[SOLVED] Connect 4k TV as the third monitor make the other 2 monitors stop working

[Nyandere]

My Specs:
CPU: i7 4770k
GPU: GTX 1080
RAM: 32GB
PSU: EVGA 800W

For black friday, I bought a samsung 65 inch NU6900 4k. Really like it, color is good, etc. I'm connecting it to my PC as my third monitor. The other 2 monitor I have is LG 34um88, and asus predator XB271HU. Below is a picture of my setup, things are looking good....

https://imgur.com/a/tsCpHyj

View: https://imgur.com/a/tsCpHyj



However today, I am watching 007 new trailer on youtube on the TV to test the picture quality. Midway, I stopped the video, move the chrome tab to my LG monitor, then play the video. My LG monitor becomes like this:

https://imgur.com/a/AFco9Zo

View: https://imgur.com/a/AFco9Zo


The two monitors are connected to the GPU using displayport, TV is using HDMI cable that came in the TV box. I have a GTX 1080 GPU. I am not sure what the hell is going on. I can recreate this problem if I play youtube in tv, move to monitor, play video in fullscreen in monitor. Try with my Asus one and it happens too. I'm not even sure what this problem is called so I can't google it...

Guys, any inputs are appreciated. It's driving me crazy...

 

[Nyandere]

Anyone help....?

 

[Nyandere]

 

[mortemas]

The image is vaguely there. Maybe try another HDMI cable?

 

[Nyandere]

The image is vaguely there. Maybe try another HDMI cable?

Tried another HDMI cable already, I can still recreate that problem 😥

 

[mortemas]

OK, if it happens with the Asus monitor also and you tried 2 different cables (assuming both cables are ok) then your GPU is the next suspect. What happens if you gently wiggle the HDMI cable going into the GPU?

Next suspect is something in the software, which is my hunch about where this is going.

EDIT: if you want to skip to this and try, look for Hardware Acceleration in the Chrome settings and disable it. See if that fixes the problem.

 

[Nyandere]

OK, if it happens with the Asus monitor also and you tried 2 different cables (assuming both cables are ok) then your GPU is the next suspect. What happens if you gently wiggle the HDMI cable going into the GPU?

Next suspect is something in the software, which is my hunch about where this is going.

EDIT: if you want to skip to this and try, look for Hardware Acceleration in the Chrome settings and disable it. See if that fixes the problem.

For the 2 monitor I use display port, hdmi for the TV so i don't think hdmi cable is the problem here?
I do feel that it has something to do with softwsre or jumping between 4k and 1440p (my monitors are 1440p) so not sure if anyone encounters this problem before.

For the hardware acceleration, I have not checked but wouldn't having acceleration turned on be better?

 

[mortemas]

Theoretically it would be better. but let's hope it doesn't affect the browsing experience too much (and let's hope it fixes the problem, of course). Give it a shot. It fixed weird in-browser color issues for me with HDR. You're traversing different hardware by moving the Chrome window, so maybe disabling Hardware Acceleration will fix it.

 

[Nyandere]

Theoretically it would be better. but let's hope it doesn't affect the browsing experience too much (and let's hope it fixes the problem, of course). Give it a shot. It fixed weird in-browser color issues for me with HDR. You're traversing different hardware by moving the Chrome window, so maybe disabling Hardware Acceleration will fix it.

Unfortunately disabling hardware acceleration did not fix the issue for me 😥

 

[mortemas]

OK, that's a dead end 😕

Quick question: what makes the problem go away? I’m assuming a reboot?

You mentioned something earlier that might be a factor. Let's try all monitors at 1080p. I know this configuration would be undesired, but we’re still trying to figure out exactly why this is happening so we need to keep changing the variables until we get a different result.

If that doesn't work, then I think some other possibilities are:

-Windows Update
-Chrome update (or maybe uninstall/reinstall)
-GPU Driver Update (check nVidia release notes for known issues)
-GPU BIOS update (check card manufacturer's website)

 

[Nyandere]

OK, that's a dead end 😕

Quick question: what makes the problem go away? I’m assuming a reboot?

You mentioned something earlier that might be a factor. Let's try all monitors at 1080p. I know this configuration would be undesired, but we’re still trying to figure out exactly why this is happening so we need to keep changing the variables until we get a different result.

