[Update: LG has just announced that it is going to introduce a firmware update that will improve HDR game lag on its TVs. Details here. The original story continues below.]
Just days after I reported that frustrated owners of LG OLED TVs had kicked off a petition to try and get LG to improve the input lag of its TVs when playing high dynamic range images, owners of LG LCD TVs have started a separate petition over the same game-related issue.
This new petition can, like the OLED one, be found on change.org, and again it makes the point that due to the amount of time it takes LG’s LCD TVs to render pictures after receiving image data at their inputs, they’re seriously compromised as gaming monitors.
In fact, the case for LG to reduce HDR input lag with its LCD TVs is arguably even more critical than the one proposed by the OLED petitioners. Partly because the relative affordability of LG’s LCD TVs means there are likely more of them out there in people’s homes, but also because some of the most affordable HDR-capable LCD TVs in LG’s current range suffer from really quite extreme amounts of input lag.
Lag hell
The excellent folk at rtings.com have recorded input lag of nearly 140ms with some of LG’s most affordable - and thus most popular - LCD TVs when they’re running in HDR mode. This is more than four times higher than the sub-40ms input lag figures we look for from gaming-friendly TVs.
Even LG’s premium LCD TVs for 2016 deliver input lag of around 60ms in HDR mode. Not shockingly bad, but again almost twice as high as we’d ideally see, and enough to represent a potential performance-damaging problem for seriously competitive gamers.
The issue for LG is that it didn’t predict the arrival of HDR games consoles when it launched its 2016 LCD TVs, and so didn’t include a low-lag Game picture preset you can activate after the TV kicks into its HDR playback mode. The game mode LG’s TVs provide for standard dynamic range images reduces lag right down to a fairly consistent 30ms or so across LG’s latest TVs, so you can see why so many gamers are keen to get a similar input lag result for HDR gaming too.
Even Sony's TV division failed to take into account that the PS4 Pro and PS4 Pro models would make... [+]
To be fair, other TV brands have fallen into the same missing HDR Game Mode trap. Even the vast majority of Sony’s 2015/2016 TVs didn’t provide HDR gaming support despite Sony recently introducing HDR gaming to all of its PS4 consoles.
However, while Samsung and (as reported in this separate story) Sony have both managed to introduce firmware updates that introduce a proper HDR Game mode in Samsung’s case and generally reduced HDR lag in Sony’s case, LG has remained largely silent on whether it can and will introduce a way of reducing HDR lag on its TVs. Despite many owners - and me! - repeatedly asking them about it.
Hence the new petition. The OLED petition now boasts nearly 2000 digital signatures only a week or so after launch, and I could easily imagine the LCD one racking up at least the same sort of numbers once word of it spreads. At which point there will be some serious pressure on LG to either find a fix or come right out and admit that a fix isn’t possible.
Watch this space for further developments.
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