Bad video and sound quality on now tv on LG TV

[pootle]

This page says I should be able to stream full HD and DD 5.1 with my LG TV. I'm getting stereo and video that varies between poor SD and 720p a lot of the time, it does manage 1080p sometimes. I never get DD 5.1

My subscription includes boost - although that seems a waste of money given I don't reliably get 1080p and never get DD5.1

I'm using an LG CX TV with s/w version 04.40.10

ARC to a Yamaha receiver

rock solid 50Mb internet connection

[gavs82008 · Accepted solution]

@pootle 

For 5.1 sound you’ll need to adjust settings on the TV along with in the app itself.

https://help.nowtv.com/article/how-to-adjust-audio-settings

To select surround sound:

• Step 1: In the NOW app, go to My Account and Settings and ensure that Surround sound is selected.
• Step 2: On your LG TV, go to All settings, then Sound and Additional settings and ensure DTV Audio is set to Dolby Digital Plus orDolby Digital.
  
  

As for the 1080p, have you tried unplugging both your TV and router for a minutes?

You could also clear/delete the data and cache of the app.

[commanda6]

Hi @pootle @gavs82008 

the information in the article mentioned above is definitely correct with respect to step one. However, I feel the need to caution users with respect to step two. The setting mentioned in step two relates only to have the TV handles audio with respect to digital TV broadcasts be those via terrestrial or satellite. It has no bearing with respect to now.

The setting you are actually looking for in relation to step two is actually 'digital audio out' this setting must be set to either auto or passthrough in order to achieve 5.1 audio for some reason, by default on many of the later LG TVs. The default setting for this option is PCM and that most certainly is not conducive to achieving 5.1 audio. Indeed, when set to PCM you would be stuck with stereo.

most of the time, you will not need to do anything with respect to step two. As it is only on LG TVs from the past couple of years that have the relevant option set to PCM by default. You only need to check the digital audio out option if completing step one  still results in stereo output. Do not confuse the digital audio out setting with HDMI output format

@Simon-J . Can the  information in the article @gavs82008 mentions above be changed to more accurately reflect the settings on LG TVs with respect to audio as currently what he suggested to step two would actually do nothing. I understand that the information might have been correct at one point in time, but it certainly isn't any more.

[Simon-J]

Hi @commanda6 Thanks for the feedback, I've sent it over to the Help team to review 🙂

[RoyB]

@pootle @commanda6 

CX is 2020, so not one of the latest two iterations, which are C1 and C2.

I have a GX with a GX soundbar, and on my goto test movie, Dune, Now gives nothing away to the HD BluRay (though the UHD disc does show up what Now lacks).

So something’s not right somewhere with Now on your CX.

It’s worth running WiFi Analyzer on an Android phone or tablet, to see if your WiFi is experiencing contention, maybe moving the router onto clearer 2.4GHz and 5GHz channels, and making sure the TV is using a 5GHz connection, if it is in range and capable of it.

[RoyB]

Sorry, @commanda6, I was obviously too literal-minded there to understand that ‘couple of years’ might be three or more 😛

I do know that the LGs changed after the GX, and gained the Freeview Play that provides the All4 that the -X TVs still lack, but I don’t know if the setup UI changed on these.

But on my GX, and so, I would imagine, on the CX, both the audio settings under discussion, DTV Audio Setting and Digital Sound Out, are in Settings/All Settings/Sound/Additional Settings.

My DTV Audio Setting is Dolby Digital Plus.

Digital Sound Out can’t be set when you are on the internal speakers, but on my usual (e)ARC to the GX soundbar, it shows Passthrough. The LG legend seems to expect you to use Passthrough, and only select PCM or Auto if you can’t hear anything on Passthrough.

All of the DTV Audio Settings work on Passthrough, for me.

I don’t know what the default was for Digital Audio Setting, but the manual provides this small nugget of information:-

If set to Auto the search order is AC4 → HE-AAC → Dolby Digital Plus → Dolby Digital→ MPEG and output is produced in the first Audio Format found.

