U2720Q, Chrome, YouTube fullscreen, color changes

Question

Hi all,

Greetings! The issue I am facing with the U2720Q occurs on Google Chrome playing YouTube videos. Most of which are 1080P non-HDR. After entering full screen for a few seconds and the playback control disappears, the entire screen goes black for a second, then display the videos with a totally different color temperature, which seems to be over-saturated and yellowish. It will resume normal with 1 second black screen (again) if I quit full screen.

So far, Chrome with full screen YouTube is the only situation I encounter this issue. The occurrence of black screens makes the issue looks like involving changes in display modes, therefore I would like to enquire whether SmartHDR set to DisplayHDR will make the monitor detect contents and adjust color profiles, thus causing the issue? However, the issue so far only appears with non-HDR YouTube videos.

Somebody has suggested that forcing Chrome to run scRGB color profile may solve the issue. Does it affect anything if my monitor and corresponding NVIDIA CP settings are set this way:

Color > Preset Modes: Standard
Color > Input Colour Format: RGB
Display > Smart HDR: DisplayHDR
NVIDIA CP: Highest (32-bit); 10bpc; Full; RGB)

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Anson

Anson Cheung · Answer

I just have a new suspicion.

I recall that the issue also happens when I played Team Fortress 2 in full screen mode. Now I am still not sure whether this was an issue for gaming because I thought it was a visual enhancement done by in-game HDR enabling. The green word looks fluorescent while the white part looks a bit yellow. In other words the game in full screen looks warmer.

The interesting thing is that, whenever I use my soundbar remote to control the volume, a little volume bar overlay from Windows 10 will appear on top-left corner and at this moment the entire screen goes black for a second, thereafter the colours will turn back to normal (which I can see while not running programs in full screen mode). This also applies to the problematic situation in original post (the Youtube one).

I can also recall that the “problematic” warm and yellow-ish colour scheme/tone looks very similar to the colours before I set OSD’s Smart HDR option from default to DisplayHDR AND enable Windows 10 HDR options. Therefore I now suspect that the Windows 10 is applying HDR colour profile for desktop apps which are NOT in full screen mode, while temporarily switching to non-HDR colour profile when running non-HDR content in full screen, in this case Youtube and Team Fortress 2. If this is the case, this explains why the screen goes black then display “normal” colour when Windows 10’s volume bar overlay appears at top-left corner.

The issue now becomes a bit sophisticated. But hope it helps the troubleshooting.

Thanks,

Anson

Anson Cheung · Answer

I just found two posts that describe very similar issues with mine.

https://hardforum.com/threads/prevent-sdr-games-from-turning-off-hdr-mode.1992724/

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1043937-how-is-no-one-else-having-this-problem-with-hdr-volume-adjustment/

https://youtu.be/l0WRKmEUog8

Same as his situation, enabling HDR options in Windows 10 gives issue-free and even fantastic colours to everything that is NOT run in full screen mode, believably “mapping the colors of SDR content (desktop and apps) to HDR colors”. However, when Youtube and another game (I suddenly recall) Team Fortress 2 is run in full screen, the colours become noticeably warmer and yellow-ish, just like the HDR options are turned off in Windows 10. Particularly for Team Fortress 2, the green looks fluorescent while the white looks yellow. Therefore, I suspect that the issue that I am facing is a matter of “SDR content in full screen overriding Windows HDR colour profile”.

Hope this helps troubleshooting.

Monitors

U2720Q, Chrome, YouTube fullscreen, color changes

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