LG 48CX

I cut my CX weekly hours by almost 80% now using a 4k LCD as my day monitor. I honestly wouldn't care if I wasn't WFH, but with WFH the hours were racking up really fast. Maybe it's dumb though, since I do have a 5 year burn in protection plan.

I use 4k side monitor(s) too and I'm very happy with that scenario. I have used a similar setup for a long time now. Previously I had been using a 31.5" 1440 GK850G VA g-sync screen as my gaming monitor in the middle, dedicated to gaming. What's different now is that before my side 4k monitor(s) were better contrast (~6100:1) than the gaming VA (~2800 to 3000:1).. so I would default to them for media playback outside of games - where now the OLED is the best for both gaming and media, also with a huge upgrade to quality HDR capability.

I usually use the turn off the LG CX screen via mic method while home and awake. I power the screen down to standby when I leave the house or when I go to sleep so it gets to cycle and have downtime daily once or more.

I played jedi:fallen order in HDR with no HUD using an ini edit. The "turn the screen off" trick came in handy throughout my playthrough so that I was never leaving a static HDR screen on when AFK or multitasking. "Turn of the screen" doesn't drop the CX from the monitor array so it doesn't clunkily drop the fullscreen exclusive + HDR mode game and shuffle windows around, put the game on a different screen, etc. It just blanks the screen emitters and when you click the remote it pops back instantly with the game still running.

I haven't found a way to toggle the HUD on and off or turn off the HUD entirely in Nioh2 (PC) yet. Nioh2 is also HDR and it has a lot of HUD elements but I've found that I'm pulling up the inventory screen often which completely displaces the HUD elements so that should help.
 
I use 4k side monitor(s) too and I'm very happy with that scenario. I have used a similar setup for a long time now. Previously I had been using a 31.5" 1440 GK850G VA g-sync screen as my gaming monitor in the middle, dedicated to gaming. What's different now is that before my side 4k monitor(s) were better contrast (~6100:1) than the gaming VA (~2800 to 3000:1).. so I would default to them for media playback outside of games - where now the OLED is the best for both gaming and media, also with a huge upgrade to quality HDR capability.

I usually use the turn off the LG CX screen via mic method while home and awake. I power the screen down to standby when I leave the house or when I go to sleep so it gets to cycle and have downtime daily once or more.

I played jedi:fallen order in HDR with no HUD using an ini edit. The "turn the screen off" trick came in handy throughout my playthrough so that I was never leaving a static HDR screen on when AFK or multitasking. "Turn of the screen" doesn't drop the CX from the monitor array so it doesn't clunkily drop the fullscreen exclusive + HDR mode game and shuffle windows around, put the game on a different screen, etc. It just blanks the screen emitters and when you click the remote it pops back instantly with the game still running.

I haven't found a way to toggle the HUD on and off or turn off the HUD entirely in Nioh2 (PC) yet. Nioh2 is also HDR and it has a lot of HUD elements but I've found that I'm pulling up the inventory screen often which completely displaces the HUD elements so that should help.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. I have played a shit ton of games on consoles with the C9 that have plenty of HUDs on screen and so far no issues.
 
Nice, LGD is ramping from 200k units to 1mil units for 2021 of the 48". It would be great to see these panels get even cheaper. Maybe they'll MSRP for £1400 in 2021?

It also looks like the 48CX has price dropped to £1300 everywhere in the UK and box.co.uk is a new retailer as far as I know. The 48" hype is real, many PC gamers are buying this. Interesting times for OLED panels.
 


Not quite disposable pricing but good news. :D


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I finally got around to hooking up my shARC.. the input I put it on nearly blasted me out of the room at first volume wise .. oops. After a scramble to turn it down I started messing with it.

Apparently LG did not support TrueHD/Atmos uncompressed over eARC via the Plex WebOS app, at least on the C9 so I don't know if they ever fixed that even now on the CX. No matter what I've tried to make it pass the original without transcoding, it will only transcode the video untouched but always transcodes the 7.1 TrueHD or Atmos tracks to ---> eac3()

"Cannot direct play with protocl: codec: truehd. Not found in profile.
"App cannot direct play this item. Direct play is disabled"


I tried playing the same files off of mpc-hc on the pc input using the default audio renderer (the LG CX) and I kept getting mutichannel PCM there too.

