Hendrik, thank you for starting to get this conversation rolling. You touched on a few points, including:
1. Media Center does not modify the colors of the image. It does not "convert" it to Adobe RGB, it just leaves it whatever it was in the file - assuming it'll match your screen. Therefor, if you have a sRGB photo, and a sRGB monitor, the image should display as intended. This is the most common case for everyone.
2. Your monitor is not sRGB… in (this case), there is also no information attached to the image that would have any meaning, instead you would need information about the screen you use.
3. If your monitor offers this, and you never had any intention of using a wider gamut in the first place, using a "sRGB Mode" is an easy fix, and would fix all the applications, not just Media Center.
My responses…
1. I might guess that most consumer monitors are sRGB, agreed. To clarify for readers here, Photoshop does not convert an sRGB image in any way (unless you instruct it to), in order to still display it correctly on my wide-color display… it simply reads the color-profile tag within the image, and displays it correctly. This being Windows, I imagine Photoshop also knows about my display (Display – Settings), in order to match the image color-profile to my display’s capabilities.
I imagine JRiver/MadVR does something very similar, reading A) the video file, and then B) the display capabilities (JRiver – Video – MadVR Settings – Devices), and then matching them both.
2. For the record, my monitor is the Acer XV272U… 10bit color (via dithering), and covers 95% of DCI-P3 color space (130% sRGB), factory color calibrated at Delta E<2.
There actually IS meaningful information attached to the image… at least, that’s what all my research keeps suggesting. That’s the ‘color profile’ embedded in the image. Photoshop can read it, and display in text which color profile this or that image is encoded with.
However, it’s true that not all images have an embedded color profile… most likely to be some images that are downloaded from online. I’ve opened some of these in Photoshop, and will get a warning that it has no embedded color profile instructions, and what I’d like to do about it.
3. Yes, my monitor does have an sRGB Mode that I can manually switch to in the worst case scenario. I’d rather JRiver become a ‘color managed’ app, and automatically handle such images (and videos) correctly. Especially because, I don’t generally use JRiver at all, using my desktop and monitor… my desktop is mainly used for productivity apps like Photoshop, Word, Excel + Youtube.
For media display/entertainment, I instead use JRiver on my media server, which is connected to an LG OLED tv – another wide color gamut display. And unless I’m mistaken, I think a LOT of JRiver users would be considered ‘enthusiasts’ like me… not your average consumer. As such, I imagine a lot of JRiver users might actually have wide color gamut displays – a much greater % than the general populace. That’s why I think this may actually be quite a relevant upgrade to JRiver users, even if they’re not yet aware of it being an issue.