jubilex]

I just bought the N2+ thinking it would be my futureproofed device for 4k/HDR. I only have 1080p SDR displays right now but intend to get all media in 4k HDR from this point for futureproofing.

The problem is the tonemapping on the N2+ is not good. For example, Lord of the Rings 4k HDR is much duller than the old 1080p bluray version (with Coreelec's HDR>SDR set to On in Kodi). 

By comparison, Plex through my laptop outputting to the same SDR display seems to do this tonemapping perfectly -- I can't tell a difference between the 4k HDR version and the SDR version when played through my SDR TV. 

Am I doing something wrong or did I just buy the wrong device? I don't see myself upgrading my projector at least to HDR anytime soon.

[noggin]

I just bought the N2+ thinking it would be my futureproofed device for 4k/HDR. I only have 1080p SDR displays right now but intend to get all media in 4k HDR from this point for futureproofing.

The problem is the tonemapping on the N2+ is not good. For example, Lord of the Rings 4k HDR is much duller than the old 1080p bluray version (with Coreelec's HDR>SDR set to On in Kodi). 

By comparison, Plex through my laptop outputting to the same SDR display seems to do this tonemapping perfectly -- I can't tell a difference between the 4k HDR version and the SDR version when played through my SDR TV. 

Am I doing something wrong or did I just buy the wrong device? I don't see myself upgrading my projector at least to HDR anytime soon.

HDR->SDR tone mapping is a non-exact science - particularly mapping the wider Rec 2020 colour space widely used for HDR content to the smaller Rec 709 space used for SDR (and part of the HD spec).  There is no single 'right' way of doing it - in fact there are very distinct and different algorithms depending on what you want to achieve (*). Many consumer UHD Blu-ray players with built in tone mapping allow a lot of tweaking to alter the SDR output because of this. 

Also - Rec 709 SDR HD Blu-rays and HDR UHD Blu-rays will often have been 'graded' (where the colourist decides the look of each shot/scene) separately to optimise them for the two different target outputs (or at least the conversion of one grade session to output in a new dynamic range and colour gamut will be manually optimised), so it isn't always possible to automatically convert a UHD HDR Rec 2020 Blu-ray so that it accurately matches the separately graded HD SDR Rec 709 Blu-ray release.  

(*) Two very different approaches used for HDR Rec 2020->SDR Rec 709  conversion are Display Light conversion and Scene Light conversion.  Display Light conversion effectively simulates the 'look' of HDR, but in SDR.  In some ways it's like pointing an SDR camera at an HDR display. This preserves the HDR Rec 2020 look as far as possible in SDR space.  The Scene Light conversion simulates what an SDR Rec 709 capture path would produce if shooting the same scene as the HDR route that captured the scene.  This gives you a much more SDR Rec 709-like look, and produces content that looks much more like normal SDR video.  Both approaches are valid - but will deliver pretty different results.  Other approaches are sometimes used in conversion - that are more related to HDR->SDR photography conversion - which is also a valid approach to take I guess.

[Sholander]

I just bought the N2+ thinking it would be my futureproofed device for 4k/HDR. I only have 1080p SDR displays right now but intend to get all media in 4k HDR from this point for futureproofing.

The problem is the tonemapping on the N2+ is not good. For example, Lord of the Rings 4k HDR is much duller than the old 1080p bluray version (with Coreelec's HDR>SDR set to On in Kodi). 

Does it make any difference when you set (in CoreElec) HDR>SDR to Auto?

[wrxtasy]

The problem is the tonemapping on the N2+ is not good. For example, Lord of the Rings 4k HDR is much duller than the old 1080p bluray version (with Coreelec's HDR>SDR set to On in Kodi). 

You could try the new Beta Kodi v19.0 Matrix release.
Maybe there is an updated Linux Kernel used that would output different results.

[noggin]

The problem is the tonemapping on the N2+ is not good. For example, Lord of the Rings 4k HDR is much duller than the old 1080p bluray version (with Coreelec's HDR>SDR set to On in Kodi). 

You could try the new Beta Kodi v19.0 Matrix release.
Maybe there is an updated Linux Kernel used that would output different results.

