LG 48CX

[NM64]

I am still thinking what is the best way to play 60fps locked games on pc and ps5 with lg oled. Would it look better if I disabled VRR and left the screen at 120hz ? Or switch to 60hz without vrr? What bout input lag booster which maybe forces it to run at 120hz?

I would think that all you'd have to do is disable VRR while keeping 120Hz to avoid the gamma issues and call it a day, which is also probably the most convenient method since you can simply set a game profile in your GPU drivers to simply have VRR disabled for that specific game.

According to Rtings, the input lag for 60Hz with boost is pretty much exactly double that of a native 120Hz input, so there shouldn't be any benefit to changing to 60Hz unless you want to disable boost in order to use black frame insertion (which also wouldn't do much good at 120Hz when the game itself is running at 60fps - it'll result in a sort of double-image effect), not to mention using black frame insertion increased the input lag by around a frame or two on the CX (no idea about the C1).

 

[hhkb]

I got a Shield for a better Plex experience but have been a bit underwhelmed. It's great in Plex...but Netflix has a TON of stutter and looks somehow lower res than the builtin app. I'm not sure it's worth it for only Plex.

Yeah I think I'll just use my browser for watch together, no big deal. Not worth 200 just for plex I think. Maybe if I can get a good deal on one. I have a PS5 too but its plex app is spectacularly bad.

 

[clayton006]

This looks like its beside the kitchen. Which suggests this is the dining area. That's serious.

What's the material the desk top is made out of for the standing desk? I plan to get a standing desk for an LG OLED C1 TV. 48". So far I know I need something wide enough to hold a TV and a second monitor (at an angle). strong enough as well. A mounting arm is likely.

So that kitchen area is a secondary one in my basement. The primary one is upstairs.

the standing desk is from Vari and I got the black one. Not sure what the material is.

 

[elvn]

On the TV side without a shield - you can disable dts in the plex webOS app so it will play AAC sound on/from the tv but I found the TV's playback buggy on some titles where it would drop playback to black screen partway through or show a short time line as if the video was truncated, which for all practical purposes it functions as if it is in this scenario and just cuts off at that point.

Transcoding, which is what happens when you disable dts in the plex webOS player, is always some minor fidelity loss. It's not the same as remuxing a title beforehand 1:1. I'm also not certain that it's not transcoding the video by default when you disable DTS sound that way too.

The shield is good if you have a bunch of DTS sound titles and a receiver because you can port the shield to the sound system and back to the tv "the old fashioned way" instead of using the eARC out from the TV, at least when you are using the shield to watch a video. Besides seamless 1:1 (non-transcoded) DTS audio playback, the shield also has a full gigabit connection, full usb 3.0 ports, 5Ghz wifi, a very fast speed operation and a lot of other features like high quality AI upscaling, a more robust google play store full of apps compared to the app store on most TVs (and a bunch of other capabilities with gaming/emulation/streaming , android side load apps. etc. if you are into that) but yes you are paying a decent amount for all of those capabilities if you go that route ~ $200 USD.

From TechRadar:

Who’s it for?

Premium Cord-Cutters and Streamers: The new Nvidia Shield is a premium 4K HDR/Dolby Vision streaming player. It’s not the cheapest gateway into 4K streaming, but it is one of the most powerful. If you’re looking to dabble in high-end formats, this is the player to get.

Discerning Cinephiles: Because AI upscaling really focuses on the small details in a scene (the lettering on a bag of chips, the wrinkles in someone’s face, etc…) relatively observant cinephiles will get the maximum enjoyment from the upscaling features of the new Shield.

https://www.legitreviews.com/nvidia-shield-tv-2019-review-better-media-streaming_216195

NVIDIA SHIELD Key Specifications:

Processor: NVIDIA Tegra X1+ 64-bit Mobile Processor w/256-core NVIDIA Maxwell GPU
Memory: 2GB of RAM
Storage: 8GB internal (portion used for OS and system software) w/ microSD Expansion
Wireless: 802.11ac 2×2 MIMO 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi / Bluetooth 5.0 + LE
Wired: 1x Gigabit Ethernet
OS: Android 9.0 powered by Android TV w/ Google Chromecast 4K built-in
Power: 40W power Adapter (5-10W typical power consumption)

NVIDIA SHIELD Video Support:

AI-enhanced upscaling for 720p/1080p to 4K up to 30 FPS
Up to 4K HDR playback at 60 FPS (H.265/HEVC)
Up to 4K playback at 60 FPS (VP8, VP9, H.264, MPEG1/2)
Up to 1080p playback at 60 FPS (H.263, MJPEG, MPEG4, WMV9/VC1)
Format/Container support: Xvid/ DivX/ASF/AVI/MKV/MOV/M2TS/MPEG-TS/MP4/WEB-M

NVIDIA SHIELD Audio Support:

Dolby Audio (Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Atmos)
DTS-X surround sound (pass-through) over HDMI
High-resolution audio playback up to 24-bit/192 kHz over HDMI and USB
High-resolution audio up-sample to 24-bit/192 kHz over USB
Audio support: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, WAVE, AMR, OGG Vorbis, FLAC, PCM, WMA, WMA-Pro, WMA-Lossless, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD (pass-through), DTS-X (pass-through), and DTS-HD (pass-through)

 

[elvn]

I got a Shield for a better Plex experience but have been a bit underwhelmed. It's great in Plex...but Netflix has a TON of stutter and looks somehow lower res than the builtin app. I'm not sure it's worth it for only Plex.

Are you using it wired or wireless? Netflix buffering is what I would suspect at first but idk. I don't watch netflix on the shield that is on my LG CX but I've watched it plenty on my ~ 2016 4k vizio FALD VA (no HDR) in my living room on a gigabit lan connection with zero issues in the past for things like stranger things, umbrella academy, etc. and I do pay for the 4k netflix tier so it's full bandwidth.

