Angry Gamers Start Petition Against LG OLED TVs
John Archer Contributor
11/11/2016 @ 9:07AM 1,759 views
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2016/11/11/angry-gamers-start-petition-against-lg-oled-tvs/print/With the Xbox One S, PS4 and hot-off-the-press PS4 Pro all now merrily outputting games in high dynamic range, you’d think the gaming world but be a happy place, full of gamers lapping up the wonder of HDR’s enhanced brightness and color on their shiny new 4K/HDR TVs. Unfortunately, however, it seems that for owners of LG’s OLED TVs the HDR gaming experience is causing more frustration than elation.
So upset are some owners of LG’s 2016 OLED TVs, in fact, that they’ve set up a petition designed to put pressure on LG to fix the HDR input lag problem that’s causing them so much trouble.
The LG OLED55B6 is one of the 2016 OLED TVs gamers want LG to improve. (Pic: LG Electronics)
Input lag, if you’re not familiar with it, is the time it takes for a TV to actually render pictures after receiving picture data at its inputs. This is critically important to serious gamers, since any delay in the picture appearing hands a competitive advantage to rival players in online matches.
The problems with LG’s OLED TVs stem from the fact that when they were launched earlier this year, LG (along with most other TV brands, to be fair) apparently hadn’t anticipated that HDR-capable games consoles might be coming out before the year was done. So while the OLED TVs can play HDR signals, they won’t let you play HDR and activate the TVs’ low input lag Game mode at the same time.
This means that when playing an HDR-enabled game, gamers on LG’s OLED TVs are having to contend with input lag figures as high as 68ms. That’s more than twice as high as I’d hope to see with a TV, and also nearly twice as high as the input lag you get when using the Game mode LG’s OLED TVs provide for use with non-HDR games.
The Sony PS4 Pro is now available – complete with HDR game support. (Pic: Sony PlayStation)
The exact input lag figures do vary slightly between different 2016 LG OLED TVs, but the bottom line is that their lack of an HDR Game setting means none of them get close to the sort of HDR input lag figures being achieved by, in particular, 2016 Panasonic and Samsung TVs.
Rubbing more salt into LG OLED TV owners’ wounds is the way that Samsung and Sony have both managed to introduce post-launch firmware updates to their 2016 TVs that improve their HDR input lag performances. Samsung’s update introduced a genuine HDR Game mode that reduced HDR input lag to less than 25ms, while just a few days ago – as reported here – Sony rolled out an update that halved the HDR input lag of its 2015 and 2016 HDR TVs.
The Sony update actually hasn’t gone as far as some game-loving Sony TV owners would like, but at least it’s proved that Sony has the will and, more importantly, the means to achieve some sort of retrospective HDR lag improvement.
The wording of the petition to get LG to find a solution to its OLED HDR lag woes actually references the Sony/Samsung situation specifically: “Loyal OLED owners, who have spent thousands of dollars on their top-of-the-line TVs, request that LG address [the HDR lag] issue as other competitors, such as Samsung and Sony, have already addressed it with firmware updates for their TVs.”
The Xbox One S was the first console with HDR support. (Pic: Microsoft)
Currently running on change.org, the petition is seeking 1000 signatures before it’s presented to LG Electronics. At the time of writing it had already racked up nearly 900 names, despite only being established five days ago.
The million dollar question in all this, of course, is whether it’s actually possible for LG to fix its OLED TV HDR input lag problem. I’ve approached LG myself about the issue in recent weeks, and received two determinedly vague responses. The first one went like this:
“HDR gaming is undoubtedly going to become more popular with an increase in console and title sales. LG are fully committed to delivering a wide range of HDR formats and choice throughout its OLED TV & LED TV ranges, and will continue to improve picture quality across all forms of content i.e. OTT, IPTV, Satellite and gaming consoles.”
After receiving this I pushed for something a bit more ‘on point’. But all I got was this: “At current, we are unable to confirm if HDR Game Mode will be coming to 2016 models.”
The only information of potential substance I’ve come across is a message from LG’s customer services to an LG OLED TV owner stating that an HDR Game update to 2016’s OLED TVs is not possible because it would require new hardware rather than just new software.
Experience suggests that replies from customer services operatives of most companies are notoriously unreliable, but this one does chime with my growing feeling that if LG could deliver an HDR Gaming mode to its OLED TVs in any way easily, it would have done so already.
I guess all OLED TV-owning gamers can hope for at this point is that the petition manages to inspire LG’s TV engineers to come up with a solution that they’re maybe not currently seeing. Fingers crossed.