They both sound decent but I'd like to use TrueHD and Atmos untouched.


from a sept 2019 LG C9 post on AVSforum:

"While the C9 supports HD audio over eARC it does not support it over the WebOS media player, they forgot to update it or over looked it.

So yeah you need a Shield to play the audio, you can plug the Shield directly into the TV with eARC and it will send the TrueHD 7.1 Atmos"

"Be aware also the C9 does not support PCM 7.1 over eARC something else LG over looked."


I'll have to scour the avsforum threads on the LG CX about trueHD/atmos pass though via webOS apps like Plex and Emby or on pc via mediaplayer I guess.


I might just spring for another nvidia shield to blow past any issues in the end, (and get an upgraded processor/plex server and good AI upscaling for 1080p).
 
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Not quite disposable pricing but good news. :D


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I finally got around to hooking up my shARC.. the input I put it on nearly blasted me out of the room at first volume wise .. oops. After a scramble to turn it down I started messing with it.

Apparently LG did not support TrueHD/Atmos uncompressed over eARC via the Plex WebOS app, at least on the C9 so I don't know if they ever fixed that even now on the CX. No matter what I've tried to make it pass the original without transcoding, it will only transcode the video untouched but always transcodes the 7.1 TrueHD or Atmos tracks to ---> eac3()

"Cannot direct play with protocl: codec: truehd. Not found in profile.
"Aoo cannot direc tplay this item. Direct play is disabled"


I tried playing the same files off of mpc-hc on the pc input using the default audio renderer (the LG CX) and I kept getting mutichannel PCM there too.

They both sound decent but I'd like to use TrueHD and Atmos untouched.


from a sept 2019 LG C9 post on AVSforum:






I'll have to scour the avsforum threads on the LG CX about trueHD/atmos pass though via webOS apps like Plex and Emby or on pc via mediaplayer I guess.


I might just spring for another nvidia shield to blow past any issues in the end, (and get an upgraded processor/plex server and good AI upscaling for 1080p).
What happens if you bitstream Atmos from a PC?
 
Well this sucks. Yesterday the Logitech speaker system fell off the shelf and the cable yanked the Optical digital Audio out connector loose from the LG48cx. It is still working but very loose and it wouldn't surprise me if it becomes so loose that it loses connection. I tried to reseat it hoping it would pop back ino place, but no luck.

Can anyone advise how I might set it back in place? Obviously I prefer to not have to open the TV up.

Its hard to tell from the photo, but the connector is hanging down and loose.

IMG_20210218_111639.jpg
 
Well this sucks. Yesterday the Logitech speaker system fell off the shelf and the cable yanked the Optical digital Audio out connector loose from the LG48cx. It is still working but very loose and it wouldn't surprise me if it becomes so loose that it loses connection. I tried to reseat it hoping it would pop back ino place, but no luck.

Can anyone advise how I might set it back in place? Obviously I prefer to not have to open the TV up.

Its hard to tell from the photo, but the connector is hanging down and loose.

View attachment 330671

It's not a cheap option at ~$150 but the shARC breakout box not only "adds an eArc port" to one of the hdmi inputs on a receiver but also has an optical and rca analog output. there are probably some other hdmi breakout boxes that split optical off of hdmi that might be cheaper.

SHARCSIDE.png

Other things I'd look into are
-- See if the TV is still in the mfg warranty period.
-- (at your own risk) you could consider trying some plumber's putty to hold it in place, maybe make a small plastic or cardboard square plane around the connector that snaps over it and then making a raised crater rim of plumber's putty around the connection. I'd say gell super glue or two part epoxy rather than plumber's putty but that's more permanent so would be harder to reverse/remove and so would probably void your warranty.
 
Very interesting. Does that 8K count factor in a screen saver? How bright have you been running it?

In any case, that's still some mileage out of a screen, which though not cheap, is much less expensive than it was.

I have brightness+OLED set to max on my panel (when I used it for work from home I would lower it as mostly white screen was too much at 100%). If you run with lower brightness the panel should last longer.

