LG CX-OLED TV user claims to have increased HDMI bandwidth to 48Gbit / s
An owner of an LG CX-OLED TV says on Reddit that he has managed to increase the HDMI bandwidth from 40 to 48Gbit / s. In practice, this does not lead to significant improvements, although this probably means that the bandwidth of 40Gbit / s is not a hardware limitation.
On Reddit, the user says that he has managed to increase the bandwidth to 48Gbit / s and he also offers a step-by-step plan for other users. In short, he used a tool from the maker ToastyX, namely Custom Resolution Utility. This makes it possible to adjust the EDID of the television via Windows. This is a metadata standard that allows televisions and monitors to transmit their capabilities to the video source. As proof of the 48Gbit / s, he also shows that the recallable FreeSync Information screen shows 4 lanes with 12Gbit / s, or 4L12; previously it was 4L10.
According to the user, there are no risks involved, because only the EDID is adjusted via the step-by-step plan. He also says that everything seems to be functioning normally, even though he has not yet been able to test all the features of the HDMI 2.1 standard, such as e-arc. In any case, the user says that it is now possible to use a signal with 4k, 120Hz, 4: 4: 4 chroma subsampling and 12bit, which was previously limited to 60Hz. At 10bit color depth there is no such limitation and the LG CX has a 10bit panel.
In May, it turned out that LG’s OLED TVs from this year once again had HDMI 2.1 support, but that the bandwidth was limited to 40Gbit / s. This while the OLED TVs from LG from 2019 do achieve 48Gbit / s. The HDMI 2.1 specification also assumes 48Gbit / s. There was some surprise and fuss about this limitation with the OLED TVs of 2020, even though 4k in combination with 120Hz is possible with a maximum of 40Gbit / s. LG stated that it had reallocated ‘hardware resources’ for the 2020 chipsets so that they are optimized for the televisions AI functions.
In practice, the full 48Gbit / s compared to 40Gbit / s is actually only of added value in the case of 12bit panels. And there are currently no such consumer televisions. There are now more devices that support HDMI 2.1, but do not go beyond 40Gbit / s, such as the Xbox Series X console from Microsoft.