LG CX, new firmware lowers peak brightness in game mode by 20%

[D4v30]

Just seen this story pop up and thought it might be of interest. It seems LG's latest firmware for the CX drops peak brightness in game mode by ~100 nits.

Latest LG OLED TV Firmware Update Reportedly Makes Gaming Duller

This might be an update to avoid until we know more about it.

www.forbes.com

I'm kind of glad mine hasn't arrived yet, if this isn't fixed I think it will be the last nail in the coffin for me canceling my order.

Update:
It looks like HDTVTest was able to get a reply from LG stating that they are aware of the brightness drop and it will be fixed in an update in the coming weeks while not affecting the improvements made to banding and posterization.


Update 2:

Seems this issue has been fixed in firmware 3.21.16

 

[eagleGSU]

Really curious about following this story. I just picked up my CX a couple weeks ago. And will be really disappointed if this is an intentional nerf and not corrected. Will wait for more info though.

 

[D4v30]

It would definitely be a kick in the pants, you buy a product with a certain level of performance and then it gets taken away? That's not right, but hopefully it's just a bug in the firmware.

I've had a CX on order for about a month now, they're pretty hard to get here these days. But I've really been wrestling with keeping it especially knowing that there will be many mini led tvs coming out this year. Now I'm hoping it doesn't show up for another week or two or at least until we know more details about this new issue.

 

[D4v30]

Been looking through some threads on this firmware and it seems some people are experiencing other issues with it as well. It seems to have possibly made the VRR near black flicker issue worse. At least a couple people seem to be having issues displaying HDR in some cases or switching to 120hz.

It does appear to have improved eARC with some people saying it's fixed the sound drop-out issue.

Might be worth disabiling updates until this is all resolved, assuming you don't have the update already.

 

[gogogadgetstressboy]

We have been discussing this pretty heavy on AVS and been updating with lots of empirical data. It seems people are losing about 150 nits on average in hdr game mode. It does fix raised blacks in DV among other things but me being a hardcore gamer and I know that I and others bought this tv is for gaming that is not ok. And I expect LG to fix this sooner than later and revert this dulled out game mode. I’ve heard they stopped rolling the firmware out which is good news because that means it probably wasn’t intentional and got thru QA somehow...

 

[D4v30]

Thank you very much for the info, Gogogadgetstressboy. I've been popping by the AVS thread every now and again to see if there have been any new developments but there's so much activity it's hard to keep up.

It's definitely good news if they have indeed stopped the update rollout. I'm also a gamer and this TV would be used for PC gaming as well as pretty much all the consoles so loosing that much brightness in games is an instant deal breaker.

Fingers crossed it will be fully fixed.

 

[D4v30]

It looks like HDTVTest was able to get a reply from LG stating that they are aware of the brightness drop and it will be fixed in an update in the coming weeks while not affecting the improvements made to banding and posterization.


Still not clear if this was intention and they just got called out or if it was a bug. If it is intentional then that could signal that there is a burn-in issue that they are trying to quietly address. Hopefully that is not the case and it was just a bug.

 

[chenks]

probably no need for a new thread about it,
alread has been discussed at length in the existing CX owners thread.

 

[D4v30]

Possibly but for people searching for details a new thread is much better than trying to wade through countless posts.

 

[foulplay]

LG did this to the 65" C6V in 2016 when I bought one. I just ordered the CX 48" two days ago and they are doing the same again? :-(

 

[D4v30]

Hi heard about that, hopefully they will actually follow through and reverse it this time. I really don't agree with manufacturers taking performance away so I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

[chenks]

It has been fixed on the newest firmware release

 

[D4v30]

Nice, any details?

 

[chenks]

Read the CX owners thread

 

[D4v30]

Don't really feel like sifting through hundreds of posts of find the relevant one. Always better to separate topics into, well, topics.