I have now had it confirmed directly from LG’s factory in Korea that the EG960 does not use a Silicon Image HDMI port processor. LG have implemented their own solution and looking at the tracks on the TV’s circuit board, it would appear that part of the main XD engine is doing the work (as illustrated).
If LG had have used the sil9777 chip from SI they would not have to worry about HDMI 2.0a firmware as SI would have written and tested it. Having your own chip means that either you have to write your own firmware or ensure that third party code runs on your platform.
LG have stated that the EG960 will not support HDR via the HDMI port and that they will launch HDR products that do in the second half of 2015. Let’s look at the possibilities come September.
We know that there will be several new TVs.
- A 55EG920, likely to be a tweaked version of the unreleased 55 Inch EC970 with WebOS 2.0. This set is unlikely to be HDR compliant.
- 55EF950 and 65EF950, flat screens of the same generation as the EG960 curved.
- 65EF980 flat screen with enhanced audio via integrated soundbar.
The 950s and 980s were all shown at CES and are of the same generation, this would imply they use the same video processing. It would be strange if the EF950 used an upgraded processor and its more expensive, curved sibling did not.
The EF980, possibly joined by a curved EG980 could but it would require different hardware at a time when LG are trying to reduce production costs; common components save money.
If the HDMI processor cannot be software updated, LG may show a completely new HDR TV. It’s possible but it would be expensive and is something that normally happens once a year at CES. It makes far more sense that the current models can and will be software updated to support v2.0a.
HDMI chips come in 2 speeds, 340MHz and 600MHz. The former is the v1.4 spec but was tweaked to allow 4k video at p50/60 with 8 bits and 4:2:0 chroma sampling. This has been referred to as v2.0 level B and was common in early 4k TVs. The latter is the full HDMI 2.0 spec and adds 10 to 16 bits at 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 (4:4:4 at lower framerates), 10 bits minimum are required for HDR.
Looking at the deep colour capabilities of the EG960, it’s clear that the processor is a 600MHz unit and can therefore support full fat HDMI 2.0.
It’s possible there is a hardware issue on the chip that stops a HDR update; I did notice that the 12 bit options are greyed out in the deep colour menus. Some forms of HDR do require 12 bits, even though they would be downscaled to 10 bit for display.
Since the changes required for HDR are pretty minor and passing 12 bit should be part of the v2.0 spec, it’s difficult to understand why a simple firmware update wouldn’t suffice.
I spoke to an industry contact over a year ago about HDMI 2.1 and the addition of Display Stream Compression; that hasn’t been released yet so LG would have definitely known the earlier, HDR draft spec at design time.
So, new model notwithstanding, if the firmware can be updated for the flat screens, why can’t it be updated for the EG960?
At the end of the day, I can’t see LG showing off their UHD Blu-Ray players at IFA, constantly explaining why half their OLED TV range won’t work with it. We will have to wait and see.”