I had screen saver set to 1 min (turn off screen) which then triggers the TV own rotating pictures for a few minutes before it turns off.

For the first year and a half I had rotating pictures as background in windows, after that I switched to just black background. I moved static elements like taskbar/icons to a small secondary monitor on the side.

My recommendations for maximizing your OLED lifetime:

Do not light up any pixels you are not actively using. Use black background, dark theme. Use dark reader addon for web browser. Either move windows desktop taskbar/icons to 2nd monitor or run with a clean desktop.

You can run with lower brightness but I bought OLED to have bright vivid pictures so I ran at 100% (and if that means lower lifetime so be it).

Your red color pixels will decline the fastest (this is actually most visible on magenta color). The youtube red progress bar was one of the first offenders. The burn in is however not visible unless you have large areas of uniform color. In normal usage as TV/gaming monitor you will not see it even at 13k hours.
 
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It's not a cheap option at ~$150 but the shARC breakout box not only "adds an eArc port" to one of the hdmi inputs on a receiver but also has an optical and rca analog output. there are probably some other hdmi breakout boxes that split optical off of hdmi that might be cheaper.

View attachment 330678

Other things I'd look into are
-- See if the TV is still in the mfg warranty period.
-- (at your own risk) you could consider trying some plumber's putty to hold it in place, maybe make a small plastic or cardboard square plane around the connector that snaps over it and then making a raised crater rim of plumber's putty around the connection. I'd say gell super glue or two part epoxy rather than plumber's putty but that's more permanent so would be harder to reverse/remove and so would probably void your warranty.
Thanks. Yeah I have a similar breakout box but was going to sell it bc I don't have a lot of spare USB inputs to spare on my laptop.

I bought the TV at Christmas so I assume it would be within warranty but the thought of packing this up to ship it or take it someplace is daunting, plus this issue is totally my fault.

Will consider the last suggestion. I am all elbows when it comes to mechanical repair work so I am worried I would make a mess of it
 
I cut my CX weekly hours by almost 80% now using a 4k LCD as my day monitor. I honestly wouldn't care if I wasn't WFH, but with WFH the hours were racking up really fast. Maybe it's dumb though, since I do have a 5 year burn in protection plan.

The LG OLED is not an ideal work from home/office monitor. The ABL itself can be a nuisance. In my case since I primarily used VNC I just made myself a 1440p VNC window to workplace and used it that way (leaving the rest of screen dark). In general for that usage an LCD will work better.
 
I have brightness+OLED set to max on my panel (when I used it for work from home I would lower it as mostly white screen was too much at 100%). If you run with lower brightness the panel should last longer.

I had screen saver set to 1 min (turn off screen) which then triggers the TV own rotating pictures for a few minutes before it turns off.

For the first year and a half I had rotating pictures as background in windows, after that I switched to just black background. I moved static elements like taskbar/icons to a small secondary monitor on the side.

My recommendations for maximizing your OLED lifetime:

Do light up any pixels you are not actively using. Use black background, dark theme. Use dark reader addon for web browser.
Either move windows desktop taskbar/icons to 2nd monitor or run with a clean desktop.

You can run with lower brightness but I bought OLED to have bright vivid pictures so I ran at 100% (and if that means lower lifetime so be it).

Your red color pixels will decline the fastest (this is actually most visible on magenta color). The youtube red progress bar was one of the first offenders. The burn in is however not visible unless you have large areas of uniform color. In normal usage as TV/gaming monitor you will not see it even at 13k hours.
Yes, this. And if I notice any burn in/wear after 3-4 years I will happily buy another one to replace it. These aren't inexpensive, but they are that good. I will not go back to LCD, period. The true blacks and motion handling are unsurpassed...this is a holy grail display to be sure.
 
Well this sucks. Yesterday the Logitech speaker system fell off the shelf and the cable yanked the Optical digital Audio out connector loose from the LG48cx. It is still working but very loose and it wouldn't surprise me if it becomes so loose that it loses connection. I tried to reseat it hoping it would pop back ino place, but no luck.