I'm very particular about stuff like that and I would notice and find it extremely aggravating so it sounds like something particular to your setup.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Youtube HDR is not working on the shields though but that is a separate issue because they lack an AV1 chip. :/

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1588740730

Netflix began streaming in AV1 in February 2020 and now YouTube has flipped the switch for compatible Android TV devices through the latest software update. YouTube has been experimented with AV1 in PC browsers for some time.

At this time, compatible Android TV devices include those the running on Broadcom's BCM72190/72180 and Realtek’s RTD1311/RTD1319 chipsets, according to XDA Developers who first spotted the change.

We were not able to pull down AV1 video streams on our 2019 Nvidia Shield, which is hardly surprising as it does not have hardware support for AV1. At this time you are unlikely to see any major changes.

However, in the long term AV1 support could bring 4K and HDR streaming to many more devices and streaming services following the slow roll-out of the royalty-based HEVC format as well as VP9, the two codecs currently being used for 4K HDR streaming. The royalty-free AV1 format is backed by Apple, Facebook, Netflix, LG, Microsoft, Netflix, Samsung and many others. LG and Samsung are also introducing the first TVs with AV1 support this year.

--------------------------------------------------

I can always just switch between things with the CX's remote holding the mic button:
..."youtube" opens the webOS youtube app directly for full youtube HDR. A problem with a lot of youtube HDR channels is they have a persistent static logo for advertising their channel/brand though.
..."switch to PC" (or "hdmi 3") to get back to PC
....and "shield" (which I named it's input) to get back to the shield.

I do have to swap hdmi sources using my receiver's remote when going to/from the shield though since I'm not porting the shield's audio through the TV in order to get the audio formats the shield supports (especially DTS formats). A minor inconvenience. In the old days I had to swap between sources manually all the time on the receiver (playstation, blu-ray player, set top box, pc) so only having to do it to/from the shield when I decide to use it isn't really a problem for me. I'd only be doing it when playing a whole video so it's not like I'd be swapping back and forth many times.

 

[Armenius]

I have a question about the gamma changing with hz on cx/c1.

When I play 60fps locked game on PC, is it better to run it in "120" hz and let freesync/gsync/lfc change hz to 60 or turn 60hz specifically ?
Or run 120hz, turn of freesync and enable half vsync?
And what about the input lag booster that says it doubles frames to 120hz ? would it be useful on console?

Same question for ps5 btw. Just without vrr since it does not support it... but I can enable the "prevent input delay: boost" option whatever it really does

On PC you would set the refresh rate to 120 Hz and let VRR or G-SYNC do its thing. On PS5 you would set to 120 Hz and let the console do its thing.

The new Resident Evil demo 8 came out and seems a tiny bit washed out. I manage 70-120 fps 4k with HDR so probably vrr gamma is at fault.
I am still thinking what is the best way to play 60fps locked games on pc and ps5 with lg oled. Would it look better if I disabled VRR and left the screen at 120hz ? Or switch to 60hz without vrr? What bout input lag booster which maybe forces it to run at 120hz?
Sorry, it's a repeat from my previous post

As for game being a bit washed out maybe it's srgb vs rec709 ?

If RE8 or any game looks washed out then you need to change the HDR calibration in the game. For RE8 follow the instructions to make the inner box disappear and make the red and blue marks equal length. If you have HDR enabled then it shouldn't be possible to change the color space in the options for the game.

On PC make sure you enabled HDR in the Windows Display Settings and that you have color settings in the NVIDIA control panel set to Use default color settings.

On PS5 make sure to run the console's built in HDR calibration tool and follow the instructions. Except on the last step (3/3) you want to set it as dark as it will go no matter what is shown on screen.

On the TV make sure you have Deep Color enabled for all the HDMI inputs being used.

 

[shadow2761]

Who has seen the C1 rtings review?

Is it worth upgrading my CX to a C1, mainly because I use it for gaming and the C1 has 1ms less input delay then the CX. Aldo why does the CX have 13ms input delay @ 4K VRR but the C1 has only 5.8ms according to rtings?

 

[Armenius]

Who has seen the C1 rtings review?

Is it worth upgrading my CX to a C1, mainly because I use it for gaming and the C1 has 1ms less input delay then the CX. Aldo why does the CX have 13ms input delay @ 4K VRR but the C1 has only 5.8ms according to rtings?

Since I have not seen any discounts on the CX you may as well get a C1 if it's available.

On input lag it is due to improved signal process and and the new "Prevent input delay" feature.

 

[mirkendargen]

Are you using it wired or wireless? Netflix buffering is what I would suspect at first but idk. I don't watch netflix on the shield that is on my LG CX but I've watched it plenty on my ~ 2016 4k vizio FALD VA (no HDR) in my living room on a gigabit lan connection with zero issues in the past for things like stranger things, umbrella academy, etc. and I do pay for the 4k netflix tier so it's full bandwidth.

I'm very particular about stuff like that and I would notice and find it extremely aggravating so it sounds like something particular to your setup.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Youtube HDR is not working on the shields though but that is a separate issue because they lack an AV1 chip. :/

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1588740730




--------------------------------------------------

I can always just switch between things with the CX's remote holding the mic button:
..."youtube" opens the webOS youtube app directly for full youtube HDR. A problem with a lot of youtube HDR channels is they have a persistent static logo for advertising their channel/brand though.
..."switch to PC" (or "hdmi 3") to get back to PC
....and "shield" (which I named it's input) to get back to the shield.

I do have to swap hdmi sources using my receiver's remote when going to/from the shield though since I'm not porting the shield's audio through the TV in order to get the audio formats the shield supports (especially DTS formats). A minor inconvenience. In the old days I had to swap between sources manually all the time on the receiver (playstation, blu-ray player, set top box, pc) so only having to do it to/from the shield when I decide to use it isn't really a problem for me. I'd only be doing it when playing a whole video so it's not like I'd be swapping back and forth many times.

