If you own one of LG Electronics’ G5 and C5 OLED TVs, you may have noticed that the Dolby Vision HDR experience has suddenly become much brighter and more aesthetically pleasing. That’s because the company has quietly rolled out a significant firmware upgrade that aims to address concerns over dim Dolby Vision images, and it has been given dozens of great reviews.
The r/LG_UserHub subreddit is choc-a-block with posts from happy G5 TV owners who have been sharing “before and after” images of their TVs to illustrate how much better Dolby Vision HDR now is. Most of them show a dramatic improvement in brightness, with more vibrant pictures that eradicate deep shadows to reveal much more detail than before.
LG didn’t post any official announcement about the update, but Reddit user Stanley083 posted a screenshot of changelog that summarised what the company has done. According to his screenshot, the main purpose of the update is to “resolve an issue where Dolby Vision content (specifically in "Cinema Home" mode) appeared noticeably darker than standard HDR10 content.”
However, LG has applied some brightness-boosting magic to four Dolby Vision picture modes, so it’s not just Cinema Home, but also the Vivid, Game and Standard modes. The Filmmaker Mode remains unchanged, because the whole point of that setting is to preserve the creator’s original intent and maintain the reference standard. Dolby Vision HDR obviously doesn’t really do that because of the way it changes the picture, so it doesn’t really make sense to change anything. As such, most content will likely appear much darker when viewed in Filmmaker Mode.
LG didn’t describe exactly how it has fixed the issue, but most Redditors seem happy enough with the results, and the general consensus is that it makes for a much better viewing experience in brighter rooms. In such environments, the human eye struggles to perceive the detail in dark images.
Redditor International-Oil377 posted the above and below images along with the settings used on their G5 OLED TV. They said that “Cinema Home is the most interesting” because it’s now quite a bit brighter than Filmmaker Mode, although it doesn't quite hit the heights of Vivid mode. “The highlights pop less than FMM but still remain impactful in a lot of cases,” they wrote.
That said, we’re yet to see how much of a difference the update has made to the LG C5’s Dolby Vision HDR experience. So far, no C5 owners have posted screenshots for us to compare. That could suggest that the update hasn’t quite had the same impact as it has for the G5, but we can’t be sure either way until we see evidence.
It remains to be seen if LG will also update the B5 OLED TV, which uses a much dimmer panel than either the G5 or C5 and could arguably benefit more.
If you own an LG OLED TV and you really want to get the best possible HDR experience out of it, be sure to check out Vincent Teoh's tips:
