LG confirms vrr-issue OLED TVs and does not add AirPlay 2 to 2018 TVs

LG confirms that when playing games on OLED TVs from 2019 and 2020, there may be situations where unwanted luminance changes occur in dark scenes. In addition, it now appears that LG seems to be returning to its promise to add AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to TVs from 2018.

There have been complaints about the implementation of variable refresh rate modes in LG’s OLED TVs from this and last year, and the company now acknowledges this in a statement to Forbes. In it, the company says there may be situations where luminance changes occur in dark scenes in vrr mode games. According to LG, these changes can be more clearly visible on OLED TVs than on LCD TVs, because the color black on OLED TVs is much deeper, so that the brightness differences in gray parts can appear larger. LG does not say when it thinks it has a solution ready. That could take a while, as the manufacturer indicates that it has been a challenge to implement these ‘advanced game features’ in today’s panel technology.

Television reviewer John Archer says he experienced this problem himself with LG’s 48 “CX-OLed TV. Once VR is turned on, the gamma value or brightness shifts, making dark areas in games look grayer and more restless. Vrr must be here by the way. can be understood as the generic name for the various techniques to synchronize the refresh rate of the TV with the output of the GPU; it also plays for FreeSync and G-Sync. For example, Archer describes that enabling the FreeSync function in the HDR Gears 5 calibration screen leads to increased black levels, resulting in less shadow detail in the dark areas of the hdr calibration image A user took a video of this issue illustrating the issues with the game’s hdr calibration tool , coupled with the use of G-Sync. According to Archer, the problem is even more visible if the TV’s game picture mode is exchanged for an a other picture mode.

There are also users who report flickering in the image on LG OLED TVs from 2019, when VR is switched on. In a video of a user, the flicker in the image is clearly visible, especially in the dark areas of a game. The flicker almost disappears when G-Sync is turned off. Another user confirms this problem and states that it actually gets worse in game mode. He recommends using a standard picture mode and manually turning off all kinds of image processing techniques that are disabled by default in game mode. Incidentally, this problem does not seem to occur with all games.

Apart from this vrr issue, there has been a petition from LG TV owners for some time now to add Airplay 2 and HomeKit to the suitable models that came out in 2018. It looked like this support would also be added via a software update. LG indicated in a support document in April that this was expected to be available in October for televisions released in 2018 with at least webOS 4.0. A week ago, however, an employee of the British LG division announced in a now-deleted Twitter message that LG has no plans to provide the 2018 models with Airplay 2 and HomeKit. MacRumors shows, among other things, the text of this reaction and the part of the support document in which LG at the time indicated that it would come with this update.

AirPlay 2 allows users to stream videos, photos and music from an Apple device or the Apple TV app to a supported television, among other things. HomeKit lets users control their television with the Home app or with Siri voice assistant.