Wired. It's not a bandwidth problem, there's no buffering. It's just a lot of judder/stutter/frame pacing problems. It's probably a combination of the Android TV Netflix and Android TV, nothing Shield-specific. If you Google you see tons of people reporting the same problem with no fixes.

 

[elvn]

To start with, unless you are running 120fps minimum for 8.3ms per frame that input lag is probably not going to be anything. 100fps solid ~> 10ms per frame too which is still close. Not many people are getting that and at solid rates in gorgeous high detail modern games at very high to ultra settings anyway, even with DLSS 2.0 capable games and gpus. That's why they are using VRR , for the fluctuations and ability to ride a roller coaster of frame rates in order to get better eye candy without judder because otherwise just capping the frame rate on the high end would be enough.


You can't generally operate on what you can't see from the what the game's frames haven't delivered ~ what action/world states haven't been delivered yet. Then take a dive looking at how tick rates and netcode work in online games and you are at best around a theoretical 15ms per frame of new world state data delivered at best in the chain but it's really way muddier than that cobbled between all players online, varying ping times, selective/arbitrary net code decisions on events by the devs, poor net code in many cases, most games having much worse tick rates to begin with, and in some games different (worse) separate tick rates for abilities/spells compared to the game's tick rate for "mechanical" actions.

So you are getting 15ms or so between frames on the highest tick server games.. like 65hz interpolated but due to netcode probably worse than that online. That's not a single player game locally, and that's not other game's tick rates which are way worse, and it's not taking your actual local frame rate deliveries over VRR frame rate roller coaster in account on most graphics showcase games, especially at 4k rez.

Then there is reaction time. Most people locally tested on gaming pcs get about 180 - 200ms reaction time (or worse). Some people can get close to the touch sensitive reaction time of 150ms at times, or under 160ms regularly when fed a visual reaction test. So .150 to .240 seconds reaction time on say 65states/second of online game delivered game states to be generous (worse in reality, much worse on poorer tick servers) ~ .015 second ticks theoretical optimum intepolated, and your screen lag ~ .017 seconds or less.

.180 seconds reaction time equates to 23 frames later locally at 117fps solid (8.5ms per frame) and ~ 18 local frames of reaction time at 150ms reaction time locally. So 18 - 23 frames of reaction time for the fastest people if compared to 117fps solid best case scenario. 100fps -> 18frames , 75fps -> 14 frames.

On the ~65hz(15ms) tick rate theoretical interpolated optimum on the best tick rate capable games currently (ignoring net code muddying) .180 seconds equals 12+ world state deliveries/frames worth of reaction time. .150 seconds reaction time ~ 10 interpolated ticks.

When you take all of these factors into account, (especially net code on top of tick rate systems), .001 seconds difference between the two tvs is practically nothing. Even a 4ms gaming panel .004seconds vs .017 seconds OLED panel when compared to .015 seconds theoretical best case online game server delivery chain (after it subtracts/compares your ping times and goes through net code muddying), where it is almost always more than that - and on higher tick servers a ton more than that - .. while you are getting say 75 - 117 fps locally (.013sec to ~ .009 sec) and a whopping .150second to .240second reaction time every time you are shown a series of new game world states.

Input lag 4ms gaming panel: ._____________________________________.004 second
Input lag 16-17ms tv:___________________________________________ .017 second
Highest tick server theoretical ordinary (interpolated) max: ~ 65Hz --> ____ .015 second per tick/delivered frame after netcode (higher in reality and magnitudes higher on other game servers)
Local frame rate using VRR example 75 - 117fps cap --> _____________.013 to .009 second roller coaster
Fast to fastest gamer reaction times------------------------->______________.180 to .150 seconds


128tick at interp_2 = .015 seconds
64 tick at interp_2 = .031 seconds
22 tick at interp_2 = .090 seconds
12 tick at interp_2 = .166 seconds

If you set interp_1 then the tick interpolation time would be halved (minus 1 frame, 2 frames, 5 frames, 10 frames respectively) - but any lost packet at all would hit you with a 250ms delay /8.5ms per frame = 29 frames.

Command Execution Time = Current Server Time – (Packet Latency + Client View Interpolation)

For reference, tick rates of some common online games:

Valorant: 128tick
Specific paid matchmaking services like ESEA: 128tick
CSGO ("normal" servers): 64tick
Overwatch: 63
Fortnite: 60 (I think, used to be 20 or 30)
COD Modern Warfare mp lobbies: 22tick
COD Modern Warfare custom lobbies: 12tick


Some have guessed that League of Legends tick rate is around 30.
ESO PvE / PvP: ??
WoW PvE / PvP ?? .. World of warcraft processes spells at a lower 'tick rate' so is a bit more complicated, but overall the tick rate probably isn't that great.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/is-classic-getting-dedicated-physical-servers/167546/81


https://happygamer.com/modern-warfa...or-a-game-that-wants-to-be-competitive-50270/


---------------------------------------------

Keep in mind that a higher tickrate server will not change how lag compensation behaves, so you will still experience times where you ran around the corner and died.

-----------------------

An example of lag compensation in action:

• Player A sees player B approaching a corner.
• Player A fires a shot, the client sends the action to the server.
• Server receives the action Xms layer, where X is half of Player A's latency.
• The server then looks into the past (into a memory buffer), of where player B was at the time player A took the shot. In a basic example, the server would go back (Xms+Player A's interpolation delay) to match what Player A was seeing at the time, but other values are possible depending on how the programmer wants the lag compensation to behave.
• The server decides whether the shot was a hit. For a shot to be considered a hit, it must align with a hitbox on the player model. In this example, the server considers it a hit. Even though on Player B's screen, it might look like hes already behind the wall, but the time difference between what player B see's and the time at which the server considers the shot to have taken place is equal to: (1/2PlayerALatency + 1/2PlayerBLatency + TimeSinceLastTick)
• In the next "Tick" the server updates both clients as to the outcome. Player A sees the hit indicator (X) on their crosshair, Player B sees their life decrease, or they die.