If that doesn't work, then I think some other possibilities are:

-Windows Update
-Chrome update (or maybe uninstall/reinstall)
-GPU Driver Update (check nVidia release notes for known issues)
-GPU BIOS update (check card manufacturer's website)

Haven't had a chance to try those, but I notice something about the color on the TV. When I tried to watch a movie today, I notice that the Dark portion of the movie, the color is very weird, it's like bleeding:

https://imgur.com/a/fGUR06K

View: https://imgur.com/a/fGUR06K


Do you happen to know what could have caused this? May be it is a setting on the color?

 

[mortemas]

Like the blotchy, purple spots? I think that's just artifacts from video processing, or downgrade to a lower bitrate while streaming.

Oh, what about different browsers? Does this happen in MS Edge, or Firefox?

 

[Nyandere]

Like the blotchy, purple spots? I think that's just artifacts from video processing, or downgrade to a lower bitrate while streaming.

Oh, what about different browsers? Does this happen in MS Edge, or Firefox?

No I mean the weird artifact at the lower right corner, it mostly happen when video is dark.
I found out that turn off "PLay HDR content" in windows setting resolves this specific problem, maybe it has something to do with playing non-HDR contents on HDR screen?

 

[mortemas]

If I'm getting it right this time, maybe it's the posterization you are seeing? This effect usually has to do with lower than desired bit depth, which again goes back to poor connection and a resultant downgrade to lower bitrate while streaming, or simply the streaming quality setting is just too low and can be increased by the user in YouTube:

As far as the HDR, first I'll just confirm if you had it enabled on your TV? If so, I believe you've also been to the HDR settings in Windows, but I would say just to be sure: you can adjust how SDR content looks while Windows is in HDR mode. See Microsoft webpage here and scroll to "All standard dynamic range (SDR) content and apps appear too bright or too dark on an HDR-capable display. "
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4040263/windows-10-hdr-advanced-color-settings

You might also want to review the next 2 problems on the Microsoft list to see if it applies to your situation.

Back to the problem with Chrome. What if you move the Chrome window to the LG display first and then load the video? Does the problem still happen? If not, then this might be a case of:
You: Doctor, when I do this it hurts
Doctor: Then, don't do that

Did you try setting all displays to 1080p?

I'm guessing only the TV is HDR capable? It could be this. Try disabling HDR everywhere, in Windows and also the TV and any of the 2 monitors that might support it if they have settings for it and try the Chrome problem again.

It is likely that all 3 displays support the sRGB colorspace, so try using that color setting in nVidia control panel and select for it in each display if the setting is available.

Sorry for all the suggestions here, but this looks like quite a unique problem. You might also want to try your luck at the nVidia forums or contact Chrome, YouTube, and LG support. Hey, does it happen with other video sites, or just YouTube?

 

[Nyandere]

If I'm getting it right this time, maybe it's the posterization you are seeing? This effect usually has to do with lower than desired bit depth, which again goes back to poor connection and a resultant downgrade to lower bitrate while streaming, or simply the streaming quality setting is just too low and can be increased by the user in YouTube:

As far as the HDR, first I'll just confirm if you had it enabled on your TV? If so, I believe you've also been to the HDR settings in Windows, but I would say just to be sure: you can adjust how SDR content looks while Windows is in HDR mode. See Microsoft webpage here and scroll to "All standard dynamic range (SDR) content and apps appear too bright or too dark on an HDR-capable display. "
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4040263/windows-10-hdr-advanced-color-settings

You might also want to review the next 2 problems on the Microsoft list to see if it applies to your situation.

Back to the problem with Chrome. What if you move the Chrome window to the LG display first and then load the video? Does the problem still happen? If not, then this might be a case of:
You: Doctor, when I do this it hurts
Doctor: Then, don't do that

Did you try setting all displays to 1080p?

I'm guessing only the TV is HDR capable? It could be this. Try disabling HDR everywhere, in Windows and also the TV and any of the 2 monitors that might support it if they have settings for it and try the Chrome problem again.

It is likely that all 3 displays support the sRGB colorspace, so try using that color setting in nVidia control panel and select for it in each display if the setting is available.

Sorry for all the suggestions here, but this looks like quite a unique problem. You might also want to try your luck at the nVidia forums or contact Chrome, YouTube, and LG support. Hey, does it happen with other video sites, or just YouTube?

