The seemingly endless confusion surrounding the specifications of HDMI 2.1 connections has struck again. And this time the source of the confusion is the one brand that had previously declared itself above the whole HDMI 2.1 mess: LG Electronics.
LG has contacted me today to say that contrary to initial communications, and in a turn around from the HDMI 2.1 situation introduced with its 2019 4K TVs, none of its 2020 4K TVs, OLED or LCD, will carry ‘full bandwidth’ HDMI ports capable of handling HDMI 2.1’s maximum 48Gbps data rate. The good news is that this almost certainly doesn’t matter in real world terms.
The 48Gbps rate is required to handle uncompressed 12-bit 4K at 120Hz with RGB 4:4:4 chroma sampling. LG tells me now, though, that while all the HDMIs on its premium 2019 TVs were indeed full 48Gbps examples, all four HDMIs on the WX, GX and CX OLED TVs will instead handle 10-bit (rather than 12-bit) 4K at 120Hz with RGB 4:4:4 chroma sampling. This implies a likely 40Gbps data rate.
It turns out that contrary to initial indications (and unlike 2019 models), none of LG's new 4K TVs ... [+]
On LG’s BX OLED and the NANO91, NANO90 and NANO86 LCD TVs (which use LG’s Alpha 7 Gen 3 processor, rather than the Alpha 9 Gen 3 processor found on the premium OLEDs) you will get two HDMI 2.1 ports capable of 10-bit 4K at 120Hz with RGB 4:4:4, and two lower bandwidth ports that max out at 4K/60P with 8-bit RGB 4:4:4.
There’s no getting round the fact that the HDMI situation with LG’s 2020 4K TVs is a pretty big turn around from the brand’s 2019 position, where it was very vocal about its desire to reduce the confusion and worry associated with buying a new TV by simply offering full HDMI 2.1 support when its rivals did not (even this year, so far as I know only one brand, Sony, is offering 48Gbps HDMI 2.1 support, on just its XH90 TVs). So why the change of heart?
Here’s the official statement LG shared with me:
“While LG covered most of the HDMI 2.1 related specs in its 2019 TVs, including full bandwidth support in all of the HDMI ports for its 4K and 8K TVs, the market situation evolution indicated that real content that requires 48Gbps is not available in the market.
Based on market situation, LG decided to re-allocate the hardware resources of 2020 chipsets optimizing for AI functions including CPU&GPU and supporting full bandwidth in only 2 ports of 2020 8K TV series (ZX series, NANO99, NANO97, NANO95). And the rest of the ports of 8K TVs and all HDMI 2.1 ports of 4K TVs have lower bandwidth than 48 Gbps but support up to 4K 120P 4:4:4/RGB 10bit. We apologize for not flagging this earlier to you.”
The Xbox Series X is going to push even 2020 TVs to their absolute limits when it launches at the ... [+]
In other words, according to LG’s statement, the brand believes it can deliver better performance through its ‘intelligent’ automatic audio and visual adjustment systems if it takes processing capacity away from the HDMI 2.1 inputs and makes it available to the TVs’ AI systems instead. And that it thinks this is OK to do because there’s little evidence of sources arriving that will take advantage of the full 48Gbps HDMI 2.1 data rate capacity.
It’s interesting to note from the statement, too, that LG is now only claiming that two of the HDMIs on its 2020 8K OLED and LCD TVs will be full bandwidth 48Gbps connections capable of 12-bit 8K/60Hz at 4:2:0 YCbCr. The other two will be top out at 10-bit.
So what does this all mean in practical terms? Well, while we don’t yet know for certain the absolute maximum potential output capability of the next generation of consoles, a TV being able to support 10-bit 4K at 120Hz with 10-bit RGB 4:4:4 should be enough to get the job done.
Even if a game was potentially able to up its output to 12-bit, it’s highly debatable that you would see a visible difference given that all TVs are currently only 10-bit. And as we’ve seen, LG (along with, I suspect, other brands taking a similar not-quite-full-48Gbps-approach to HDMI 2.1 this year) can reasonably argue that it can make a more visible difference with the extra power it’s making available to its video processing systems by limiting the HDMI 2.1 bandwidth.
Now if only the PS5 and Xbox Series X could just hurry up and get here early, so we can all play around with all their next-gen loveliness for ourselves!...
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Naturally I will be updating my recent review of the LG 65NANO906 to reflect the new connectivity information, as well as my LG 2020 TV range overview article. Links to these articles are below, as well as to a couple of other articles you might find interesting.
LG 65NANO90 (65NANO906) 4K TV Review: Changing Up
LG’s 2020 TV Line Up Explained And Priced
LG OLED65CX OLED TV First Impressions
Surprise Xbox Series X Features Will Make Old Games Look Brand New