Note: In an example where two players shoot eachother, and both shots are hits, the game may behave differently. In some games. e.g. CSGO, if the first shot arriving at the server kills the target, any subsequent shots by that player that arrive to the server later will be ignored. In this case, there cannot be any "mutual kills", where both players shoot within 1 tick and both die. In Overwatch, mutual kills are possible. There is a tradeoff here.

----------------------------------------

• If you use the CSGO model, people with better latency have a significant advantage, and it may seem like "Oh I shot that guy before I died, but he didn't die!" in some cases. You may even hear your gun go "bang" before you die, and still not do any damage.
• If you use the current Overwatch model, tiny differences in reaction time matter less. I.e. if the server tick rate is 64 for example, if Player A shoots 15ms faster than player B, but they both do so within the same 15.6ms tick, they will both die.
• If lag compensation is overtuned, it will result in "I shot behind the target and still hit him"
• If it is undertuned, it results in "I need to lead the target to hit them".

 

[Armenius]

The 48 CX is down to $1,400 USD, finally. Not a lot, but it's something.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-48-...4k-uhd-smart-webos-tv/6416732.p?skuId=6416732
https://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-oled48cxpub-oled-4k-tv

 

[MistaSparkul]

The 48 CX is down to $1,400 USD, finally. Not a lot, but it's something.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-48-...4k-uhd-smart-webos-tv/6416732.p?skuId=6416732
https://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-oled48cxpub-oled-4k-tv

Amazon has it for $1350 and you can price match at Bestbuy. My buddy just picked one up today. For $150 off you might as well just get a CX as the C1 is pretty much the same TV.

 

[mirkendargen]

Greentoe is probably selling 48CX's below that. I just got a 77CX for $2800 including tax/shipping for example.

 

[NM64]

On the TV side without a shield - you can disable dts in the plex webOS app so it will play AAC sound on/from the tv

...

Transcoding, which is what happens when you disable dts in the plex webOS player, is always some minor fidelity loss.

I've never used plex, but is there any reason multi-channel PCM can't be used instead of AAC so that it's actually lossless? Or something like FLAC?

At least, with a USB drive plugged directly into an E9 OLED, the built-in WebOS player is able to decode multi-channel PCM and multi-channel FLAC without issue.

I found the TV's playback buggy on some titles where it would drop playback to black screen partway through or show a short time line as if the video was truncated, which for all practical purposes it functions as if it is in this scenario and just cuts off at that point.

What if you use one of those USB ethernet adapters that are known to work with the TV to get a 300mbps wired connection?

 

[mirkendargen]

I've never used plex, but is there any reason multi-channel PCM can't be used instead of AAC so that it's actually lossless? Or something like FLAC?

At least, with a USB drive plugged directly into an E9 OLED, the built-in WebOS player is able to decode multi-channel PCM and multi-channel FLAC without issue.




What if you use one of those USB ethernet adapters that are known to work with the TV to get a 300mbps wired connection?

The built in pictures and video app refused to decode DTS for me to anything (it refused to do Atmos also strangely). Plex on Shield does decode DTS-MA into multichannel PCM over eARC though. I connect my Shield this way because my receiver doesn't support Dolby Vision.

 

[NM64]

The built in pictures and video app refused to decode DTS for me to anything (it refused to do Atmos also strangely). Plex on Shield does decode DTS-MA into multichannel PCM over eARC though. I connect my Shield this way because my receiver doesn't support Dolby Vision.

Maybe it wasn't entirely clear, but yeah I know the CX can't decode DTS unlike the E9 - that's why I'm asking about transcoding to a supported lossless format like PCM or FLAC because, contrary to what elvn says, transcoding does not inherently mean a loss of quality, only if you transcode to lossy formats (Opus, AAC, etc) rather than lossless formats (PCM, FLAC, etc).

 

[mirkendargen]

Maybe it wasn't entirely clear, but yeah I know the CX can't decode DTS unlike the E9 - that's why I'm asking about transcoding to a supported lossless format like PCM or FLAC because, contrary to what elvn says, transcoding does not inherently mean a loss of quality, only if you transcode to lossy formats (Opus, AAC, etc) rather than lossless formats (PCM, FLAC, etc).

To my knowledge, no. It seems to only be something the client can do (decode to 7.1PCM rather than bitstream the encoded format). It would definitely be useful to be able to do it on the server side.

 

[shadow2761]

Do you rekon next year they may bring 144hz to there OLED range?

 

[NM64]

Do you rekon next year they may bring 144hz to there OLED range?

It's my impression that BFI at 120Hz on the CX results in a given pixel being turned off for the same amount of time that it's turned on, meaning that the panel is already natively 240Hz.

So assuming that this is accurate, then going straight to 240Hz input seems like the more likely scenario.

 

[elvn]

Transcoding will always have some minor loss. It is not the same as remuxing 1:1 beforehand. Whether you can notice personally, whether it is noticeable in testing, or whether that "not the original 1:1" fact bothers you or not are other questions. Plenty of people watch streaming services which are much more watered down (compressed/bit rate) with no issues for example. I think when plex transcodes the audio it might also be doing the video by default too. Besides transcoding, the plex WebOS app was crashing or seeing a file as truncated partway through several videos I played among other things. I already have a shield on my living room tv so I sprang for another on the CX so I didn't have to worry about anything other than swapping my receiver input when I switch to the shield.

-------------------

Regarding BFI , I'm not sure what method LG uses but some BFI implementations do a rolling scan independent of the refresh rate.

https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?t=6310#p47203

 

[mirkendargen]

Transcoding will always have some minor loss. It is not the same as remuxing 1:1 beforehand. Whether you can notice personally, whether it is noticeable in testing, or whether that "not the original 1:1" fact bothers you or not are other questions. Plenty of people watch streaming services which are much more watered down (compressed/bit rate) with no issues for example. I think when plex transcodes the audio it might also be doing the video by default too. Besides transcoding, the plex WebOS app was crashing or seeing a file as truncated partway through several videos I played among other things. I already have a shield on my living room tv so I sprang for another on the CX so I didn't have to worry about anything other than swapping my receiver input when I switch to the shield.

