LG OLED C8 TV owners and discussion

Yes, it has an optical port
 
Yes, it has an optical port
brand-dark.svg
About our ads
Cheers. I saw the optical but wasn't sure if it was OK for lip sync. I've heard some of some odd goings on with optical so was hoping that there's a single digi coax input too but the other audio input on the back looked like a headphone socket.
 
The TV has no inputs other than HDMI - the optical is than standard audio out that tv’s have had for years now.

I can’t recall seeing one that had a digital coax out, and analogue outputs are long gone.

You can use both too - in this picture of the C8 in my bar, the soundbar is connected via HDMI and comes on automatically with the TV. The Onkyo amp is connected by optical and I turn that on when I want proper stereo separation (although that’s very rare these days, it’s mostly used as a gift and for supplying the speakers in the garden)
 

Attachments

  • 63D565B0-257D-4EB3-BC3E-875655E90E32.jpeg
    63D565B0-257D-4EB3-BC3E-875655E90E32.jpeg
    345.8 KB · Views: 139
The TV has no inputs other than HDMI - the optical is than standard audio out that tv’s have had for years now.

I can’t recall seeing one that had a digital coax out, and analogue outputs are long gone.

You can use both too - in this picture of the C8 in my bar, the soundbar is connected via HDMI and comes on automatically with the TV. The Onkyo amp is connected by optical and I turn that on when I want proper stereo separation (although that’s very rare these days, it’s mostly used as a gift and for supplying the speakers in the garden)
I was using my yamaha soundbar but think optical into 13k worth of stereo might sound better than a 500 quid soundbar and 'an annoying to fit in the front room' sub.
 
I was using my yamaha soundbar but think optical into 13k worth of stereo might sound better than a 500 quid soundbar and 'an annoying to fit in the front room' sub.

For sure. Mine’s in a glorified shed, so bit of a different setup...
 
IMG_20200726_164909.jpg
 
I've had my room with three different layouts and my priorities are music so although I now have light reflection from the window I'll probably stick with this layout as I can always close the blinds.
Will see how Netflix etc sounds through the devialet expert 220 Pro and totem tribe towers before I think about trying fit the sub in the corner.
 
I've had my room with three different layouts and my priorities are music so although I now have light reflection from the window I'll probably stick with this layout as I can always close the blinds.
Will see how Netflix etc sounds through the devialet expert 220 Pro and totem tribe towers before I think about trying fit the sub in the corner.

Make sure you don’t have strong, direct sunshine on the screen - OLED’s don’t like that
 
Make sure you don’t have strong, direct sunshine on the screen - OLED’s don’t like that
I should be OK but I read that too, my mrs won’t want blinds leaving closed and it’s right at the end of the lounge but I could always cover it with an appropriate sized sheet in a tasteful colour!
 
Hi there!


I am having some trouble with Dolby Vision on my C8. It is going on for quite some time now. It's driving me crazy, as I am very pleased with the tv, except for this issue.



I generally watch movies/tv shows in a pitch black room. That's why I used "Cinema" mode for Dolby Vision content.
But the blacks seem severely crushed. I tried using "Cinema Home" but it blows out the highlights way to much. Also, if I am correct "Cinema Home" compensates for room lighting.


My temporary solution is to watch 4K Ultra HD discs with Dolby Vision in HDR10 mode. My 4k Ultra HD player has that option fortunately. I watch HDR10 in "Cinema" mode with no trouble, and way more detail than Dolby Vision in "Cinema" mode.



I would like to watch the Dolby Vision content, as the colors seem superior than in HDR10.


I am on the latest firmware: 5.10.45.



Does anyone recognise this problem? I already contacted LG but they do not recognise this and won't do anything. I send them the attached photo's of the Aquaman 4K Ultra HD disc in HDR10 and Dolby Vision, both in "Cinema" mode.
 

