Your Roku TV may experience an HDR bug with the latest update. Here’s what to know

If you’re a Roku user and you’ve noticed that your content hasn’t looked as sharp over the past few days, you’re not alone. There’s a problem with HDR streaming content on Roku — and so far, there’s no fix. 

About a week ago, a user on Roku’s community support forum posted that they were having an issue with colors on Disney+ being washed out after a recent update. Several other users echoed the same issue, adding that the problem also extended to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube TV, and more. Some even added that the problem makes content “simply unwatchable.”

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Several users posted comparison shots across multiple TVs, and content on affected devices is noticeably less vibrant — almost appearing in black and white. “Unwatchable” might have seemed like a strong word at first, but after seeing the alleged issue in photos, I’d have to agree with that assessment.  

Users note that non-HDR content, menus, and overlays are fine. Watching HDR content through an input seems to be fine on affected devices, meaning the problem is limited to streaming. 

The problem is happening across a variety of TV sets, but the common thread seems to be that affected content is all HDR and always on the Roku OS. It’s probably not a coincidence that Roku deployed an update just a few days ago.  

There doesn’t seem to be a fix for now, but Roku says it’s looking into the issue. In the meantime, users say, neither restarting the TV nor checking for an update fixes the problem. Since the update in question was automatically installed, there’s nothing you can do to avoid it, either. 

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If you’re able to turn off HDR in the app you’re using to stream, that should fix the problem of content appearing washed out, but it won’t look as good as it should either. 

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