-------------------

Regarding BFI , I'm not sure what method LG uses but some BFI implementations do a rolling scan independent of the refresh rate.

https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?t=6310#p47203

This is not true. If you take a zipped file, unzip it, then rar it, was there "loss"? No, they are lossless forms of encoding or they literally wouldn't work. PCM is the same as the unzipped file, FLAC is the same as the rar.

 

[elvn]

It's possible to transcode to a higher codec but I don't think thats happening generally on the fly from something like plex, as opposed to remuxing something beforehand.

Lossless remuxing vs typical transcoding on the fly are different.

https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/21618/does-transcoding-always-mean-quality-loss

Generally, H.264 and H.265 (as well as others like VP9) are lossy codecs, at least in their default settings with most encoders. This means that whenever you re-encode from one to another (or even in the same codec), you throw away information.


Whether this information loss is visible or not depends on your source material and the chosen settings, of course.


To combat the loss of information, you often need to choose a higher bitrate than what your input is, or a higher constant-quality setting than the default of the respective encoders. There is no "general principle" here – it really depends on what the default bitrates or quality targets are for the encoders you're using.

 

[mirkendargen]

It's possible to transcode to a higher codec but I don't think thats happening generally on the fly from something like plex, as opposed to remuxing something beforehand.

Lossless remuxing vs typical transcoding on the fly are different.

https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/21618/does-transcoding-always-mean-quality-loss

We're talking audio, and transcoding not remuxing. Lossless audio codecs have been a solved problem for a decade or two, and even completely uncompressed audio is a manageable amount of bandwidth/storage. Video is very different, and bit-perfect lossless video will probably never be a thing due to the storage/bandwidth needed. For video perceived quality will always be better by compressing a higher resolution source with a lossy algo than having a lossless lower resolution source, so that's the strategy that will always be used up to the maximum "acceptable" level of storage/bandwidth. A 24FPS 12bit color 720p video would be ~400Mbps for example. Who would want to watch that over a 4k HEVC video with a ~20Mbps bitrate?

 

[elvn]

There is pass-through, decoding, transcoding, remuxing.

I'm not saying a FLAC container passed through with plex isn't lossless or something else like a receiver decoding passed through data.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/4nzdff/can_plex_stream_flac_losslessly/

Plex Media Server supports FLAC just fine, and clients like Plex Media Player and Open Plex Home Theatre do as well. Even the iOS client does, I believe.
Whether or not you'll be able to stream lossless FLAC files without transcoding depends entirely on what hardware you're using, and which release of the Plex client.

I'm saying plex transcoding (not just streaming) on the fly changing to a different codec. And I'm not sure when you do that with audio if plex doesn't automatically trancode the video too.


https://www.winxdvd.com/video-converter/plex-transcoding.htm

Plex supports pretty much media formats[1]. However, not all content can be Direct Played on your client device because your device always has special requirements for media encoding format, container format, and resolution. Some content needs Direct Stream or Transcode. Direct Stream is enabled when Plex client can support the video and audio codec formats but can't support the container format. Transcoding is used when Plex client can't read either the video or audio format or can't support the resolution, bitrate, etc.[2]

Edit: according to some replies on some other forums I looked up, Plex can still stream the video mp4/mkv even if it transcodes and converts the DTS audio seperately. So that concern might be out at least though I haven't found that confirmed elsewhere yet. The general idea in all of the plex conversations is avoiding transcoding wherever possible.

Either way the built in webOS plex player was dropping playback partway through to a black screen on several different titles more than once, acting like the file had been truncated there so I'd rather just use a shield along with it passing dts tracks to my recevier normally without transcoding even if it cost me some money.

 

[elvn]

This is not true. If you take a zipped file, unzip it, then rar it, was there "loss"? No, they are lossless forms of encoding or they literally wouldn't work. PCM is the same as the unzipped file, FLAC is the same as the rar.

Yes there is no loss if you take it out of or change the container without manufacturing whole new streams from the original source in it (or if you take a long time manufacturing a new file rather than doing it on the fly). I think there might just be some confusion on terms we are using between us.

support.plex.tv

Remuxing, in our context, refers to the process of changing the “container” format used for a given file. For example from MP4 to MKV or from AVI to MKV. It also allows adding or removing of content streams as needed. Remuxing differs from Transcoding in that remuxing a file simply repackages the existing streams while transcoding actually creates new ones from a source.

Transcoding speed/quality

Your Plex Media Server’s default value is Very fast. Slower values can give you better video quality and somewhat smaller file sized, but will generally take significantly longer to complete the processing.

Most users will not want to change this, but those who have a particularly powerful server or who don’t mind much longer processing times might choose a higher quality (slower) value.

There is also hardware/gpu enabled transcoding which is faster but might be a little less precise (e.g. a little more artifacting occasionally in dark scenes with a lot of motion according to some reports). Plex's hardware transcoding was in some cases worse than software and they had hardware HDR transcoding, HDR tonemapping to SDR , etc. issues at first but they have been updating it.

I never said transcoding is not usable and probably not noticeable to the less discening eye but it's not 1:1 direct play, especially if you are using plex's default transcode speed.

"Direct Play" (pass-through) > direct stream (change/break the container type and pass the readable video/audio stream types already inside) > transcode (create new streams on the fly from the unplayable streams)

 

[mirkendargen]

Yes there is no loss if you take it out of or change the container without manufacturing whole new streams from the original source in it (or if you take a long time manufacturing a new file rather than doing it on the fly). I think there might just be some confusion on terms we are using between us.

support.plex.tv



Transcoding speed/quality


There is also hardware/gpu enabled transcoding which is faster but might be a little less precise (e.g. a little more artifacting occasionally in dark scenes with a lot of motion according to some reports). Plex's hardware transcoding was in some cases worse than software and they had hardware HDR transcoding, HDR tonemapping to SDR , etc. issues at first but they have been updating it.