Can anyone advise how I might set it back in place? Obviously I prefer to not have to open the TV up.

Its hard to tell from the photo, but the connector is hanging down and loose.

View attachment 330671

It depends what optical socket is LG using, it should looks like this, so there is possibility that these plastic legs which are suposed to keep socket in place are snapped and socket is just hanging on leads until some of them breaks. There is a change these legs just pooped out so you could possibly push them back if you line the socket correctly.
1613669212941.png
 
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It depends what optical socket is LG using, it should looks like this, so there is possibility that these plastic legs which are suposed to keep socket in place are snapped and socket is just hanging on leads until some of them breaks. There is a change these legs just pooped out so you could possibly push them back if you line the socket correctly.
View attachment 330702
Thanks for this. I am hoping they can be popped back into place. Do I risk damaging it if I try again to slot it back into place? I can't see anything so I can't tell if its lined up.
 
You could also get a short optical audio cable and a fem/fem connector barrel looking union, then just zip tie the cable to your HDMI or power cable or something so it never moves again. Could prob do the same with the HDMI cable(s) (if there are any hdmi 2.1 ones), maybe run a sleeved metal cable off of the back of the tv mounting screws or vesa stand if you have one and use black zip ties (+ trimmed ends) -- so you never have to worry about the ports getting yanked ever again.

They do make optical ext cables F/M but I think they are overpriced:
ital-Audio-Extension-Cable-for-Speaker.jpg_640x640.jpg


You could probably use a short optical cable with a barrel union to your longer regular cable instead:

610Yhj5mXRL._SL1200_.jpg


I actually ruined a hdmi cable off of my side 4k TV once due to yanking it while installing the new samsung TV when the original TCL TV's backlight died. One hdmi cable rather than the port at least.
 
To expand on what I was talking about - it's a "metal rope" cable that is also available in a rubber/plastic coated type. You can get them at a hardware store along with some screw down metal cinch hardware and clips, etc. I have my 70" vizio VA tv connected to some wooden framing behind it with a few of these thin cables since it's on it's own shallow tv feet on top of a long tabletop style stand and I have a few cats who like to jump up behind the tv and stand on the window sill. I run the cables from bolt-like metal eyelets I screwed into the tv's vesa/mounting holes to other small wooden-screw style eyelets I screwed into the framing of my picture window behind the tv. I use crab claw like clips on the ends of the cable's looped ends that I can squeeze like scissors to release the cables from the wall if I have to.

What I'm suggesting for the 48" OLED is running a line or loop of this kind of wiring off of an eyelet screwed into the mounting holes and then black zip tying all of your cabling to that snugly, leaving enough slack between the zip tie and the ports of course. Optionally, use cable unions after that point as break-aways.

There are other ways to do it like attaching them all to something screwed into the desk or if the TV is actually vesa mounted, tying them to that mounting hardware, etc. The closer to the back of the TV and the ports you can tie/lock them in the better though.
 
Well this sucks. Yesterday the Logitech speaker system fell off the shelf and the cable yanked the Optical digital Audio out connector loose from the LG48cx. It is still working but very loose and it wouldn't surprise me if it becomes so loose that it loses connection. I tried to reseat it hoping it would pop back ino place, but no luck.

Can anyone advise how I might set it back in place? Obviously I prefer to not have to open the TV up.

Its hard to tell from the photo, but the connector is hanging down and loose.

View attachment 330671
Having fixed TV's before I would take off the back and look at it first to evaluate. The plastic legs poke thru PCB and melted on back to secure it. Simply put a dot of non conductive epoxy to secure it again to the PCB as it still works electrically. ...Dont use Hot Glue please :)
 
The LG OLED is not an ideal work from home/office monitor. The ABL itself can be a nuisance. In my case since I primarily used VNC I just made myself a 1440p VNC window to workplace and used it that way (leaving the rest of screen dark). In general for that usage an LCD will work better.
Yes it is. Do some research and disable ASBL. You can thank me later
 
Yep, see my post on how to disable ASBL automatic dimming. I did this last year, and haven't had to touch it since I did it, even after multiple firmware patches. I've never looked back.
Thank you (and others in this thread) for all the info on this. Your post was the last push I needed, just ordered a MKJ39170828 remote on Amazon for $8.
 