Attachments

  • DV1.jpg
    DV1.jpg
    281.8 KB · Views: 131
  • DV2.jpg
    DV2.jpg
    291.4 KB · Views: 132
  • HDR1.jpg
    HDR1.jpg
    274.6 KB · Views: 137
  • HDR2.jpg
    HDR2.jpg
    265.3 KB · Views: 125
Hi, need help.

I have Xbox one X which can handle Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Atmos both. It also allows bitstreaming passthrough. So if I connect my Xbox oneX to my Lg c8 Oled through normal HDMI 2.0 port. And if I play a Blue-Ray disc with Dolby TrueHD Atmos track. Will my TV be able to handle the sound coming out of my Xbox One X with bitstreaming option ticked on console. Or i need to turn off bitstream option



Help would be highly appreciated. Regards
 
Hi there!


I am having some trouble with Dolby Vision on my C8. It is going on for quite some time now. It's driving me crazy, as I am very pleased with the tv, except for this issue.



I generally watch movies/tv shows in a pitch black room. That's why I used "Cinema" mode for Dolby Vision content.
But the blacks seem severely crushed. I tried using "Cinema Home" but it blows out the highlights way to much. Also, if I am correct "Cinema Home" compensates for room lighting.


My temporary solution is to watch 4K Ultra HD discs with Dolby Vision in HDR10 mode. My 4k Ultra HD player has that option fortunately. I watch HDR10 in "Cinema" mode with no trouble, and way more detail than Dolby Vision in "Cinema" mode.



I would like to watch the Dolby Vision content, as the colors seem superior than in HDR10.


I am on the latest firmware: 5.10.45.



Does anyone recognise this problem? I already contacted LG but they do not recognise this and won't do anything. I send them the attached photo's of the Aquaman 4K Ultra HD disc in HDR10 and Dolby Vision, both in "Cinema" mode.
LG won't do ****, they haven't even acknowledged the issue on B8 in every mode!
Your best bet to contact your seller and ask them to do something about it. Or sell it. :(
 
my C8 had some issue with power board and LG replaced it under warranty. Now I wanted to have a dolby atmos soundbar and understand tv don't have earc and LG don't have firmware update for that. Does it do the trick with firmware update? Hardware is compatible for earc?
 
I’d imagine we will see a Beta version of firmware first, and we haven’t yet. I agree it’s probably been pushed back.
There is a new engineering firmware, is it in that?
 
I don’t think so from what I have read, but I’d love to be wrong.

Now it’s not my primary TV, I’ll install it and have a look
 
Nope, no sign of AirPlay or Apple TV. Can install Disney+ now though, which you couldn’t on the previous engineering builds
 
It's generally true that firmware updates don't impact on calibrations. There was a situation however when LG were endeavouring to fix the chroma overshoot issue that they managed to crush shadow detail. A subsequent firmware fixed the crush issue but this did impact on calibrations that had been subsequently performed. I've always assured folk that should a firmware impact on their calibration I'll revisit for the price of the petrol and a Pukka pie (other pies are also acceptable ;) ). I'm not sure whether fellow calibrators do the same but as an industry we obviously need clients to feel confident that should the worst come to the worst they'll be looked after.

As a side note to this it should be noted that OLEDs benefit from periodic recalibration. They slowly drift. So a display calibrated in 2018 might well benefit in this regard.
I'm happy to cheer you up on this one. The update that changed it did two things. It implemented the dithering to work-around the chroma overshoot. It also detected if the 1DLUT had been replaced, and if so, did not use the dithering so that the calibration remained the same as before.

The following a basically a re-post of an earlier post I made on this thread IIRC. The info first came from Vincent Teoh (who was instrumental in helping us to raise this with LG in the first place) and as I say below, it's easy to check whether dithering is being used.

firmware 4.10.31 (and later) behaves differently when a 1DLUT (either from an autocal session or a "unity 1DLUT") is uploaded to the TV. It adds a special flag.
firmware 4.10.31 (and later) therefore knows whether the 1DLUT was uploaded on firmware 4.10.31 (and later) or not, so it is able to behave in one of two ways:
  1. no flag; 1DLUT created on an older firmware => behave like the older firmware did, and use the white sub-pixel near black instead of the new dithering. Risk of the overshoot flashing, but this is required to match exactly the TV as it behaved on the day of calibration. Done on purpose so that calibrations remain exactly the same. <== this should make you happy
  2. flag; 1DLUT created when TV had firmware 4.10.31 (or later) => use the new dithering routines near black, as on the day of calibration.