I never said transcoding is not usable and probably not noticeable to the less discening eye but it's not 1:1 direct play, especially if you are using plex's default transcode speed.

"Direct Play" (pass-through) > direct stream (change/break the container type and pass the readable video/audio stream types already inside) > transcode (create new streams on the fly from the unplayable streams)

No I think there's confusion about lossless codecs. TrueHD/DTS-HD MA/FLAC are all lossless codecs. You can transcode between them infinite numbers of times, and the PCM they all decode to will be bit-identical. Just like zipping/raring a file. It's absolutely still transcoding not remuxing, the stream is decoded from one format and encoded into another. But there is no loss whatsoever. The wish is that Plex could transcode to FLAC (Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD MA encoders aren't freely available) on the fly, or decode to 7.1 PCM on the server side to send to the client and be more universally compatible when things like CX TV's without DTS decode capability are in the mix.

 

[elvn]

I get what you are saying now, thanks. I'm assuming from what you said that lossless audio, being smaller and maybe by nature of the codec and decode, can be transcoded fast enough (remaining lossless) on the fly "do it live" by plex - as opposed to full quality video which gets some loss by default when transcoded on the fly by Plex.

Plex server can be forced to transcode to AAC if you disable dts in the plex client so I had been trying that at first. What I said about transcoding vs quality as opposed to what happens remuxing the container type (like changing from a rar full of a few files to a zip full of those files, at least container wise) with video holds true on the video end (rather than the audio end *when it is lossless audio codec*) with plex transcoding though which is what stuck in my head and is what I posted quotes and examples of - so my concern is/was that I heard somewhere that when you force dts transcoding kicking plex into trancoding mode, that it might also transcode the video stream automatically. If that were the case, the video quality could be degraded slightly when the forced dts transcoding "trick" was utilized to get some audio off of a dts title through the LG CX's webOs Plex client. Now that I've looked it up more, it might not be transcoding video when you do that but I'm not positive.

Where I posted, (*in regard to steams that aren't lossless audio formats)

Remuxing, in our context, refers to the process of changing the “container” format used for a given file. For example from MP4 to MKV or from AVI to MKV. It also allows adding or removing of content streams as needed. Remuxing differs from Transcoding in that remuxing a file simply repackages the existing streams while transcoding actually creates new ones from a source.

Transcoding speed/quality

Your Plex Media Server’s default value is Very fast. Slower values can give you better video quality and somewhat smaller file sized, but will generally take significantly longer to complete the processing.

Most users will not want to change this, but those who have a particularly powerful server or who don’t mind much longer processing times might choose a higher quality (slower) value.

In any event, when I did the forced dts to AAC transcode several titltes were acting as if they were truncated in the PlexWebOS partway through the title. To the PlexWebOS client, the video file ended there so even after the videos abruptly ended to a black screen, I couldn't even resume them. Compared to the shield, the indexing was a little slower too (not unusable though). All things considered, coming from having nvidia shields that pretty much pass through anything (and have gigabit connections and usb3 ports, etc) - I decided to go with another shield on my LG CX and just pass everything (including dts) to my receiver unchanged so I don't have to worry about all of that stuff. The only thing the shield lacks is Youtube HDR but I can tell the LG remote to bounce back to webOS youtube anytime. Most of the youtube HDR content has bad static logos promoting the channel/brand though anyway so I don't like leaving those on a loop.

 

[hhkb]

Plex can transcode video/audio independently. It also does on the fly remux if it can. I think usually when people use the term transcode, they tend to mean lossy encoding. Plex always says "transcode" in the server dashboard even if it is doing a lossless remux, which is sort of annoying. I think tautalli might show it properly though but I haven't tested.

For anyone w/ the nvidia shield, how's the AI upscaling w/ plex? Does anyone know how it is implemented? Is it like DLSS? In mpv you can use similar upscaling shaders, which work really well for certain types of content, but I think the nvidia thing is different. I wonder if that feature would make it worthwhile for 1080p content.

 

[elvn]

That would explain how it would be hard to determine from just looking at the dashboard. Thanks for the clarifications overall hhkb
and mirkendargen. Unfortunately even if forcing plex to transcode the dts to aac kept full fidelity sound and left the mp4/video untouched~>direct play or (or at least direct stream/remux), I was still getting bad performance issues on occasion. The worst of those being the truncated file issue dropping out of playback with no ability to resume since the LG webOS plex client thinks the file ends there after it happens. It still might be a valid workaround for some people but the performance results in my case were not solid enough for my liking. I also just love the overall capabilities of the feature rich nvidia shields that just work and pass through just about everything (I also find the lack of gigabit on the LG annoying) - so even if paying a decent amount for the shield it wasn't that big a leap to pull the trigger on one for me.


=================================================

Shield AI upscaling --
Is it like DLSS? kind of. It is Nvidia's machine learning AI upscaling but DLSS is used in a few different ways from what I've read. By default on quality settings it sounds pretty similar if you consider DLSS reducing the resolution being a similar starting point to having 1080p to start with in a video on a 4k screen. If you prioritize performance in DLSS 2.0 it will look worse though.

(from a random Geforce forums post

Dlss on quality setting runs on essentially half the resolution and then upscales it. Quality algorithm is quite good and with dlss 2.0 you would be hard to find a difference for the performance boost you will receive. Performance on the other hand takes an image thats 1/4 resolution and upscales it. You will notice it but in cases where the performance is terrible it may be the only way the game is playable.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/02/03/what-is-ai-upscaling/

Traditional upscaling starts with a low-resolution image and tries to improve its visual quality at higher resolutions. AI upscaling takes a different approach: Given a low-resolution image, a deep learning model predicts a high-resolution image that would downscale to look like the original, low-resolution image.

