LG OLED, fix for the 100Mb NIC bottleneck
Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2019 11:26 pm
Hi all,
I just encountered and successfully tested a major improvement for the built-in DLNA streaming on LG OLED TVs - you can buy a specific CableMatters USB Gigabit Ethernet adapter which Web OS apparently contains integrated driver support for, and you simply use this instead of the disappointing built-in wired 100Mb network connection. You won't get the full gigabit throughput, but you will notice a significant improvement: around 250Mb is achievable which is more than enough to play 1:1 UHD disc rips without issue. With this there's basically no need to buy an nVidia Shield, removing a lot of AV setup complexity for the rest of the family.
I can play the 140Mb Jelly Fish test clip fine on the TV's Photo & Video DLNA client app served from Serviio for instance with no buffering nor dropouts. Bear in mind that the UHD Bluray disc spec is up to 128Mb so in theory all UHD rips now ought to be playable. Another bonus of this external NIC is that I noticed I could also scan through some high bitrate MKV files that previously could only be stopped or started.
I did find that even with this fix some of the store UHD demos still stutter a little bit (itself a big improvement, yet these play fine off USB mass storage) so I presume that these particular clips contain very high but transient bandwidth peaks which likely exceed the disc spec (e.g. Sony Mont Blanc demo stutters consistently at the point the helicopter enters frame, whether using Plex Media Server plus Plex app, or Serviio and Photo & Video app).
Oddly this discovery has highlighted that 2017 and earlier models have a single USB 3.0 port (side) and two USB 2.0 ports (rear), but sadly the 2018 or newer models are limited to USB 2.0 only for all three ports. USB 2.0 has a 480Mb overall bus speed, and other components like the wifi controller reportedly share this bus, hence a real world network bandwidth much lower than this. I have a 2018 B8 so it's possible the benefit may be even greater on a 2017 TV for instance.
When you use the external NIC the TV doesn't show any status for it (Internal NIC shows as disabled) but all of the TV's WebOS apps (e.g. Netflix, Amazon, BBC iPlayer) continue to work fine.
And the beauty is that this NIC only costs £10.99 from Amazon!
I found the info on the WebOS forum here. Details of retailers in other countries for confirmed working products, and availability of the white external NIC can be found there (Amazon Europe only seems to have black - no such a good match for the white plastics of the 2017 TV rear).
There is of course a danger that this driver support and secret functionality could be removed from future WebOS firmware versions, so be cautious updating until continued support is confirmed.
Enjoy!
I just encountered and successfully tested a major improvement for the built-in DLNA streaming on LG OLED TVs - you can buy a specific CableMatters USB Gigabit Ethernet adapter which Web OS apparently contains integrated driver support for, and you simply use this instead of the disappointing built-in wired 100Mb network connection. You won't get the full gigabit throughput, but you will notice a significant improvement: around 250Mb is achievable which is more than enough to play 1:1 UHD disc rips without issue. With this there's basically no need to buy an nVidia Shield, removing a lot of AV setup complexity for the rest of the family.
I can play the 140Mb Jelly Fish test clip fine on the TV's Photo & Video DLNA client app served from Serviio for instance with no buffering nor dropouts. Bear in mind that the UHD Bluray disc spec is up to 128Mb so in theory all UHD rips now ought to be playable. Another bonus of this external NIC is that I noticed I could also scan through some high bitrate MKV files that previously could only be stopped or started.
I did find that even with this fix some of the store UHD demos still stutter a little bit (itself a big improvement, yet these play fine off USB mass storage) so I presume that these particular clips contain very high but transient bandwidth peaks which likely exceed the disc spec (e.g. Sony Mont Blanc demo stutters consistently at the point the helicopter enters frame, whether using Plex Media Server plus Plex app, or Serviio and Photo & Video app).
Oddly this discovery has highlighted that 2017 and earlier models have a single USB 3.0 port (side) and two USB 2.0 ports (rear), but sadly the 2018 or newer models are limited to USB 2.0 only for all three ports. USB 2.0 has a 480Mb overall bus speed, and other components like the wifi controller reportedly share this bus, hence a real world network bandwidth much lower than this. I have a 2018 B8 so it's possible the benefit may be even greater on a 2017 TV for instance.
When you use the external NIC the TV doesn't show any status for it (Internal NIC shows as disabled) but all of the TV's WebOS apps (e.g. Netflix, Amazon, BBC iPlayer) continue to work fine.
And the beauty is that this NIC only costs £10.99 from Amazon!
I found the info on the WebOS forum here. Details of retailers in other countries for confirmed working products, and availability of the white external NIC can be found there (Amazon Europe only seems to have black - no such a good match for the white plastics of the 2017 TV rear).
There is of course a danger that this driver support and secret functionality could be removed from future WebOS firmware versions, so be cautious updating until continued support is confirmed.
Enjoy!