MPEG seems to be being used interchangeably with Stereo and with PCM.

Playing Dune on the native Now app, with Boost, on the GX TV and the GX soundbar with  the SP8 wireless rears, I get the full 5.1 surround sound experience, showing Stream Quality 7830 when I pause it.

What do you get, @pootle if/when you try this? That will tell us if your stream is what it should be or not.

[commanda6]

---

@RoyB wrote:

But on my GX, and so, I would imagine, on the CX, both the audio settings under discussion, DTV Audio Setting and Digital Sound Out, are in Settings/All Settings/Sound/Additional Settings.

My DTV Audio Setting is Dolby Digital Plus.

Digital Sound Out can’t be set when you are on the internal speakers, but on my usual (e)ARC to the GX soundbar, it shows Passthrough. The LG legend seems to expect you to use Passthrough, and only select PCM or Auto if you can’t hear anything on Passthrough.

All of the DTV Audio Settings work on Passthrough, for me.

I don’t know what the default was for Digital Audio Setting, but the manual provides this small nugget of information:-

If set to Auto the search order is AC4 → HE-AAC → Dolby Digital Plus → Dolby Digital→ MPEG and output is produced in the first Audio Format found.

MPEG seems to be being used interchangeably with Stereo and with PCM.

Playing Dune on the native Now app, with Boost, on the GX TV and the GX soundbar with  the SP8 wireless rears, I get the full 5.1 surround sound experience, showing Stream Quality 7830 when I pause it.

What do you get, @pootle if/when you try this? That will tell us if your stream is what it should be or not.

---

Hi @RoyB   

I was operating on the assumption that @pootle was not using the internal TV speakers as would be standard practice when wanting 5.1 audio as very few TVs would support this by internal speakers. My experience you would have to pay several thousand pounds for such a TV

in my experience, the DTV audio setting should never be touched and should be letting a lot. This is because of the weird and wonderful things we do with TV audio here in the UK, especially on digital terrestrial while everyone else HD channels uses good old Dolby Digital plus, we use HE-AAC , which sometimes leads to weird and wonderful things happening (yes, I say that with sarcasm) . I know why we do that here in the UK that it can be a real pain . As I said above that setting actually has no bearing on Now whatsoever. On leaving you to alter should the least achieve your desired results. Almost every time.

I have an LG sandbar (SP8YA) with SP8 rear speakers as well, and I see the exact behaviour that you see your setup and achieve full 5.1 audio on Now

my settings are as follows

• digital audio out: passthrough
• HDMI output format: bitstream
• DTV audio: Auto

I hope that the steering all of these details helps @pootle sort out their issue😀

[pootle]

I'm mostly getting stream quality 7830 now, although it does lapse lower fairly regularly. I'm assuming this is Now TV's servers / network as I can stream 4k HDR using iplayer flawlessly, and that needs LOTS more bandwidth than full HD. I'm just really disappointed that there is no way at all to get 4k HDR for HBO in the UK (well apart from VPNs etc).  Good 4k HDR is SO much better than 1080p (for example His dark materials on BBC iplayer and Blade runner 2049).

After the fix @gavs82008 posted for sound, I am getting 5.1 reliably to my receiver. The TV was already setup to deliver 5.1 to the receiver via ARC, I just didn't realise the app would need to be told to do this rather than picking the info up from the TV as most other apps seem to do automatically.

just as a further note to @commanda6 

For all except my blu-ray player, sound is from tv back to yamaha receiver via ARC; youtube, BBC iplayer apps all work flawlessly. I do have a problem with some 4k blu ray discs as the LG CX won't pass some surround sound formats back through ARC, even though my receiver handles them, so the blu-ray player (LG) uses a toslink connection direct to the receiver, which works for all the older surround sound fornats (DTS, DD 5.1), but I miss out on the joys of dolby atmos for now.