I just finished "Ori and the Will of the Wisp" (PC) in 4K HDR. Holy shit. This game is an epic masterpiece. And it really showcases an OLED TV features. Blacks are true black and colors are so vibrant and pop out. Pretty much smooth gameplay with 100 to max fps throughout the game (with RTX 3080 FE). LG should totally use this game to advertise their TV lol. If anyone hasn't played it, you should definitely give it a try.
 
Yup the original Ori and the sequel games are fairly old news, but indeed a decent showcase in HDR on any C9/CX and RTX2x/3x series card.

Metroidvania or the art style/story might not be for everyone, but thats for them to decide.
 
Just had someone on PCMR tell me that the CX can only do 60hz because it's a TV...

I honestly thought that everyone that's a PC enthusiast knew about the CX and it's amazing capabilities, but apparently, I was wrong.
The C9 has a native 120 Hz panel, too. Hope they got destroyed in the comments.
 
Thank you (and others in this thread) for all the info on this. Your post was the last push I needed, just ordered a MKJ39170828 remote on Amazon for $8.
Done. Feels a bit strange to pay $8 for something, use it for literally 10 seconds, take the batteries out and store it away. But $8 well spent - ASBL is now disabled.
 
Done. Feels a bit strange to pay $8 for something, use it for literally 10 seconds, take the batteries out and store it away. But $8 well spent - ASBL is now disabled.
Nice, hope you enjoy it disabled. I don't like wasting money and plastic/resources on cheap components either, but for the sake of using this beautiful screen without annoying auto-dimming I had to do it, as it was driving me crazy.
 
Sky15, New models not out yet but there will not be hardly any changes if any. The model similar to this one will be the C1. The big changes will be to the new G1 lineup. New processing and brighter picture.
 
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I just finished "Ori and the Will of the Wisp" (PC) in 4K HDR. Holy shit. This game is an epic masterpiece. And it really showcases an OLED TV features. Blacks are true black and colors are so vibrant and pop out. Pretty much smooth gameplay with 100 to max fps throughout the game (with RTX 3080 FE). LG should totally use this game to advertise their TV lol. If anyone hasn't played it, you should definitely give it a try.

Can you share your in game HDR settings? My biggest gripe with HDR is that there's too many things to adjust and I don't even know what's suppose to be 'accurate' and what not. And if anyone knows what the correct HDR settings are for Horizon Zero Dawn I'd appreciate some guidance.
 
Can you share your in game HDR settings? My biggest gripe with HDR is that there's too many things to adjust and I don't even know what's suppose to be 'accurate' and what not. And if anyone knows what the correct HDR settings are for Horizon Zero Dawn I'd appreciate some guidance.
You have to do it by eye for each game, basically. I don't know what calibration tools Horizon comes with, but some are definitely better than others. Doom Eternal is pretty worthless, and I had to experiment to find out what led to a good picture. Battlefield V and Resident Evil 2 both include what I would consider the bare minimum to be able to set HDR game settings correctly.

For generalized TV settings I just use the same calibration settings from SDR, but turn the OLED light up to 100. I think there is an HDR mode for CalMAN and other screen calibrators if you need the color to be dead on accurate for your display.
 
A lot of games have HDR mode but don't really do HDR, and/or they have settings you can change but it just makes it worse.

The idea is you're supposed to be able to set the range of your TV's brightness capabilities and the game will render within those specs.

So for the LGCX you would set the low end to as low as possible then set the peak brightness to 800 nits and disable tone mapping on your TV. Then the game would render within that spec and you won't get any detail clipping or need the tv to do any tone mapping.
So for example if the peak brightness is set correctly you could stare at the sun in game and see all sorts of detail in the sun, but if you set the option too bright it would render the sun so bright it's beyond the capabilities of your TV and the sun would just be a bright blob with no detail at all.
On LCDs they can only get so dark so you want to set the darkness limit, but the LGCX can do true blacks (because it's OLED) and you don't need to worry about that.

