LG OLED TV G-SYNC Update Wants To Level Up Living Room Gaming

Of late, TV makers have been competing with each other on adding "smart" or AI-powered features to ride on the wave of trends in the general tech industry. Mostly that applies to things like upscaling to 4K or even 8K, HDR and color management, and frame interpolation. The overall goal is always the same, to offer the smoothest video output possible. That may work well for regular movies and films but game graphics can be a bit trickier to address. That's why LG will be pushing NVIDIA's G-SYNC technology to its most recent TV sets to make them suitable not just for binging but also for gaming on large screens.

Video games usually require more than what you'd find even in advanced TVs. In addition to fast response rates, games are usually subject to the phenomenon of tearing or flickering when the display can't keep up with the video data that a computer is spitting out.

NVIDIA developed its G-SYNC technology to ensure that the computer, or rather the graphics card, and the display are in sync to prevent artifacts from ruining your game. As nice as it sounds, it does require that the displays support G-SYNC, which is the case for many high-end computer monitors. TVs, on the other hand, not so much.

That is why LG is almost boastful of what it's trying to achieve, claiming dibs on the first TVs to be compatible with NVIDIA G-SYNC. This gives its OLED TVs an edge in gaming. Of course, given the size of the TVs that will get this firmware update, LG is suggesting more or less PC gaming in the living room, perhaps how Valve envisioned Steam OS would be used.

LG says that the update will start rolling out this week in North America with other markets to follow soon. Not all LG TVs are entitled, of course, only the 2019 OLED TVs such as the E9, the C9, and the B9 sets. It also goes without saying that you will also need a computer with an NVIDIA graphics card, specifically an RTX 20 or GTX 16 series cards.