Isn't tonemapping handled by part of the SoC on AMLogic devices? I guess a newer kernel may have more AMLogic tweaks - but I thought HDR<->SDR and HDR10<->HLG etc. conversion was handled at the SoC level rather than in software  (due to the large amount of processing required - - or is that a false assumption? (You're converting a video stream of 15Gbs if you're tone mapping 3840x2160 60fps 4:4:4 10-bit content)

Or am I totally wrong?  I though that was why tonemapping differed between different AMLogic platforms in how it performed (as different SoCs implemented different algorithms to do so?)

[jubilex]

The problem is the tonemapping on the N2+ is not good. For example, Lord of the Rings 4k HDR is much duller than the old 1080p bluray version (with Coreelec's HDR>SDR set to On in Kodi). 

You could try the new Beta Kodi v19.0 Matrix release.
Maybe there is an updated Linux Kernel used that would output different results.

You're right - on Windows, Matrix Beta 2 has the Hable and ACES algorithms which work excellently. Unfortunately, Coreelec's Matrix nightlies don't have this feature, and in fact their Leia doesn't even allow the Reinhard algorithm which has been in since Leia (which is pretty useless anyway). Coreelec seems to only use its own method that is switched on or off in the System menu, and it's no good.

I've asked on their forum about this. Hopefully it's not something hardware dependent that can't be implemented in Coreelec.

[jubilex]

The problem is the tonemapping on the N2+ is not good. For example, Lord of the Rings 4k HDR is much duller than the old 1080p bluray version (with Coreelec's HDR>SDR set to On in Kodi). 

You could try the new Beta Kodi v19.0 Matrix release.
Maybe there is an updated Linux Kernel used that would output different results.

Isn't tonemapping handled by part of the SoC on AMLogic devices? I guess a newer kernel may have more AMLogic tweaks - but I thought HDR<->SDR and HDR10<->HLG etc. conversion was handled at the SoC level rather than in software  (due to the large amount of processing required - - or is that a false assumption? (You're converting a video stream of 15Gbs if you're tone mapping 3840x2160 60fps 4:4:4 10-bit content)

Or am I totally wrong?  I though that was why tonemapping differed between different AMLogic platforms in how it performed (as different SoCs implemented different algorithms to do so?)

You are right, that is how Coreelec is currently doing it, just a switch in System settings to turn on the hardware tonemapping. But it's so bad as to be useless.

When I switch the software algorithms on and off in Matrix beta on Windows, there is no noticeable spike or dip in CPU or GPU usage, so it doesn't *seem* to be something that would be too tough for N2+ to handle, I hope.

edit: Response on Coreelec forum: "It looks like it wasn’t implemented for GLES, only for OpenGL and D3D, so it’s not gonna work on any ARM devices." I don't know if he meant the existing code won't work on ARM or the whole thing is impossible on ARM.

If so that's a bummer and means I need to stick to buying only SDR media for the forseeable future.

[MrCrispy]

So what does this mean - HDR on Amlogic under CE won't look good? Then what is the point of HDR?

Btw I've noticed a lot of issues with HDR/Dolby Vision in general. My tv is not the highest cost, its a TCL, but it was also very well reviewed for its picture quality and was the only one in budget when I bought it last year.

The HDR esp DV quality on it is so variable in different players e.g. Android ExoPlayer vs whatever streaming services use. Often image is dark and washed out colors, not at all what I expect in DV. I had read that CE contains lots of tweaks for this and is not limited by Android, so the above is pretty disappointing.

[Boulder]

HDR looks good, the issue is if you have an SDR display so that the device will do the HDR->SDR grading.

In any other case, it should be a case of how the material is encoded and how the primaries etc. are tagged in the files and how your display device utilizes the information. I have had no issues with HDR10 on my N2 and UHD remuxes or my own re-encodes.

[graham-h]

Isn't tonemapping handled by part of the SoC on AMLogic devices? I guess a newer kernel may have more AMLogic tweaks - but I thought HDR<->SDR and HDR10<->HLG etc. conversion was handled at the SoC level rather than in software  (due to the large amount of processing required - - or is that a false assumption? (You're converting a video stream of 15Gbs if you're tone mapping 3840x2160 60fps 4:4:4 10-bit content)

Or am I totally wrong?  I though that was why tonemapping differed between different AMLogic platforms in how it performed (as different SoCs implemented different algorithms to do so?)

You are not wrong.  Tonemapping happens in the SoC.  The way it's implemented gets more sophisticated with each SoC generation as they now have to do tonemaps on the fly for DV and HDR10+.  I suspect even a s922x wouldn't handle that in the CPU.