[Intel-gfx] HDMI colour space and depth questions (YCbCr, xvYCC, Deep Colour)

[Paul Owen]

On 28 February 2012 17:59, Jesse Barnes <jbarnes at virtuousgeek.org> wrote:
>
> There are several places we need to set extended vs normal range:
> DSP*CNTR (bit 25)
> PIPE*CONF (bits 26 and 13)
> TRANS*CONF (bit 10, for xvYCC DP configs)
> DVS*CNTR (for sprites, bit 21)

Okay - good learning exercise for me this! So by default, latest 3.3
kernel (github / master) upon boot xrandr reports Broadcast RGB as
Full. For that intel_reg_read reports the following (hope I'm looking
at the correct registers):

intel_reg_read 0x70008 (PIPEACONF): 0xC0000000 / bits 26 and 13 aren't set
intel_reg_read 0x70180 (DSPACNTR) : 0xD8004400 / bit 25 isn't set

Okay - so just as an experiment, running xrandr -d :0 --output HDMI3
--set "Broadcast RGB" "Limited 16-235" and rerunning the above gives
exactly the same result, i.e. no bits set. So trying intel_reg_write
with the following commands (hope my binary is correct!):

intel_reg_write 0x70008 0xC4002000
intel_reg_write 0x70180 0xDA004400

Seems to have the desired effect - that is video seems to have the
correct colour range - this is by eye since my TV doesn't seem to
report the actual input range anywhere. Running just the first command
seems to raise the brightness/decrease the contrast (or just raise
gamma - not sure) - the second brings it back down - so both as you
say are needed. Changing refresh seems to knock out the effect of the
second command. Re-running that second command fixes it once more.
I've posted on the XBMC forum in the hope others can try this to see
what effect it has.

> Yeah defaulting to the limited range for TVs may make sense.  Paulo has
> been looking at TV detection and HDMI infoframes a bit, so may be able
> to whip up a patch.

That would be superb if possible since it removes all faffing about
with xorg or whatever. Many thanks for this.

Paul