[commanda6]

---

@pootle wrote:

After the fix @gavs82008 posted for sound, I am getting 5.1 reliably to my receiver. The TV was already setup to deliver 5.1 to the receiver via ARC, I just didn't realise the app would need to be told to do this rather than picking the info up from the TV as most other apps seem to do automatically.

just as a further note to @commanda6 

For all except my blu-ray player, sound is from tv back to yamaha receiver via ARC; youtube, BBC iplayer apps all work flawlessly. I do have a problem with some 4k blu ray discs as the LG CX won't pass some surround sound formats back through ARC, even though my receiver handles them, so the blu-ray player (LG) uses a toslink connection direct to the receiver, which works for all the older surround sound fornats (DTS, DD 5.1), but I miss out on the joys of dolby atmos for now.

---

Hi @pootle 

so your LG CX or receiver don't support eARC? If that's the case then @RoyB is correct you would be better off connecting your Blu-ray player directly to one about HDMI inputs on your Yamaha receiver. eARC support is needed for the newer sound formats (anything newer than Dolby Digital plus). Connecting your 4K Blu-ray player directly to your receiver and allow you to bypass the limitations of ARC and you would have access to all the formats that your receiver supports when playing Blu-ray/4K Blu-ray and would probably no longer need the toslink connection. 

[pootle]

The cx supports eARC. My old Yamaha amp only supports ARC. With the blue
ray player running hdmi to the tv and toslink to the amp, the amp
automatically flips to the toslink for dd5.1 etc. when I play a blue ray
disc

[commanda6]

---

@pootle wrote:
The cx supports eARC. My old Yamaha amp only supports ARC. With the blue
ray player running hdmi to the tv and toslink to the amp, the amp
automatically flips to the toslink for dd5.1 etc. when I play a blue ray
disc

---

@pootle if it's working perfectly for your needs, then I'd say leave it as it is. 😀

I was just concerned that you might be limiting yourself with your current setup as typically in order to get the most out of Blu-ray discs. It is advisable to have Blu-ray players connected directly to an AV receiver input via HDMI , rather than being connected to the TV directly. Thereby bypassing bypassing HDMI ARC altogether and allowing you to take advantage of every single format your AV receiver supports. Now should be outputting in Dolby Digital plus, for its 5.1 audio. Assuming your setup supports it. If your setup doesn't support it get Dolby Digital output your AV receiver should tell you what it is outputting. 😉

With the advent of e-ARC assuming that all devices in the chain support e-ARC lack format support is no longer an issue. I've never seen standard ARC go above DD plus or DTS in terms of format support.

Right now, onto @RoyB 's problem.

It's always been my understanding that the DTS format is supposed to be backwards compatible similar to the Dolby formats. So if your setup doesn't support DTS Master audio then it should try an output in DTS HD or DTS, but in your case it doesn't seem to be doing that would suggest you might have an even bigger problem. There any audio settings on your Blu-ray player itself. If so, it may be set use Dolby formats. The Xbox one family of devices. For example, does something similar. Mine, for instance, is set as Dolby Atmos and output as Dolby Digital plus, where Atmos is not supported

I have to say Les Miserables  seems to be a rather special Blu-ray if it doesn't possess a Dolby Digital plus/Dolby Digital audio track as a fallback, so I think you find yourself to be in quite a unique situation.

[commanda6]

I am aware that the CX would not be exactly the same as the one C1 and C2 @RoyB . The CX would be running running webOS 5 . Before I had my C1. I did have a 2020 WebOS5  LG TV which my grandmother is has now inherited. I agree with you that there is something likely wrong with the setup on the @pootle 's CX 

the fact that LG keeps changing the layout of their settings menus doesn't really help the situation here, but here would be my recommendation , bearing in mind that most of the settings names that we are  talking about here haven't changed since WebOS4 . But where the settings can be found within the menus has so @pootle might need to go on a bit of a hunt.

ensure that 'digital audio out' is set to auto and not PCM . If I remember correctly WebOS5  could  occasionally be funny with audio when the above-mentioned setting was set to pass through

@pootle  just to confirm you are using the Smart TV functions on LG TV itself to access Now and not an external device that is connected to the TV via HDMI? If you're using an external device to access Now you will also need to ensure that 'HDMI output format' is also set to bitstream and not PCM

with respect to the information that is in Nows help article in relation to this, due to the amount of changes that have occurred to LG TVs with respect to audio in the past four or five years. It is no longer sufficient to have basic generic advice in that article . The problem with that is that it's going to make things significantly more complicated from a support point of view.