During the period 4.10.31-4.10.55 we had a particular problem on our 2018 models. These firmwares had a "crushed blacks" gamma curve. This was fixed by LG in 4.10.55 (and later) so that the gamma curve matched 4.20.05 and before, but with the added benefit of the new dithering routines for better near-black detail.

  • If you didn't have a custom 1DLUT uploaded (from Calman Autocal, or Lightspace, NB Autocal is not the only method of creating the 1DLUT and putting it in the memory slot in the TV, but it's a convenient "shorthand" Vincent uses in the video) - or a manually done calibration - then you'd have the same problem we all had with crushed blacks.
  • Work-arounds to that were calibrate again (few could), or do manual tweaks like raise the 5% black level with test patterns etc which quite a few people did. Others shared their settings after doing do.
    • If you manually calibrated again during this (relatively short) time, and didn't expect LG to fix this problem, ie thought they'd leave everyone with crushed blacks forever, then you'd find you would need to manually calibrate once more on 5.* firmwares.
    • Or, if you just "waited it out", then fw 5.* restored the original gamma curves from launch used pre-4.10.31.
  • If you DID have a custom 1DLUT uploaded (Autocal shorthand again), during that period (and indeed from then on), you were on a newer firmware which knew to operate one of two ways, and so your TV behaved the same as it always did in those modes which were calibrated ("1. no flag" situation above)
  • Any calibration done using 1DLUT from fw 4.10.31 or later should look a bit better for dark detail, due to (2) above.

It's clever and pretty much the maximum LG could have done to appease people who had paid for Autocal calibrations on old firmwares with the overshoot problem not losing everything, whilst still working around the overshoot problem. This is dead easy to check in the dark on your TV with a jeweler's loupe which you can buy online for a few quid. Just check the difference of a grey patch between a mode that has been calibrated and one that hasn't (such as "Standard").

NB1: If your calibration didn't use the 1DLUT, and was instead a manual one where you can re-input the values into the TV's menus, then yes as @Canary_Jules says above (his and my posts crossed over), if you manually calibrated during that one relatively short window of time, your calibration would indeed need to be re-done.

NB2: There is a separate firmware bug which means that if you ever use the 1DLUT for HDR10 or Dolby Vision, you will always lose the new dithering routines and so it's not recommended to use the 1DLUT for those modes. This is separate to the bugs with the 1DLUT in SDR which are well documented by respected calibrator Ted Aspiotis in a long post>here< .

Ps. This is quite a complex set of scenarios, so you might have to read this post a few times, sorry about that but that's the detail of it all. HTH

Thanks guys, sorry for the late response haven’t been on for a while. So I had my C8 calibrated when on FW 04.xx.xx and stopped updating FW at 04.10.20, so if I’ve understood correctly if I know update to the most recent, is that 05.10.03? That I should not experience any change in my calibrated settings, no introduction of black crush or chroma overshoot? Sorry @mrtickleuk I did read you posted several times but I struggled to be clear on it. If I recall a 1DLUT was created for HDR & DV so what impact will the latest FW have on watching something in those formats? Thanks again

Edit - Also I might be getting confused between having had a 1DLUT & 3DLUT here :facepalm:
 
Last edited:
It's generally true that firmware updates don't impact on calibrations. There was a situation however when LG were endeavouring to fix the chroma overshoot issue that they managed to crush shadow detail. A subsequent firmware fixed the crush issue but this did impact on calibrations that had been subsequently performed. I've always assured folk that should a firmware impact on their calibration I'll revisit for the price of the petrol and a Pukka pie (other pies are also acceptable ;) ). I'm not sure whether fellow calibrators do the same but as an industry we obviously need clients to feel confident that should the worst come to the worst they'll be looked after.

