A key part of LG’s OLED TV marketing these days is its promise to keep updating its TVs with the latest versions of its WebOS smart system for up to five years. So aside from it arriving a little earlier than expected, it wasn’t a great shock when LG revealed on its product websites this week that it had started rolling out an update for 2023’s C3 and G3 OLED series that upgrade them to WebOS 24. What has come as a (very pleasant) surprise, though, is the new firmware’s addition of a Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode to the C3 and G3’s range of picture presets.
LG’s G3 OLED TVs are now receiving a new firmware update that adds, among other things, Dolby Vision … [+]
The Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode combines two of serious home theater fans’ most popular picture quality features in a bid to deliver the most accurate picture quality possible on your TV. Dolby Vision adds extra scene by scene image information to high dynamic range picture feeds to help compatible screens deliver HDR more accurately, while the Filmmaker Mode uses a picture set up designed (in particular by turning of post-processing features such as noise reduction, motion smoothing and AI Enhancements) to ensure that images track as closely as possible to the established image standards typically used in professional video mastering suites.
I’d worried when I first heard about the Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode that blending these two video features might find them getting in each other’s way a bit. Having now had the chance to experience the mode properly on an LG G4 OLED TV, though, it actually works very well, injecting a touch more dynamism into the Filmmaker Mode’s deliberately relatively flat look (versus a TV’s ‘show off’ picture modes) while simultaneously freeing the picture of the sort of distracting processing-related artefacts that can besmirch some regular Dolby Vision preset options.
LG has a long and impressive track record of delivering updates that add genuine new features to its OLED TVs, rather than its firmware updates merely carrying bug fixes—and these days LG’s updates no longer seem to be plagued by the sort of new glitches that used to crop up quite regularly a few years back. Even by LG’s standards, though, the addition of the Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode to last year’s TVs is an excellent effort.
LG’s C3 range is also in line to get the major new firmware update.
Strangely the change log provided for the LG WebOS 24 update on LG’s US websites doesn’t actually mention the addition of the Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode; it was reported first, to my knowledge, by FlatpanelsHD. This would hardly be the first time, though, that there seems to have been a failure of communication between LG’s update engineers and marketing/customer relations departments!
The change log does reveal, though, that a Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode update is far from the only thing update 23.20.50 delivers. Another actually quite major new feature being added to C3 and G3 OLEDs is built-in Chromecast support, making it much easier to share mobile content on last year’s premium LG OLEDs without needing any additional devices.
A new Voice ID feature, meanwhile, handily allows the TV to recognise whose voice is speaking to it, so that it can automatically switch the menus and settings over to that person’s previously established individual smart profile.
A Sports Portal is added, too, giving sports fans easy access to schedules, scores, betting odds and so on relating to their favourite sporting teams, and last but by no means least, the new update introduces the Chatbot feature to C3 and G3 TVs that works so well on this year’s G4s. This combines AI with LG’s excellent voice recognition engine to give you what works essentially as a customer services/trouble shooting department built into your TV.
The new update has been confirmed by LG as already rolling out to C3 and G3 TVs, but you should note that you might not be able to access it yet as LG typically staggers its firmware roll outs by territory. The update is actually available in the support section of LG’s U.S. website as a file you can download to USB stick, but I wouldn’t recommend you take this option if you live outside the U.S. It’s worth noting, too, that once the new update has been applied, you won’t be able to revert to the previous OS—though at the time of writing I’m not seeing any reports of the new firmware causing any unwanted problems.
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