As for me, I generally love the MadVR picture. What MadVR produces, is based on feedback from AVSForum people as it was developed and reflects their preferences. There were so many murky HDR movies on my BenQ that I have rewatched and they are so much clearer and better.
One big question I have is for @desray How do the scenes look on a state of the art JVC projector and Lumagen?
I suspect u need to play around with the tone mapping curve, I’m not sure about madvr and cannot help much, maybe Sammy can help out here. Maybe some balance in between , but will need time to experiment which one looks best overall
No, I didn’t mix it up. MadVR is much brighter for me as well. As you know when I run MadVR, I am outputting to SDR2020 so I never touch HDR. My issue is simply with LG DTM for HDR being too dark and I never got it to my liking, as Bryan has. The way I have it hooked up now, HDMI3 is HDR and HDMI1 is MadVR. So I can compare instantly.
As you know some of this comes down to preference and perhaps you and I have similar preferences
I suspect your projector’s contrast control might be enough 
Yes, definitely need tweaking, but I am pretty optimistic that it can be done with some tweaking, madVR is powerful because it can be easily tweaked to suit individual’s taste, or to director’s intent. To tune the brightness down, we can adjust several settings in madVR HDR page like DPL (Display Peak Luminance), “don’t add peak nit”, “no compression limit”, etc. However, to strike a balance between brightness and contrast, custom TM curve might be handy, it’s much more complicated than just a figure change for some settings, but I will give it a try.
As for the individual preference, to be honest, after watching too many murky movies in my TW8300, brightness and shadow details are what I’m hungry for, so when marched into madVR, the 1st thing I did is to boost up the luminance to as much as I can (without too much clipping), but after a while, I started to value contrast/punch as well, so I acknowledge the weakness of my settings, and take it as a fun journey to further improve the PQ along the way……I admit I’m a pretty lazy guy, so it will take a while, lol….
Yup, I guess both of us coming from low nit projectors so we share the same hunger for brightness/shadow details, lol.
From the picture itself, I also felt LG internal DTM makes the picture too dark, I would prefer somewhere in between with DTM and with DTM for LG projector.
Actually I’ll tell u honestly, my post calibrated hdr is showing up with peak luminance at 34 nits only with iris closed down to 0
It’s not even even coming in at 50nits
If I’m going to compare the Epson at 50nits below 
Be the Lg with DTM on at 34 nits below
You will soon realise its not entirely about lumens
But there needs to be a balance with the tone mapping curve u apply, too much and u clip white, too less and the blacks look grey or too black etc etc
It’s really not easy… no joke to get it right…
There must also be balance with brighter scenes, not only dark jungle scenes , that’s why I shared the two scenes above, one in the jungle (dark scenes) one election scenes (brighter) . So u can judge what u r sacrificing between the two
Let me use current PQ as a base to test out custom TM first, unless I fail to improve it, I will either turn to AVSForum for help, or give contrast/gamma a try (Epson projector has custom gamma which can be tweaked based on picture itself, so could be fun to explore)
I’m wondering why you only got 34nits off your 135 screen (same size as mine) with LG laser projector Bro Bryan? That really surprised me.
Ya quite low right, my screen gain is advertised as 1, but I doubt it’s actually 1, probably lower 0.9
This is post calibrated peak luminance levels…
But when we apply the tone mapping curve that the Lg algorithm uses, a specific multiplier is to be used to bring out the best…
Also the iris when opened wider will allow more lumens and measured peak luminance…
Before I embarked on recalibrating the system, I was assessing this aspect, whether to keep the iris wide open at 8, 4, or 0.
After going through a few torture test clips, I’ve come to the conclusion to use iris 0, which tracked what I’ve seen at desray place more accurately. (Previously I was on iris 4) much brighter image
Sometimes it’s good to visit different homes, so u have an idea what’s going on. And that is how I tweaked my settings to try and mirror as much what the jvc and lumagen is producing at desray place.
Trust me, u will not find the pic as dark as the camera image shared here. U will see it’s just nice. With all the details. Then u come to brighter scenes, u will realise what a loss it is to be sacrificing the black levels
I love this image above
I kinda feel disappointed with this one above… don’t have that inky black look
This is the reason I pushed the iris down to 0 and sacrificed on peak luminance . That is why I’m recalibrating the entire projector again……
The question is what LG DTM is doing with dark scenes? I can understand an appreciate its ability to tone down bright scenes to the projectors limits, but why darken dark scenes to the point where they look murky. I think this is a bug and somehow DTM brought the whole curve down.
When you turn off DTM, that means there is no tone mapping? Isn’t that then the raw output being displayed? So with no tone mapping are the dark scenes then the most correct? Of course with DTM off, bright scenes will blow out without LLDV.
It’s even more complex because of adaptive contrast, which I have on high. Adaptive contrast modulates the laser like an iris, but faster. So when the average light levels rise, it ups the laser power to make more vibrant scenes. I like this, but you can have an issue where there are a mixture of very dark and very bright scenes.
Torture test from Disney+ Bad Batch Season 2 Episode 8 “Truth and Consequence” around 2:47
If I’m assessing the 2 images above, the black panther now looks like becoming the grey panther with the madvr on .
One looks like OLED , another looks like CRT tv
But I agree it’s still better than not being able to see anything in total darkness without the madvr. So it is a life saver to have the madvr
Definitely need to push the image to be darker with better blacks but not losing details the same time…
Jia you ! I know it’s not easy, easy for me to talk, but actually doing it not easy! That’s why I cannot comment much other than letting you know a lot of work is required still on the madvr and I hope you get some help
Interesting , definitely not easy, let me try tonight to pull out this scene
Any more torture scenes we can test out ? So I can compile them next time I can zoom in straight
The streaming source from Disney + is also not really good compared to the original bluray… so normally I don’t use them for testing … but I’ll check it out as well
The Batman is good ? U reckon we have tons of dark scenes that are good ?
I think Bad Batch is not on Blu Ray yet. What is unique about that scene is extreme brightness on the right and a black star field on the left. If you compress the highlights down too much, the stars will disappear. So it will come down to counting the number of stars as shadow detail 
Ok got it! Will look out for that , cheers
Here are some of the Black Panther proshots off my LG HU810 calibrated Cinema mode Iris 3. Seems not as bright as @matrix16888 projector
Same sequence from my Calman calibrated Panasonic OLED in Professional 2 mode (night). To me, its clear that the shadow detail on MadVR is similar to OLED. Its useful to have a calibrate reference OLED when trying to decide if you are heading in the right direction.
yes, ideally should use reference monitor but a high nit TV should serve as a good reference too
Above is my calibrated OLED Lg in rec709 sdr1080p
Below is lg projector tone mapped
They are tracking accurately from my view between OLED and projector
Changing the light on the camera also affects how the lady’s face is showing up… which makes it a bit hard to compare
I try to make it look like what I’m seeing on screen…
Based on what I’m seeing, I can’t see the head scarf of the lady on the right, but I can see her face
I’m above madvr version, that head scarf is clearly visible, but on the Panasonic OLED, I also can’t see that headscarf