As a side note to this it should be noted that OLEDs benefit from periodic recalibration. They slowly drift. So a display calibrated in 2018 might well benefit in this regard.
That’s amazing service Jules, much appreciated. If I update & spot any issues I’ll give you a call :thumbsup:
 
Thanks guys, sorry for the late response haven’t been on for a while. So I had my C8 calibrated when on FW 04.xx.xx and stopped updating FW at 04.10.20, so if I’ve understood correctly if I know update to the most recent, is that 05.10.03? That I should not experience any change in my calibrated settings, no introduction of black crush or chroma overshoot? Sorry @mrtickleuk I did read you posted several times but I struggled to be clear on it. If I recall a 1DLUT was created for HDR & DV so what impact will the latest FW have on watching something in those formats? Thanks again

Edit - Also I might be getting confused between having had a 1DLUT & 3DLUT here :facepalm:

Cool. With your extra info then, if you stopped at 4.10.20 and then update now, your calibration will remain the same. No near-black overshoot fix for you, in the calibrated modes, but it will look the same. If you have the flashing problem at all, which you don't mention so maybe that's good and you don't notice it in content, you'd be able to compare your calibrated and non-calibrated modes to see.

05.10.03 is not the most recent. It is over a whole year old! 5.10.45 is the latest (March 2020).

Now onto the LUT/calibration stuff. No worries that it's not clear as I struggle to make it clear and it's pretty convoluted at the best of times. 1DLUT = greyscale. 3DLUT = colours. They are separate things but relate to each other. Think of the 3DLUT as a "layer" on top of the base "foundation" 1DLUT. Even without changing the TV's LUTs, when calibrating you would always do the greyscale first, and only tweak the Colour Management System afterwards since it all stems off the greyscale.

For a HDR10/DV calibration, you cannot create and replace your own full 33x33x33 3DLUT (35,937 points) because these WOLED panels are too unstable at high luminances [this means they "drift" when the panel heats up] and the measurements would be all over the place. Instead, all LG allows is you can only do a "matrix" LUT replacement which measures black + peak white/red/green/blue and interpolates all the other 35,932 points in between; hence, for creating a 3DLUT for HDR10/DV it's very unlikely you can do a better job than LG did in the factory when they made their full 3DLUT for those modes.

This restriction is not in place for SDR. For SDR you can measure far more points and there are several options. Matrix measures 5 and interpolates everything. Lightning measures 101 points (along the edge of the "colour cube") and interpolates everything. Still nothing inside the cube is ever measured. Then finally, the other options (eg fixed grid) actually measure enough colours inside the cube to generate a good replacement LUT.

For each Picture Mode, you could have:
LG factory 1DLUT + LG factory 3DLUT (default)
LG factory 1DLUT + LG factory 3DLUT + manual greyscale calibration + manual CMS calibration (this is an "old style" calibration)
replacement 1DLUT + replacement 3DLUT (BAD, this is what Calman steers you into doing)

There are some long-standing horrible bugs in the "replacement 1DLUT" handling in the TV, this is LG's problem and not Calman's, but the 2019 and 2020 models still have them. Any calibrator worth their salt knows about them. IMHO no pro calibrator should really palm you off with an Calman Autocal'd 1dLUT. Calman just uses guesswork to do this, you press a big button and it does it by random adjustments. You run it twice, you get two different results! That's fine for the home hobbyist, but definitely not fine for a professional charging for a service, knowledge, and expertise.
For this reason after a lot of experimentation of all possibilities, a group of users who spend their lives testing all this stuff to destruction recommend another technique for SDR:
LG factory 1DLUT + replacement 3DLUT.
As long as you measure enough greyscale points in the 3DLUT, this will calibrate the greyscale as well. It's just a collection of measurements, which can and should include greys. I got much better results with this method as well myself. There are some caveats when you use the TV but it's the end result PQ that trumps all :)

I bet this is more than you needed, sorry. It's more than I meant to type :)
 
Last edited:

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom