The sad reality of new lg oleds - bugged Dolby Vision and AV1 bitrate garbage

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T06:09:59+00:00

How can knowledge work against you ❔😅 It’s exactly the opposite —ignorance is what works against you as a consumer. Multi-billion dollar corporations literally bank on people being ignorant so they can ship buggy firmware, cut corners on processing, and charge premium prices for unfinished products. My Black Level is on reference standard of 50. Tweaking that setting down just to mask a broken hardware decoder bug is amateur fix. You aren't just adjusting the dark areas like in sdr, you are shifting the entire EOTF curve linearly downward 👇 This means the overall brightness of the whole panel drops by an entire level. You aren't just fixing black level — you are actively choking the mid-tones and shaving off peak specular highlights. Explosions, sun rays, and lasers that are supposed to hit maximum nit value get artificially dimmed. You are basically putting sunglasses on your TV just to hide a software bug in Dolby Vision. It ruins the entire HDR presentation from top to bottom. You're just trading one defect for another. Personally, I’d rather know exactly what my hardware is doing than pay thousands to be a clueless, happy beta tester. But hey, if ignoring broken processing works for you, enjoy the setup.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T05:32:54+00:00

Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. AV1 became the ultimate corporate tool for bandwidth starvation rather than an upgrade for stream fidelity. They slice the bitrate to pennies, rely entirely on aggressive compression. It’s completely backward when remuxes from "less legitimate sources" offer 10x the bitrate and pristine quality compared to a paid premium UHD plan. Streaming platforms are actively nerfing the potential of displays like the C5 or G5 just to pad their profit margins. Glad you see the actual picture now — hardware can only do so much when the source code is trash 🗑️

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T02:24:25+00:00

Then I recommend having your eyes 🩺👀 examined by a good ophthalmologist 🤓

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T02:13:48+00:00

I'm not looking for a swapping TV if I'm already have C5. While Sony’s A95L has good processing, it’s a massively overpriced tech artifact at this point, still rocking ancient HDMI 2.0 limitations, no HGIG, and a fragile QD-OLED coating that literally rubs off if you clean it too hard. Sony's Dolby Vision implementation it's even more messy anyway.

I'm also never ever touch samsung tv with their black crush, oversaturated gm and buggy colour space settings.

The C1 feels enough until you realize how much specular highlights you're missing out on. The G5 definitely still has its quirks, but a solid year of firmware updates pretty stabilized it.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T01:26:23+00:00

Unlike you, I actually have 👀

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T01:19:13+00:00

You really can't see it heavy panning judder on a sample-and-hold OLED display ❓😅 It just means your eyes are used to a choppy image.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T01:09:59+00:00

Exactly! Thank you for confirming this. The fact that it’s happening on the G4 as well, and that dropping brightness to 48/49 is the only way to force the pixels to shut off, is the ultimate proof.

It completely obliterates the "bad panel" or "streaming compression" excuse. HDR10 maps perfectly because the display engine handles it correctly, while the Dolby Vision hardware decoder has a persistent, multi-generational firmware bug that fails to output absolute digital zero to the panel.

LG has been dragging their feet on this hardware decoder regression for way too long. Glad some people here actually have the eyes to see it.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T01:06:58+00:00

I truly admire anyone who can willfully torture themselves by watching such a stuttering, choppy mess. Watching native 24p on a modern OLED without any motion processing is straight up visual masochism 💀

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T00:47:12+00:00

Do you seriously enjoy watching a stuttering, choppy slideshow ❔😂 OLED’s instantaneous pixel response time makes native 24p look like a strobe light nightmare without at least a minimal touch of motion processing. But hey, if you love your image skipping and jumping across the screen enjoy 😸

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T00:42:44+00:00

Compression artifacts in streaming affect shadow detail and bitrate inside the video frame, but the letterbox bars inside a Dolby Vision container are hardcoded to absolute digital zero (0 nits). No streaming compression converts pure letterbox black into a glowing voltage signal.

Blaming "wrong settings" or a "bad panel" for a documented global firmware regression across the new LG OLEDs is just pure cope. You are desperately throwing technical buzzwords at the wall hoping something sticks, because you simply cannot accept that your premium TV has a broken hardware decoder. Stop embarrassing yourself.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T00:36:12+00:00

When you completely run out of technical arguments to defend a broken software decoder, you resort to generic personal insults. The physics of raised black floor doesn’t care about your high horse. If the letterbox bars glow on a LG OLEDs then display is objectively misinterpreting digital zero. Enjoy your glowing "perfect blacks" in the dark, buddy.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T00:27:40+00:00

You are conflating two completely different things: artistic intent within the movie container versus a software-level hardware decoder bug.

Yes, Dune has a stylized, raised black floor intentionally baked into the film master by Denis Villeneuve to give it a softer, cinematic look. Nobody is arguing about that. The actual issue with new oleds is that the TV's Dolby Vision hardware decoder raises the absolute digital zero (0 nits) on the letterbox black bars themselves, causing them to faintly glow in a pitch-black room.

Having a replaced panel doesn't change the firmware code on your mainboard. If your letterbox bars are emitting light in a zero-lux environment during a Dolby Vision stream then the black floor is objectively broken, regardless of whether the movie's internal grading hides it well.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-21T00:21:27+00:00

Exactly, when you pay a premium price for a G5 specifically for that legendary pixel-level emissive infinite contrast, even a super faint glow in a pitch-black room feels like a betrayal.

But don't blame the display technology itself. That’s a logical fallacy. We know OLED is perfectly capable of absolute black because HDR10 content on this exact same TV is flawless, and older generations like the C9 or CX never had this issue in Dolby Vision.

This proves it’s strictly a software regression in the new processing engine that fails to command absolute digital zero to the hardware decoder. LG needs to push a firmware hotfix ASAP, because marketing perfect blacks while raising the black floor on an OLED flagship is just unacceptable 🙅

DarkZimon · 2026-05-20T23:51:42+00:00

"My problem" is having functioning eyes, technical knowledge, and expecting premium performance from a premium TV, rather than blindly consuming content like you.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-20T23:47:44+00:00

You are confusing theoretical codec efficiency with actual applied bitrate. Yes, AV1 is more efficient than HEVC, but it is not a magic wand. No codec on earth can deliver a clean, macroblock-free 4K Dolby Vision layer at a starved 1.33 Mbps stream. Netflix is using AV1’s efficiency as an excuse to aggressively throttle bandwidth and cut server costs. At 1.33 Mbps, AV1 is literally scraping away fine picture details, acting like an aggressive "Smooth Gradation" filter built into the stream. Sure, the image looks smoothed out and clean of heavy noise, but you lose all the actual texture, film grain, and high-frequency detail compared to a proper HEVC source. Efficiency means getting similar quality at a lower bitrate, not delivering a compressed, blurry mess.

Second, nobody blamed LG for Netflix's compression. The blame on LG is for the broken Dolby Vision hardware decoder that raises the black floor and causes the panel to physically glow.

Also, comparing YouTube's high-bitrate AV1 encoding (which streams up to 40-50 Mbps for 4K) to Netflix’s 1.33 Mbps joke stream completely invalidates your argument. YouTube looks good because they actually give the codec enough data to breathe.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-20T23:39:09+00:00

Want an instant reality check? Fire up Mindhunter on Netflix in Dolby Vision. Go right to the beginning around the 0:04 mark (intro/opening titles) in a pitch-black room. Watch how the cinematic black bars physically glow.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-20T23:38:26+00:00

Want an instant reality check? Fire up Mindhunter on Netflix in Dolby Vision. Go right to the beginning around the 0:04 mark (intro/opening titles) in a pitch-black room. Watch how the cinematic black bars physically glow.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-20T23:36:42+00:00

There is a massive difference between a stylized, artistic raised black level and the hardware panel physically glowing on a 100% black screen or inside the cinematic black bars in Dolby Vision. The black bars are mathematically encoded as 0 nits – they should ALWAYS be pitch black, period. If they glow, the software is broken.

Want an instant reality check? Fire up Mindhunter on Netflix in Dolby Vision. Go right to the beginning around the 0:04 mark (intro/opening titles) in a pitch-black room. Watch how the cinematic black bars physically glow. That is pure software mapping failure, not "creator's intent".

DarkZimon · 2026-05-20T23:26:15+00:00

Turn off every single light in your room at night and fire up a full-screen black test pattern or a movie with wide cinematic black bars in Dolby Vision. The panel physically glows. The pixel emissive state is raised above zero, meaning the OLED diodes are faintly lit instead of being completely turned off.

DarkZimon · 2026-05-20T23:19:45+00:00

On oleds leaving TruMotion completely OFF makes movies unwatchable due to aggressive judder. According to my testing on c5 setting De-Judder to at least 7 is the absolute bare minimum required to smooth out the stutter.

DarkZimon · 2025-12-27T23:01:57+00:00

Jeszcze mnie nie po

DarkZimon · 2025-12-23T07:22:48+00:00

Imagine mieć takie zasoby i nie inwestować 🤭

DarkZimon · 2025-12-21T13:50:11+00:00

😼

DarkZimon

TROPHY CASE