To predict the upscaled images with high accuracy, a neural network model must be trained on countless images. The deployed AI model can then take low-resolution video and produce incredible sharpness and enhanced details no traditional scaler can recreate. Edges look sharper, hair looks scruffier and landscapes pop with striking clarity.

However the shield's AI upscaling lacks the hardware that a full nvidia GPU has for DLSS:
https://www.pcgamer.com/if-the-nint...upport-i-want-it-in-my-new-nvidia-shield-too/

The Shield TV Pro already supports AI upscaling for video, although it lacks the hardware to handle DLSS locally itself, nor can it match the fidelity that DLSS is able to achieve. Right now all the super sampling is handled on the server side for GeForce Now game streaming. A newer chip could handle a form of DLSS upscaling within the Shield itself, meaning that you wouldn't need such a phat internet pipe to play games at 4K.

If the Tensor Cores in a new Ampere-based Shield could be used for a content-agnostic DLSS-analogue that worked on simple video streams, rather than needing to be added on a per-game basis, then you would only need a low-res stream from the source. The updated Shield could then do all the super-smart super sampling on the client end.

Though what that might do for latency we're not entirely sure.

Nvidia has released numerous iterations of its offerings SoC offerings since the Tegra X1 was first introduced, including the Pascal-based Tegra X2, the Volta-based Xavier, and most recently Orin.

Orin would appear to have the digital makeup needed to deliver on the promise set out by the Bloomberg rumour. Orin was first announced at the GPU Technology Conference 2018, where Nvidia boasted it had 17 billion transistors and 12 ARM Hercules cores.

Orin is Ampere-based and therefore has access to the Tensor cores necessary to weave the DLSS magic. Not only that, but while the Tegra X1 has 256 CUDA Cores, Orin has 2048 CUDA Cores.

The assumption was that Orin was destined for the vehicle market, but if these rumours for the Nintendo Switch Pro are true, then it looks like a lot of the hard work would be done for a new Shield as well. A Shield capable of streaming using GeForce Now and upscaling to 4K at high refresh rates at the same time.

https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/...rce-now-and-gamestream-graphics-apk-download/

say you're taking advantage of cloud-streamed games and you're really looking for that extra punch of detail? Perhaps it's best to own last year's Nvidia Shield TV Pro — the complementary Nvidia Games app has been updated to enable AI upscaling on the company's GeForce Now and GameStream platforms.

Once the update's installed, AI upscaling can be toggled in a new, dedicated settings menu on the 2019 Pro. We got word from Nvidia a few weeks back that this very update would enable GeForce Now games to scale up to 4K at 60fps.

Nvidia spokesperson Jordan Dodge noted in a tweet that the company has tested and found upscale-generated lag to max out at around 1 or 2 frames.

AI upscaling on the shield - This guy seemed wowed by it. heh.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/dqa16g/ai_upscaling_wow/

I just bought the new NVIDIA Shield TV (cigar tube). My first Shield. I've used or owned an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, Roku Streaming Stick + and Apple TV on my Vizio M558-G1 4K set.
Like many, I was skeptical about the new AI Upscaling feature that uses AI to make 1080 content look closer to 4K. I just figured it was NVIDIA's way to try to snow consumers to try the new Shield instead of Apple TV 4K.
Wrong. This AI Upscaling is legit. Very legit.
I just turned on a documentary in 1080 on Netflix with AI Upscaler on. Damned if it didn't look like 4K. Far more crisp and vivid than the upscaler in any other streaming stick or box I've used, including Apple 4K TV.
If you watch a lot of 1080 stuff on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, this feature is a game-changer. I'm not a fanboy of any platform or a Reddit plant for NVIDIA. I'm just a regular consumer who is blown away by this feature.
The AI Upscaling only handles 30 fps content, so everything I stream on YouTube TV unfortunately doesn't get this treatment. But it still upscales very nicely with the new Shield, just as well as Apple TV 4K to my eyes.

----------------------

This link has some side by side/split comparison images taken (rough images taken by camera) of a nvidia shield TV's demo mode

https://www.talkandroid.com/guides/android-tv-guides/nvidia-shield-tv-ai-upscaling/

If you’re watching standard 1080p content with a 1920 x 1080 resolution on a 4K television with 3840 x 2160 resolution, that means you’re putting about 2 million pixels onto a display that can show about 8 million pixels. Now, with zero upscaling you’d just see a small box of your TV show that only takes up 25% of the center of your screen, surrounded by gigantic black bars on all sides. But obviously that would be a pretty terrible experience, so instead of showing a 1:1 image of a 1080p file, your TV/streaming box tries to “fill in” those remaining 6 million pixels so you get a full-screen image.

That content can be filled in by just stretching out the pixels to fill the screen, which looks terrible, or by upscaling it. Upscaling takes that content and tries to “guess” what the nearby pixels should look like to give you a crisper, clearer image. For the most part now even cheaper TVs and boxes do this reasonably well, but NVIDIA’s solution uses AI and machine learning to take significantly more educated guesses about those surrounding pixels

It’s also important to keep in mind that this only works on 1080p and 720p content at 30FPS, so you won’t be able to use it on a lot of YouTube videos or things that are already in 4K. But if you do watch a lot of standard 1080p content, then this excellent upscaling might just be enough to tip you over into buying an NVIDIA Shield TV over whatever else you had on your list.

---------------------------------------
Some basic info here with an simulation of the ai upscaling on a gecko photo:
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/02/03/what-is-ai-upscaling/

========================

https://hackaday.com/2021/04/05/ai-upscaling-and-the-future-of-content-delivery/

While these may be early days, it seems pretty clear that machine learning systems like Deep Learning Super Sampling hold a lot of promise for gaming. But the idea isn’t limited to just video games. There’s also a big push towards using similar algorithms to enhance older films and television shows for which no higher resolution version exists. Both proprietary and open software is now available that leverages the computational power of modern GPUs to upscale still images as well as video.

The software AI upscaling they mention is horribly slow on the fly (1 to 2 fps) but still an interesting read.

