I want to play 4K files, can my computer and graphics card handle it?

[euluta]

First time using this forum I need help please

My desktop is HP ProDesk 400 G5 MT, has 8th generation i5 Pentium 8500 CPU @3GHz
I have added a Graphics card NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1050 TI, I use HDMI cable to connect the desktop to the TV.
I have a lot of movies stored on this computer and I want to play them on a 4k TV
I have bought a 4k LG Tv, but it’s not working well at all, picture is washed out and the HDR is not working, and the colours are very faint.
Before I was using a 1080p TV and it was working very well.
I think this graphics card can’t handle HDR, is this correct?

I saw an article on PC Gamer dated 18 February 2022 that says that for HDR I need HDMI 2.0a or later, my graphics card only has HDMI 2.0 (Yes, you can use any TV with HDMI inputs in place of a computer display. If you're looking at 4K TVs, you'll want a graphics card that has at least an HDMI 2.0 port (HDMI 2.0a or later for HDR10 displays). That allows for 4K at 60Hz, with 24-bit colour)

[usually_quiet]

A GeForce GTX 1050 Ti provides HDMI 2.0b, which should work for 2160p HDR video at 60 Hz. See https://www.evga.com/products/specs/gpu.aspx?pn=7e5bfb9f-c13b-4800-a855-bea3724a5f8e#:...01080p%20HD%2B. HDR must be turned on in Windows 10 or Windows 11 settings.

Very few 1080p displays are capable of processing HDR input. However, some software video players, such as VLC, can do tone tone-mapping to simulate HDR on an SDR display but the video output from the computer is still SDR.

[Subtitles]

May I suggest to test playing some of the videos on the desktop, using an external SSD or HDD plugged directly into one of the LG 4k TV USB connector?
My experience is that the TV plays my videos much better this way.

[usually_quiet]

May I suggest to test playing some of the videos on the desktop, using an external SSD or HDD plugged directly into one of the LG 4k TV USB connector?
My experience is that the TV plays my videos much better this way.

The TV's media player could be more limited in what it can play than a PC but it is worth trying. A UHD Blu-ray player's media file player may also be worth trying.

[flashandpan007]

You need madVR or MPC Video Renderer with MPC-BE for HDR passthrough to TV.

[usually_quiet]

You need madVR or MPC Video Renderer with MPC-BE for HDR passthrough to TV.

Maybe this will work and maybe it won't. According to MPC-BE's Stats, in my case, it only simulated HDR using tone-mapping instead of sending HDR metadata.

I expected it to work with my setup and don't understand what prevented that. My HTPC is connected via HDMI 2.0b to a Sony KD43X85K UHD HDR TV. My HTPC is running Windows 10 and uses the i5 10400 processor's iGPU. Windows 10 detected that the TV is able to use HDR metadata and I set up MPC-BE to use MPC Video Renderer and to pass through HDR if it was possible to do so.

[flashandpan007]

For AMD (i)GPUs and Nvidia GPUs it worked well for me. Maybe give madVR a try then?

[usually_quiet]

For AMD (i)GPUs and Nvidia GPUs it worked well for me. Maybe give madVR a try then?

I'll give it a try. However, I initially decided not to try madVR because I read something indicating that madVR does not work as well for HDR pass-through using Intel iGPUs as it does using Nvidia graphics adapters.

Edit: madVR only simulated HDR using excessively colorful tone-mapping, so I am going to uninstall madVR. MPCVR's tone mapping looked closer to what the TV's media player displayed when playing the same 4K HDR HEVC test video from a USB stick.

[euluta]

May I suggest to test playing some of the videos on the desktop, using an external SSD or HDD plugged directly into one of the LG 4k TV USB connector?
My experience is that the TV plays my videos much better this way.

Hi,
Thank you for your help.
If I connect a Seagate External hard drive to the USB in the back of 4K Smart TV will this work? On this Seagate external drive I have a few 4K movies. Will they show on the TV in high definition? This way I don't have to have the computer on.
Many thanks,
euluta

[Subtitles]

May I suggest to test playing some of the videos on the desktop, using an external SSD or HDD plugged directly into one of the LG 4k TV USB connector?
My experience is that the TV plays my videos much better this way.