[RoyB]

@commanda6 @pootle 

Yes, I agree 5.1 implies external speakers, and indeed @pootle mentions a Yamaha receiver.

I just threw in that comment about internal speakers for completeness.

Which logically, I suppose, should have had me mentioning that all my HDMI ins are set to bitstream; I didn’t because I knew we were talking about Now on the TV, and not any external inputs.

I also have to bear in mind that when playing discs, for the full experience, the video goes to the GX TV, and the audio connection is to the GX soundbar, which can handle DTS when the disc proffers it; the GX TV can’t even pass this through.

However, the BluRay player is normally set to send both video and audio to the TV, so the rest of the family don’t have to faff about manually setting the soundbar from eARC to HDMI, which is a needed step when video and audio are split.

[RoyB]

@pootle @commanda6 

Can you not connect to the Yamaha via HDMI?

My UHD player has two HDMI outputs, so I can send video via one of them to the TV and audio via the other to the soundbar.

I used to need this with a Yamaha soundbar that, confronted with the Planet Earth UHD DISC, couldn’t pass the video requiring HDCP 2.1 back out to the TV, while the TV couldn’t pass the audio on the disc unscathed over ARC to the soundbar, so no single HDMI connection could do the whole job.

But splitting the video and audio meant the UHD player could send the DHCP 2.1-requiring video to the TV, and the better-than-ARC-requiring audio to the soundbar.

I thought I could give up needing two connections when I got the GX TV with its eARC, but annoyingly it can’t handle DTS audio, so I still need the second cable to the GX soundbar, which can.

After some fiddling about this morning, in pursuit of what this thread is about, I now have the UHD player with video and audio permanently split, and when I put it on, the audio signal causes the soundbar to go into HDMI automatically and play the audio, while the TV shows the video.

To get back to normal TV, which needs the soundbar to be on eARC, you variously have to just select TV, when it will go back to eARC some of the time, or power the TV off and on again.

What the mechanisms here might be are buried deep in the CEC rules, and I haven’t figured out a pattern yet, but the main thing is, it’s a simple instruction for the family to follow, rather than having to fetch me to fix it.

[RoyB]

@commanda6 @pootle 

We’re getting away from the Now issue now, I know, but I’ve just made a horrifying discovery.

Picking out a BluRay to test DTS - Les Miserables in DTS Master Audio, and only that, to test how the GX TV and the GX soundbar, respectively, handle it, it seems that neither does, and the audio is PCM Stereo on both 😢

I would expect this on the TV, but the soundbar is supposed to support DTS-X, which is in turn supposed to support the lesser DTS formats, like Master Audio.

But the BluRay player has a button on the remote that you can press, to tell you both what the disc is capable of, and what it is actually feeding each output with after the handshake with the device on the other end.

The video is fine, and the output is the same as what the disc says it is capable of. 
 
But the audio, both as output with the video on the player’s video/audio HDMI 1, and as output on the audio-only HDMI 2, is just PCM.

I tried suppressing the audio on HDMI 1, vis the player’s option to make this channel video-only, in case this was to do with the dual video output, but while this did indeed remove the audio details for this channel, shown on the player’s display, the audio-only channel was still showing only PCM.

This looks to me like the GX soundbar is not doing what LG claim for it; but before I complain to them, can anyone think of anything I might be doing wrong here? Or things to try?

[commanda6]

@pootle @RoyB you should both make sure that 5.1 audio is working today as watching 'house of the Dragon' without 5.1 audio would be against the laws of entertainment 😁

[RoyB]

Things are now worse on the GX setup than before. The soundbar has lost its eARC option, does not respond to the Off on the On/off button on its remote, and no longer turns on when the TV turns on.

This is not correct. I shall have strong words with it.