 

[mirkendargen]

It can't be exactly DLSS, because DLSS requires the rendering engine to present motion vectors so that it can estimate movement. That obviously wouldn't be available from a dumb video stream. Some elements could be shared though.

 

[elvn]

The pcgamer article I linked said DLSS (quality setting) is better (especially for upscaling games which I think it is talking about there) - but they both use AI upscaling/deep learning

https://www.pcgamer.com/if-the-nint...upport-i-want-it-in-my-new-nvidia-shield-too/

The Shield TV Pro already supports AI upscaling for video, although it lacks the hardware to handle DLSS locally itself, nor can it match the fidelity that DLSS is able to achieve.

Regarding vector based .. DLSS in that case sounds like how time warp in VR sort of projects the next frame from the vector/head movement. Though DLSS is only supported on certain games that have been "digested" so that makes it seem less on the fly and more pre-learned for much of it in regard to games. So even if it's smart enough to project the next frame from a vector, if it hasn't learned the game enough beforehand it doesn't sound like it can ai enhance it on the fly in some random game . I'll have to try to find out if DLSS support for a game is dependent on running the game through deep learning alone or if the game has to specifically code to send vector data/handles to DLSS or something. The final result is probably much better fidelity with DLSS capable content than shield AI upscaling though all factors considered.

It makes me wonder if you could theoretically run a particular video through deep learning a bunch of times beforehand like a long render time as a option to improve it even more specifically for that title. Though it could be that the AI upscaling available to the consumer can't learn anymore (can't improve on how much it improves) specifically to that video/title unless nvidia directly supported the title feeding it to deep learning ahead of time themself in order to publish support for that movie. i.e. a directly supported AI upscaling movie list like DolbyVision supported movie library (pre-baked mastered tone mapping), DLSS supported games. I think their goal is to keep the photo and video upscaling more generic in general usage though some articles mention the potential for applying it to old movies and resolutions beforehand for new release.

That software AI upscaling mentioned in that hackaday article makes me wonder if you could "render" AI upscaling of a movie title similarly yourself over a long time and bake it in somehow.

 

[elvn]

That obviously wouldn't be available from a dumb video stream

You could theoretically take a "dumb" movie title where DLSS would be blind to any vectors and map virtual cameras to it to duplicate the movement of the actual camera used filming scene by scene.

That could either be done painstakingly on a scene by scene basis by hand or maybe using AI to do a rough guess pass of where the virtual camera is and where it moves in each scene that you (mastering professionals) would later tweak scene by scene. That's done at least in some cgi scenes in order to make a composite where the cgi elements match even when the real camera is moving in a scene. The virtual world/CGI layer's virtual camera tracks exactly the same as the real world one at that point. They have motion data captured from digital cameras now as they film in the first place, kind of like they mo-cap actors, at least in cgi scenes but that could be done with the cameras throughout if they wanted to. Deep learning/AI upscaling might be figuring out a rough guestimate of that movement already in some fashion and working from it though.

Whether you mapped virtual cameras to the existing camera in each scene's movement and zoom in a pre-existing title or you captured that during filming, you could end up with the vector data if needed by DLSS. In the case of a movie rather than a game they'd always be the same vectors once learned. However even a live video feed could potentially have a camera with motion capture/state data sent live to DLSS/AI upscaling systems if it was needed for some reason (transmitting a lower resolution for example).

I'd be curious to see a side by side comparison of a recorded video of a very graphically detailed game's play being AI upscaled on the fly at a base rez .. vs... that same game played in "real-time" using DLSS 2.0 from the same base rez (e.g. 1080p basis to 4k in both cases). That and then theoretically adding a third version with the virtual camera in the game's vectors applied to DLSS on the recorded video version. Also the same thing with a live video feed of a real life event vs the recording of the same video, then the same recording with the camera motion capture/vector data.

A little off topic, just intriguing to me.

 

[mirkendargen]

DLSS 1.0 is based on a dedicated training model for each game that supported it (and was ok but not great). DLSS 2.0+ doesn't need training for each game, it just has a universal model done by Nvidia and needs motion vectors provided by the engine (and looks amazing).

Yes theoretically you could run 1 frame behind in a video to achieve the same thing (this is exactly how motion smoothing (frame interpolation) done by the TVs themselves works).

 

[Ziran]

Best buy now has 48C1 listed as available in US:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-48-...4k-uhd-smart-webos-tv/6453311.p?skuId=6453311

My store pickup order is showing due May 14th (9 days)

 

[madpistol]

Best buy now has 48C1 listed as available in US:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-48-...4k-uhd-smart-webos-tv/6453311.p?skuId=6453311

My store pickup order is showing due May 14th (9 days)

Looking forward to your impressions.

 

[FrgMstr]

Anyone know the power usage for the LGCX 48? The UPS that mine is hooked up to, gave up the ghost and it was an older 900w unit and I don't think I need to go that big since this is the only thing plugged in now.

 

[Mizzer]

Anyone know the power usage for the LGCX 48? The UPS that mine is hooked up to, gave up the ghost and it was an older 900w unit and I don't think I need to go that big since this is the only thing plugged in now.

Dude. It’s like 50watts maybe. Therefore you have plenty of capacity for a three screen set-up. Get on it!

 

[FrgMstr]

Dude. It’s like 50watts maybe. Therefore you have plenty of capacity for a three screen set-up. Get on it!

I figured it could not be over 100w. Thanks.

 

[Mizzer]

I figured it could not be over 100w. Thanks.

My bad, it’s 50w with black screen. About 90w average. You have the capacity for only 8 more screens. 7 to be safe.

 

[FrgMstr]

My bad, it’s 50w with black screen. About 90w average. You have the capacity for only 8 more screens. 7 to be safe.

Hehe, it was an old recycled UPS I was using off the test bench. I would move those off critical testing stuff every two or three years and put those on something else that could use it. We get weird power and lighting all the time out here. Lighting ate a big UPS and a 1200W Seasonic PSU last month.