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Microsoft Fixes Xbox One's Last Big 4K Blu-ray Player Picture Bugs

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While I think it was a great move by Microsoft to include 4K Blu-ray players in its Xbox One S and Xbox One X consoles, it’s fair to say those players experienced a few teething problems.

In the process of putting together this review of the Xbox One X’s 4K Blu-ray drive, I came across two big issues: raised brightness levels that made dark scenes look washed out and grey (as first reported here), and colors that looked slightly off tone when compared with those produced by multiple rival 4K Blu-ray players.

To Microsoft’s credit it fixed the first - and worst - of these two issues within days. The color issue, however, has taken Microsoft considerably longer to get to sort out. According to the notes provided on the latest Xbox One system update (1804.180305-1900), though, a solution has now not only been found, but should already have rolled out to members of the Xbox One Preview Update Alpha program.

Photo: John Archer, 20th Century Fox (Deadpool)

The color problem was caused by the Xbox consoles outputting color from 4K Blu-rays in RGB mode, rather than the YCbCr format the video on the disc was encoded in. All other 4K Blu-ray players, so far as I know, simply pass the video out in its native YCbCr format, leaving the RGB conversion process to your TV.

Even if you selected the ‘YCC Output’ mode in the Xbox One X/S menus, the console still, bizarrely, converted the video first to RGB, and then back to YCbCr. And the more conversion processes a video signal has to go through, the more imperfections it’s likely to pick up along the way.

A ‘Display’ notification in the latest Xbox One System Update notes, though, states that the new firmware ‘resolves issues with RGB colors when displaying in 4K HDR mode when playing a UHD disc.’

I’ve asked Microsoft for more detail on precisely how the fix works, but my presumption for now is that its engineers have found a way of simply bypassing the console’s RGB conversion path with video output from UHD discs.

While the color fix for the 4K Blu-ray drive is the most important one given that it affected every console and disc, it’s also good to see the latest Xbox One System Update notes stating that they have ‘resolved the issue in which the Blu-ray app may experience visual glitching after a few minutes of playback.’

This glitching is not an issue I’ve had personal experience of, but I’ve certainly had other Xbox One owners tell me that it’s happened to them.

Photo: Microsoft

I’ve not yet had the chance to put Microsoft’s latest Xbox One system update to the test myself, to check everything performs as it should. However, the firmware update preview notes Microsoft provides to its Xbox One Insiders tend to be pretty open and reliable. So provided they’re correct on this occasion too, when the firmware rolls out to all Xbox Ones they will become even more tempting (and great value) home entertainment all-rounders than they  were before.

If you liked this article, you might also like these:

Xbox One X 4K Blu-ray Player Review: Getting There

The Xbox One X 4K Blu-ray Player Is A Disaster

The Xbox One X 4K Blu-ray Player Is No Longer A Disaster

Xbox One X Vs Xbox One S: Can You Really See The Difference?

Xbox One Dolby Atmos Gaming Review: Microsoft’s Secret Weapon

Something Weird Is Going On With Netflix On The PS4, Xbox One X And Xbox One S

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