PlayStation 5 Facing Black Crush Issues as it is not able to Reproduce SDR Content Properly

Are you the lucky one among those few million gamers who managed to grab a PS5 console, then you would have noticed that the latest gaming console from Sony outputs by default everything in a High Dynamic Range (HDR) container, Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) content included.

Though if you turn off HDR to play the older games that do not support HDR displays, it seems that the SDR reproduction is off. Digital Foundry’s Alexander Battaglia described this in his few tweets.

“PS5 is actually not displaying Original SDR content correctly – unfortunately. Does it with Backward Compatibility titles for sure. Could lead to black crush or other changes in reproducing the game’s color or tone.”

“It is not as dramatic as the limited vs full issue shown in the quoted tweet – but if you capture SDR on a PlayStation 4 Pro and compare it to SDR on PS5 of that same game there are differences which can be negative.”

John Linneman, his colleague also agreed and also said that all of the game captures made by Digital Foundry in SDR facing problems with ‘black crush’ compared to other platforms.

“Yeah, it’s been a real issue for us. That said, in this case, it’s likely a full/limited RGB issue as PS5 typically crushes darker shades rather than increase the black floor.”

“[…] the PS5 does not properly display SDR. If we capture the same game from all PS4s and Xbox systems using the same settings, blacks are crushed on PS5 in SDR. I’m convinced SDR output is broken. SDR in HDR container is better here. SDR just doesn’t seem to be quite right – all of our captures from PS5 in SDR are slightly crushed compared to all other machines…but if your display does a poor job with HDR it might still look better in SDR.”

Let’s hope that Sony will fix the PS5 issue very soon. We all know HDR content is the future, there remains no reason that the console faces some problem while reproducing any old SDR content.

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