How to properly render for HDTV.

Support Lighting and Rendering
1

So I’m doing an animation over some real footage for a client (therefore I can’t attach any files or screenshots), that needs it for HDTV, and recently I decided to start doing some rendered tests. On the laptop screen (MBP Retina) everything looks great, but when I take the .avi movie on a usb flash drive and plug it into a dvd player to watch it on a HDTV the image looks weird. Overall, it is kind of darker and the colors are over saturated.

I’m carefully linearizing all the footage in the UV editor (textures) and in the Movie clip editor (real recorded footage) to get a final linear result, so I can then convert it to the display device color space (color management):
According with the Blender user manual: sRGB for computer monitors // Rec709 for HDTV.

On the screen the sRGB version looks great and the Rec709 versions looks weird (as it should according to the manual).
But in the HDTV both versions look bad. The Rec709 should look good, but it doesn’t.
I need it to look just as good as it looks on the laptop screen. I’ve seen movies that the same .avi file looks great on booth the laptop screen and the HDTV. I’ve tested the rendered files on two different HDTVs and two different DVD players, so I’m guessing I’m doing something wrong…

Does anyone know how to properly render for HDTV?

2

First off, I should ask, are you sure these HDTVs are trustworthy? Have they been calibrated? Or at least put into the “cinema” mode? Heavy contrast and over-saturation is pretty typical for out of the box settings, it makes the display look flashier on the showroom floor. It’s also possible you’re running into some issues converting between PC color (0-255) and video color (16-235), but the player should be realizing what it’s getting.

3

Yes, these HDTVs are reliable.