Hey First of all, I just want to say that you have been really helpful, and I really appreciate your effort.

Regarding that problem, yeah I think it is Posterization, do you have experience how to get rid of that?

For the problem, it is because of the HDR. Only the TV supports HDR, and I tried turning off all HDR and the problem was gone.

 

[Nyandere]

Not sure about color space, but this is my setting for the samsung tv:

https://imgur.com/a/eurydaZ

View: https://imgur.com/a/eurydaZ

I don't see option for sRGB, I read online and people suggest just use RBG instead of the other options.

Also, should my TV support more than 8bpc color depth? Feel like a dumb question but I guess it should support 10bpc color depth for HDR content?

 

[mortemas]

OK, so it's fixed! HDR was it, huh? No problem about the help. I've actually been recovering from surgery for a week now and had extra time to help on the forums! All your displays should support 10-bit, but we'll get to that later. Before we dive in, it is a lot easier to just leave it at default RGB settings! Ok, here it goes!

Yeah, sRGB is I think a bit more specific term, but the RGB setting you see there in nVidia is basically it. Your LG monitor's product page mentions the sRGB spec. So, with 8 bit color you will get some banding (actually like the posterization pics above). This affects gradients or color transitions because lower bit depths don't allow enough "baby steps" in between the transition from one color to another due to reduced color palette (IE: 8 bit color gives 16.7 million total colors, vs 10 bit's total 1 billion colors). If you're seeing posterization all the time, it could be the lower bit depth setting in Windows. But, I would say that it also depends on the video source. It could either be dynamic bitrate adjustment (downward) due to poor connection (when streaming) as I mentioned earlier, or it could be how the video was encoded and it will always look like that. Same can be said for static images - the banding could be inherent in the picture data.

You should try downloading some 4k videos here so you can take the streaming out of the equation: http://thedigitaltheater.com/captain-marvel-2019/ If that still looks bad then it's your hardware or settings.

Before you mess with color settings, check the current state of your monitors so you can compare again afterwards. I've used http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ for a long time now to check my displays. Start at the beginning with the Contrast pic, follow the instructions, and continue to each page until you're done. Best you can do without a calibration device. There are really only a few that I use there, in this order specifically because earlier settings affect later ones: Contrast, Gamma, Black, White, Gradient. Probably a good idea to read through them all at least once if you want to know more, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary to use them all. One thing to note, I don't use the browser to view those images. I've downloaded them to my pc (just right click on them) because you must view them in actual size, pixel for pixel, without scaling. Windows and the browsers tend to want to scale everything, so it's not the true image size. Also, each display should be set to a video resolution equal to it's native resolution. Open the files in Windows Photo viewer, but go to the options in upper right (...) and select View Actual Size (especially important for the Gamma and Gradient images).

As shown in your pic above, the bpc setting is locked at 8 while in RGB mode. All 3 of your displays should support 10 bit color, although they use FRC, which is a whole other tangent! The TV most likely will support 10-bit, but you may have to set the TV to PC mode. To get 10 bit color, you have to use the YCbCr color settings. If you're not using HDR (your Acer or LG), try 4:4:4 first (that's full color information). This might open up the bpc setting so you can change it to 10. If it didn't unlock bpc, you'll have to go to 4:2:2. That's a bit of a compromise due to Chroma Subsampling which actually discards some color data to save bandwidth, but the difference should be hardly noticeable from 4:4:4. This should be very useful to you as far as the TV goes: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/nu6900#comparison_2485

I should say, the reason that all these settings can hit their limits is due to bandwidth limitations of the video connections to the monitors. Every increase in a setting will increase data usage and eat up bandwidth. The two that majorly affect bandwidth are resolution and refresh rate. So, with settings like 4k/60Hz/HDR/10bit you max out the bandwidth of HDMI 2.0b and you have to use chroma subsampling to save some bandwidth. Not sure how your ultrawide is going to fit in with all this, so you'll have to experiment. See the tables in the wikis for HDMI and Displayport:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Refresh_frequency_limits_for_standard_video
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Refresh_frequency_limits_for_HDR10_video
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Refresh_frequency_limits_for_standard_video
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Refresh_frequency_limits_for_HDR_video

Your detailed display specs:
https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/31826fe
https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/222b645
https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/7c9a13b0

 

[Nyandere]

OK, so it's fixed! HDR was it, huh? No problem about the help. I've actually been recovering from surgery for a week now and had extra time to help on the forums! All your displays should support 10-bit, but we'll get to that later. Before we dive in, it is a lot easier to just leave it at default RGB settings! Ok, here it goes!

