Flashing macro-blocking discussion (UPDATE: LG's FW fix now available)

I tried playing with the brightness setting and adjusting it a little either up or down did seem to make the flashing disappear. Increasing it made other artefacts/noise visible so I chose to dial it down to 47 which seemed to do the trick with not much shadow detail lost compared to 50 brightness. I may have just shifted the problem to scenes with a slightly higher brightness by doing this, admittedly.
 
Out of interest, has anyone noticed that it seems to be noticably worse when using native apps than when, for example, using the Shield or an external player?
 
Watch any episode of Man In The High Castle on Amazon. You will see it a lot!
 
...in pretty much most of the OLEDs? Right? ;)

Taking panel variations into account. I don't suffer with TMITHC personally.
Key thing is - it'll be fixed, we all have to sit tight for a few more weeks :)
 
Seems spotting this for the first time in real world content has opened the floodgates for me as I'm seeing it in quite a lot of content now. The macro-blocking I can just about live with but the flashing is distracting to the point where I find myself looking for it constantly in dark scenes instead of paying attention to what's going on on screen. So far most of the instances I've found go away if I turn the brightness down to about 44-45 but that just makes everything look too dark to my eyes. Turning up the brightness to about 55 also "fixes" it but then it basically looks like a cheap LCD.

There's still 3 days left in the return window so I think I'll get a replacement and if that's no better I'll just get a refund and call it a day, at least until a fix is out and confirmed working or the 2019 sets come down in price.
 
I take it that as there is still no sign of a beta version available via the service menu that an official FW with fix is probably still a long way off?
 
I take it that as there is still no sign of a beta version available via the service menu that an official FW with fix is probably still a long way off?

Correct, couple of months I reckon
 
Yup, absolute garbage for the money. While it's good they've acknowledged and stated a fix is in the works, that's all time that should be spent enjoying the TV viewing.

While I was fortunate enough to be in an easy return window, even without this - had I owned the TV for months, I'd still be kicking up a fuss right now.

Anyone that's tolerating this I believe should at least get a partial refund 'if' they're prepared to wait for the fix. Full refund should still be on the cards, especially within 6mths, and moreso now LG has publicly acknowledged the fault.
 
Garbage depends upon Panel variance too.

Garbage Panel - Garbage in - Garbage out.
 
Garbage depends upon Panel variance too.

Garbage Panel - Garbage in - Garbage out.

Maybe, but this is clearly a bug in the image processing. Panel variance has little to do with this particular issue.
 
Maybe, but this is clearly a bug in the image processing. Panel variance has little to do with this particular issue.
I disagree, panel variance can be the difference between seeing it everyday ,and only seeing it twice in 7 months ,as I have on my C8 ,and I had to go looking at content known to show the issues
 
Seems spotting this for the first time in real world content has opened the floodgates for me as I'm seeing it in quite a lot of content now. The macro-blocking I can just about live with but the flashing is distracting to the point where I find myself looking for it constantly in dark scenes instead of paying attention to what's going on on screen. So far most of the instances I've found go away if I turn the brightness down to about 44-45 but that just makes everything look too dark to my eyes. Turning up the brightness to about 55 also "fixes" it but then it basically looks like a cheap LCD.

There's still 3 days left in the return window so I think I'll get a replacement and if that's no better I'll just get a refund and call it a day, at least until a fix is out and confirmed working or the 2019 sets come down in price.

I feel the same as you but would have to strongly disagree with the fact that you're comparing an OLED at a brightness level of 55 to a cheap LCD TV. On my set with brightness at 55, in a dark room the blacks still look amazingly black and they don't look anything like LCD black levels. I realise it may look different on yours compared to mine but it can't be that much of a difference right? It may also tell me a different story if I were to get the black level measured but to my eyes and comparing it to the darkness surrounding the screen, it looks velvety black so I'm happy with this fix for now and will very probably keep this 55 brightness setting even when the fix comes out.

On another note, what would it look like if these TVs did not have the macro blocking issue? Would it be a case of the near blacks looking 'smoother' If that makes sense?
 
If you have a look at what's really going on with macroblocking, you will see there are ways to mitigate it without sacrificing the overall picture.
Get yourself ted's pattern disc and look at the advanced brightness flashing bars, you will see that below 3% tracking and progressiveness are bad, and that for some colors you will see for instance that 1% is brighter than 1.5%, and that will exacerbate the macroblocking.
5% luminance control will have limited action below 3%, so don't use it that way.
But what you can do, is set luminance to -2 at 5/10/15%, and this will flatten the curve downwards and gain better progressiveness near black.
Then you raise brightness to the highest point before black glow (which should be done anyway).
Yes this will slightly darken the picture, but you will track far better near black.
Give it a shot.
 
If you have a look at what's really going on with macroblocking, you will see there are ways to mitigate it without sacrificing the overall picture.
Get yourself ted's pattern disc and look at the advanced brightness flashing bars, you will see that below 3% tracking and progressiveness are bad, and that for some colors you will see for instance that 1% is brighter than 1.5%, and that will exacerbate the macroblocking.
5% luminance control will have limited action below 3%, so don't use it that way.
But what you can do, is set luminance to -2 at 5/10/15%, and this will flatten the curve downwards and gain better progressiveness near black.
Then you raise brightness to the highest point before black glow (which should be done anyway).
Yes this will slightly darken the picture, but you will track far better near black.
Give it a shot.

Thanks for this, on first read this seems to make a lot of sense. I will have to research a bit more when i get a chance to work out exactly what you mean and give it a go haha.

Where would I get the pattern disc
 
i realise it may look different on yours compared to mine but it can't be that much of a difference right?

It can, on my C7 for example i can go up to 55-56 and still have good blacks. On my E6 i could not go above 52 if i recall correctly and on my C8 i could not go above 51 without it looking grey. So there is a variance there as well from my experience.
 
It can, on my C7 for example i can go up to 55-56 and still have good blacks. On my E6 i could not go above 52 if i recall correctly and on my C8 i could not go above 51 without it looking grey. So there is a variance there as well from my experience.

And clearly it is down to luck and panel variance. I had mentioned so many times that my first C8 was almost identical to yours and my second one, I can even set Brightness at 57-58 for SDR and 52-53 for HDR10 without greyish blacks. So clearly you werent as lucky without C8 as you were with your previous TVs.
 
On pluge patterns I can push brightness to 55 without loosing true black but this seems to have a negative effect on blown highlights for some reason.
It's like it's pushing the whole scale higher.
 
I had a chance to return my E8 to Richer Sounds for a full refund this weekend but I've decided to keep it as it's perfect 99% of the time plus I hardly watch Amazon anyway, if LG find a fix then great but if not I'm not going to loose any sleep and just going to enjoy it for the stuff I do love which is pretty much everything.
 
It can, on my C7 for example i can go up to 55-56 and still have good blacks. On my E6 i could not go above 52 if i recall correctly and on my C8 i could not go above 51 without it looking grey. So there is a variance there as well from my experience.

Ah ok, fair enough. I had just assumed or maybe expected that all 2018 panels would leave the factory with very similar setups/calibration and would react the same when changing the settings.

Does this mean it's mostly a pointless task following the recommended settings that are posted on sites like rtings and other people's recommendations then?
 

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