A lot of games just completely fail when it comes to HDR despite saying they support HDR and having the options to tweak it. For example Cyberpunk which doesn't even do true blacks, and setting the range just messes stuff up, it's better to just use the defaults despite them not being great.

You could probably just leave tone mapping on and let every game do the maximum range and it wouldn't look that different.
 
A lot of games have HDR mode but don't really do HDR, and/or they have settings you can change but it just makes it worse.

The idea is you're supposed to be able to set the range of your TV's brightness capabilities and the game will render within those specs.

So for the LGCX you would set the low end to as low as possible then set the peak brightness to 800 nits and disable tone mapping on your TV. Then the game would render within that spec and you won't get any detail clipping or need the tv to do any tone mapping.
So for example if the peak brightness is set correctly you could stare at the sun in game and see all sorts of detail in the sun, but if you set the option too bright it would render the sun so bright it's beyond the capabilities of your TV and the sun would just be a bright blob with no detail at all.
On LCDs they can only get so dark so you want to set the darkness limit, but the LGCX can do true blacks (because it's OLED) and you don't need to worry about that.

A lot of games just completely fail when it comes to HDR despite saying they support HDR and having the options to tweak it. For example Cyberpunk which doesn't even do true blacks, and setting the range just messes stuff up, it's better to just use the defaults despite them not being great.

You could probably just leave tone mapping on and let every game do the maximum range and it wouldn't look that different.

Problem with Ori is that the HDR brightness slider doesn't have actual values so I don't know what is 800 nits on it. There's also contrast, shadow detail, some other settings to adjust. Right now I've just left everything at default settings.
 
Can you share your in game HDR settings? My biggest gripe with HDR is that there's too many things to adjust and I don't even know what's suppose to be 'accurate' and what not. And if anyone knows what the correct HDR settings are for Horizon Zero Dawn I'd appreciate some guidance.
Tbh, I just use the default HDR ingame settings. It already looks so good to me, so I don't wanna mess with it. It's the first game that made SDR looks crap to me after seeing its HDR. Can't really go back to Ori SDR after trying out Ori HDR.

Horizon Zero Dawn, on the other hand, is kinda weird. In that, default HDR settings look good for ingame day time, but ingame night time is way too dark. I did mess around with the regular ingame brightness and HDR brightness & white point, but could never get both day and night to look good at the same time. It's either day look good (while night is too dark) or night looks good but day is a bit washed out. I settled for the latter because it's almost unplayable if I can't see anything at nighttime.

Edit: added mention of "ingame" day/night time, not real day/night time lol
 
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Jedi Fallen Order's HDR looked very good on PC. A lght saber, lasers and electronic things in dark ruins showed off HDR well. Now I'm running Nioh2 in HDR. I set the game's peak HDR brightness to 800 and it looks amazing. There are a lot of fires and torches and magic effects. Also very bright sunny outdoor areas and dark catacombs. The side by side of ultra blacks alongside bright fires and effects in both of those games look great.

What the TV does with HDR 1000 is it compresses ~560 to 1000 into 560 - 800, so with compression some details in the higher range are combined just like if you compressed a higher color range into a lower one. I don't think you would lose a ton of detail relative to what the LG CX is capable of unless you were compressing a much higher curve or if the game was just doing HDR badly. From what I understand the TV will always be doing static tone mapping to fit things within the TV's own range in curves set by LG. What you are turning off in the TV OSD is -dynamic- tone mapping which is sort of like tone mapping interpolation guesswork that is trying to tweak the HDR settings per scene on the fly which is not accurate (as opposed to DolbyVision or HDR10+ movies which have the tweaked tone mapping baked in to the HDR metadata, tone mapping selectively done by studio mastering people). So I'd always turn dynamic tone mapping off. Luckily so far the few HDR games I've installed have done HDR justice.

Regarding seeing at night - I guess it would depend on how well the game's HDR was implemented but I have no problems in the two games I mentioned. I'm not the type to make things brighter to see where I shouldn't be seeing "naturally" either though. In jedi, you'd hold your lightsaber over your head horizontally as a giant flashlight. In nioh2 you are making your way between different torches and braziers but I haven't had any problems with anything being too dark in those two games.
 
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