Yeah, sRGB is I think a bit more specific term, but the RGB setting you see there in nVidia is basically it. Your LG monitor's product page mentions the sRGB spec. So, with 8 bit color you will get some banding (actually like the posterization pics above). This affects gradients or color transitions because lower bit depths don't allow enough "baby steps" in between the transition from one color to another due to reduced color palette (IE: 8 bit color gives 16.7 million total colors, vs 10 bit's total 1 billion colors). If you're seeing posterization all the time, it could be the lower bit depth setting in Windows. But, I would say that it also depends on the video source. It could either be dynamic bitrate adjustment (downward) due to poor connection (when streaming) as I mentioned earlier, or it could be how the video was encoded and it will always look like that. Same can be said for static images - the banding could be inherent in the picture data.

You should try downloading some 4k videos here so you can take the streaming out of the equation: http://thedigitaltheater.com/captain-marvel-2019/ If that still looks bad then it's your hardware or settings.

Before you mess with color settings, check the current state of your monitors so you can compare again afterwards. I've used http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ for a long time now to check my displays. Start at the beginning with the Contrast pic, follow the instructions, and continue to each page until you're done. Best you can do without a calibration device. There are really only a few that I use there, in this order specifically because earlier settings affect later ones: Contrast, Gamma, Black, White, Gradient. Probably a good idea to read through them all at least once if you want to know more, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary to use them all. One thing to note, I don't use the browser to view those images. I've downloaded them to my pc (just right click on them) because you must view them in actual size, pixel for pixel, without scaling. Windows and the browsers tend to want to scale everything, so it's not the true image size. Also, each display should be set to a video resolution equal to it's native resolution. Open the files in Windows Photo viewer, but go to the options in upper right (...) and select View Actual Size (especially important for the Gamma and Gradient images).

As shown in your pic above, the bpc setting is locked at 8 while in RGB mode. All 3 of your displays should support 10 bit color, although they use FRC, which is a whole other tangent! The TV most likely will support 10-bit, but you may have to set the TV to PC mode. To get 10 bit color, you have to use the YCbCr color settings. If you're not using HDR (your Acer or LG), try 4:4:4 first (that's full color information). This might open up the bpc setting so you can change it to 10. If it didn't unlock bpc, you'll have to go to 4:2:2. That's a bit of a compromise due to Chroma Subsampling which actually discards some color data to save bandwidth, but the difference should be hardly noticeable from 4:4:4. This should be very useful to you as far as the TV goes: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/nu6900#comparison_2485

I should say, the reason that all these settings can hit their limits is due to bandwidth limitations of the video connections to the monitors. Every increase in a setting will increase data usage and eat up bandwidth. The two that majorly affect bandwidth are resolution and refresh rate. So, with settings like 4k/60Hz/HDR/10bit you max out the bandwidth of HDMI 2.0b and you have to use chroma subsampling to save some bandwidth. Not sure how your ultrawide is going to fit in with all this, so you'll have to experiment. See the tables in the wikis for HDMI and Displayport:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Refresh_frequency_limits_for_standard_video
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Refresh_frequency_limits_for_HDR10_video
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Refresh_frequency_limits_for_standard_video
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Refresh_frequency_limits_for_HDR_video

Your detailed display specs:
https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/31826fe
https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/222b645
https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/7c9a13b0

Yeah that's a bit weird, I tried 4:4:4 and 10bpc option did not pop up, only 4:2:2 has 10bpc and 12bpc option. Would you say that 4:2:2 10bpc is worth more than RGB 8bpc?

 

[mortemas]

Honestly, it depends how it looks to you. You can use the Lagom gradient image to see if you can tell the difference between the two settings. The Rtings link will be valuable for you when messing with the TV settings. In addition to the Inputs section, they do have a Recommended Settings tab (near the top of the page). They might have pages for your monitors, too, but I didn't check.