Please help with a false contouring problem

by DangerousDave2018

I am both a newbie to Android TV and generally pretty stupid, but my brand new Android box is putting out really quite stupendously bad images (especially vis-a-vis false contouring) and I'm hoping someone can kick me in the right direction. The model is an X96 Mate with 4gb of RAM and 32gb of ROM, and it is connected to an old hard drive array via USB 2.0, and to an Optoma HD 142x projector via generic HDMI. The display setting is 1080p / 50Hz. I have ruled out the projector, the cabling, the disc array, and the actual media file (by switching everything back to my laptop).

I don't know how to embed an image in an ask-reddit, but here is a link that will take you to a comparison shot, hosted by imagebb. The top part is what I'm getting from the android box, and the bottom part is what I'm getting from my laptop, with all the same cabling, source, peripherals and settings.

https://ibb.co/6v8RpXg

agonypants

I would suspect this has something to do with the "color space" setting. While I'm not sure if a color space setting is on your device, it's under the advanced display settings on my Nvidia Shield. There's an option there to automatically match the display's color space settings. It's off by default, but turning it on made a huge world of difference, especially when viewing HDR content.

Kodi_Fan_Omicron

X96 are Chinese generic Android STB devices, which are horrible, nobody should waste their money on that trash. Should have bought an official certified AndroidTV device:

flanflinger

Is there any image preferences section in display display settings section of settings, like a vivid/natural option like this?

Moltium

Could be that Android box is pushing out HDR signal even when HDR content is not playing or not even supported by display.

If it's not in settings, there is no fix.

virmele

I have no idea what contouring is, but if you mean aspect ratio, just change it in player settings.. If the player you are using doesnt have that setting, just use Mx player or Vlc..