Hi,
Thank you for your help.
If I connect a Seagate External hard drive to the USB in the back of 4K Smart TV will this work? On this Seagate external drive I have a few 4K movies. Will they show on the TV in high definition? This way I don't have to have the computer on.
Many thanks,
euluta

You can try and it should work. Just remember to disconnect it afterwards wisely otherwise your files may get corrupted.
Some players ask the files to be FAT32 but I doubt if a new 4K smart TV would object to NTFS formatted files.

[usually_quiet]

May I suggest to test playing some of the videos on the desktop, using an external SSD or HDD plugged directly into one of the LG 4k TV USB connector?
My experience is that the TV plays my videos much better this way.

Hi,
Thank you for your help.
If I connect a Seagate External hard drive to the USB in the back of 4K Smart TV will this work? On this Seagate external drive I have a few 4K movies. Will they show on the TV in high definition? This way I don't have to have the computer on.
Many thanks,
euluta

You can try and it should work. Just remember to disconnect it afterwards wisely otherwise your files may get corrupted.
Some players ask the files to be FAT32 but I doubt if a new 4K smart TV would object to NTFS formatted files.

In addition to the above advice... If the external hard drive is powered via a wall outlet, you don't have to worry about it receiving sufficient power to run. However, the USB ports on a TV often don't provide enough power to run a portable hard drive that relies on USB for both power and data transfer.

[usually_quiet]

Maybe this is not as cut and dried as I thought.

Since I wrote the posts above, I tried playing a 2160p 59.94fps HEVC video with HDR-10 (10-bit color), 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, ITU-R BT.2020 color space, and FLAC audio at 59.94 Hz. (The video can be downloaded https://4kmedia.org/the-world-in-hdr-uhd-4k-demo/) I used a Windows 11 PC connected to a 4K HDR TV.

My PC's motherboard uses an internal LSPCON to convert one of the Intel 630 UHD Graphics DisplayPort lanes (or maybe the eDP lane?) into an HDMI 2.0b port. I used MPC-BE to play the video. When MPC Video Renderer is installed and selected as the video renderer, MPC-BE can be set up to pass-through HDR rather than perform tone-mapping, *if* HDR pass-through is possible.

Based on what I read at https://www.extron.com/article/hdmi2faq, HDMI 2.0b is supposed to support 2160p video with HDR10 pass-through at up to 60 Hz if Windows 11 is set up to use Y′CBCR 4:2:0 or 4:2:2 chroma sub-sampling. However, I can't find a way to achieve those settings for my test video using my iGPU and TV or turn on "Use HDR" in Windows with the display resolution set to 2160p and the display refresh rate set to 59.94 Hz or 60 Hz. I can only get HDR10 pass-through to work for 2160p video using RGB color (this is automatically chosen by Windows 11) with the refresh rate set to 30 Hz or less (the refresh rate is user controlled).

[Edit 2]I found out why HDMI 2.0b on my iGPU can't be set up to use Y′CBCR 4:2:0 or 4:2:2. I can't set the color depth or format in the Intel Graphics Command Center because my motherboard's HDMI 2.0b port is provided by using a DisplayPort lane plus an on-board adapter/LSPCON on one computer. On the other computer, HDMI 2.0b is provided by using an external DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0b active adapter. According to https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000087657/graphics.html "Note: Color Depth and Format are not supported via DisplayPort, USB-C, VGA, or when using adapters."

I'll either need to switch to a recent discrete GPU or replace my CPU and motherboard with Alder Lake or newer to fix the problem.

[flashandpan007]

MPC-BE developers added Dolby Vision support to their MPC Video Renderer

[usually_quiet]

MPC-BE developers added Dolby Vision support to their MPC Video Renderer

Thanks. I'll have to update MPC Video Renderer and try it out.

[flashandpan007]

Be sure to update MPC-BE aswell. Only MPC-BE, but not MPC-HC can support DV data to Renderer:
https://github.com/Aleksoid1978/VideoRenderer/commit/4c24a2836827772819725fca8948140e6f2068c0
Nightly direct from v0lt:
https://disk.yandex.com/d/X0EVMKP4TcmnHQ