u/dysphunc

I know I said I'd follow up on this a couple of weeks ago, apologies I've been unwell.

Anyway, this is out of many methods the easiest way to consistently get the best out of your LG B5 and use HDR all day every day. Have good blacks in games and not need to download any HDR mods - but I think you should still use HDR mods as they usually do more than fix the black floor. But if you don't want to have to check and find mods for every game this method takes care of that.

And to the "HDR is only for gaming" crew, you do you boo.

All you need to start off is to be in Game Optimizer, Video Range Auto and Color Gamut Auto.

You will need to download ColorControl https://github.com/Maassoft/ColorControl

There are plenty of guides on how to connect your TV but here's Google Gemini's quick summary:

Step-by-Step Manual Connection

Follow these steps if ColorControl does not automatically find your LG TV on the network:

1. Find TV IP Address: Open your TV settings. Go to Network > Wi-Fi or Ethernet Connection > Advanced Wi-Fi/Ethernet Settings. Note down the IP Address and MAC Address.
2. Open ColorControl: Open the application as an administrator on your PC.
3. Open LG Controller: Click on the LG Controller tab at the top.
4. Add New Device: Click the Add button located next to the device dropdown menu.
5. Enter Device Details:
   • Name: Type any name (e.g., "Living Room TV").
   • IP Address: Enter the exact IP address from step 1.
   • MAC Address: Enter the MAC address (required if you want the PC to turn the TV on via Wake-on-LAN).
6. Save and Apply: Click Ok or Save to add the TV to your device list.
7. Authorize on TV: Click any button in the ColorControl app (like Power Off or Mute). Look at your TV screen and select Allow/Yes on the popup prompt using your TV remote.

Once you've done this the single game changing setting you need in here is to change the Gamma setting. If only this was on in the menus :-/ High 1 and High 2 are pretty much the same they're 2.4 or BT.1886 which look the same to me. This will fix the mismatch between Windows and your TV

ColorControl - settings not found in the menus.

You'll notice everything get a tiny bit darker and colors looking deeper, but this method doesn't crush any blacks or cut brightness off the top like some other methods. Such as changing the HDMI black level or reducing the Video range to Limited.

Now you can run through the Windows 11 HDR calibration tool and the TV (if you've the 48") should calibrate to 0-800-800. The saturation slider is at your discretion but it doesn't do much so I crank it up.

That's it. Every game that was washed out in HDR or you needed a mod for is fixed. Plus SDR wallpapers look as they should and the peak brightness is intact. You only need to go into ColorControl again if you change any settings that change the Gamma level on the TV.

My previous method involved me fixing the gamma in Windows, but every other time I restarted my PC the HDR color profile would change back to a Windows one and not any of my custom ones.

So what we've done here is:

Sorry my camera's not great

Go from crappy Windows HDR gamma to helping the TV display it correctly. No highlights are lost and no blacks are crushed.

My only other preferred settings are Warm 20 and I saturate my color to 75. Tone mapping off with Mastering sliders all at 100, basically like HGiG but a tiny bit of extra brightness. That's it.

Hopefully I've helped someone, if you don't want to download anything and want to achieve close to this just with the TV - just set your Video Range to Limited and your Color Gamut to Adobe RGB or Home Cinema. The reason you'll want to force a different Color Gamut is because your colors will be off and red saturated in Limited range, those gamut's will pull it back in line. The only draw back to this is that there's black crush and highlight loss. You'll need to calibrate to .1-550-550. It's fine, just not quite as vibrant as the first method. You always turn on Dynamic Tone Mapping to push the brightness back up a bit.

Feel free to ask any questions, there are some other methods and color ranges I explored with slightly brighter and more vibrant results, but they were more of a hassle and had that extra maintenance of turning it on every time I restarted my PC.