LG 31MU97 4k Display

[pzh]

Can anyone confirm that the 31MU97-B runs decently on a Macbook Pro 15" Retina (Late 2013)? Have you been able to get the full 4096x2160 resolution even at 50Hz?

I was considering buying this monitor, but according to the Tech Specs on Apple's website (even for the current Macbook Pro 15"), the maximum supported external display resolution is 2560x1600. I know this contradict their other page about 4K support...

Also, the higher end chip on the MBP15" Retina is a a GeForce GT 750M, which according to NVidia's specs has the following display support:

Display Support:
LCD – eDP 1.2 support - Up to 3840x2160
LCD – LVDS support - Up to 1920x1200
VGA analog display Support - Up to 2048x1536
DisplayPort Multimode Support - Up to 3840x2160

This means that it may never be possible to run 31MU97 at 4096x2160/60Hz. If NVidia doesn't officially support it, they may never bother to update the drivers, even if it's technically feasible to run it @ 60Hz.

On a side note, I'm not seeing any NVidia mobile GPU that supports more than 3840x2160, and I really can't find any data for the Intel or AMD mobile GPUs either....

 

[stmad]

Tried this file, my mid 2014 retina MBP still doesn't have 4096 x2160, in either system panel or SwitchResX.

Again, let me just precise the things:

this file is NOT intended to add 4096 resolution on a system that cannot do it.

this file is intended to declare the 4096 resolution, if existing, as the native resolution of the display, so that all scaled resolutions will be based on 4096, and not on 3840.

Or simpler: use this file if you already have 4096 and 3840, but want all others resolutions to be 17:9, and not 16:9

As for using SwitchResX - it will certainly not enable 4096@50 or 60Hz on a system that cannot do it. It *may* be useful for getting 4096 at a lesser frequency, but I have not got enough feedback to say on which machine this can work.

 

[Reality4711]

OK so far!

The replacement arrived.

Packaging was perfect, all parts present and correct, installation went well,set up good and SO FAR WORKING BRILLIANTLY! HURRAA!

I will post more details and what I have learned about this display later this week when desk has been reset to accommodate its new load.

Regards

Sharkey

 

[SaxPlayer]

The replacement arrived.

Packaging was perfect, all parts present and correct, installation went well,set up good and SO FAR WORKING BRILLIANTLY! HURRAA!

I will post more details and what I have learned about this display later this week when desk has been reset to accommodate its new load.

Regards

Sharkey

Promising news, Sharkey! Fingers crossed that it continues like that.

If it does, it'll be interesting to find out from you the model type (if it's a -B) and the manufacturing date so that we can compare it with the one you sent back, as well as mine (which as we know is also working fine).

In other news... my Spyder5Pro just arrived so I'll be calibrating my LG later. I'm going to try LG's own True Color Pro software first which I've heard some people have had problems with so it'll be interesting to see how I get on with it.

 

[darkenergymedia]

well sharkey, your post has encouraged me to write to LG again.

for the record, they have gone silent. no reply to my last email. in fact, the only communication i've had from LG since has been an email offering to join the "premium care" plan.

i'm fully disgusted with LG and i will never buy another LG product after this customer service experience. just shockingly inept. my last email was brusk to be sure, but i included all the relevant details and even signed off with "please help me", but they just don't seem to care.

i'm going to try one more time.

otherwise, nothing has changed. every morning i wake up my computer via remote desktop an hour before i get out of bed so that (most days) the 31MU97s have had a chance to freak out. it's appalling.

cheers,
c

 

[rdav]

Respect for Opinion-Formers.

..I'm fully disgusted with LG and i will never buy another LG product after this customer service experience. just shockingly inept. my last email was brusk to be sure, but i included all the relevant details and even signed off with "please help me", but they just don't seem to care..

In theory, the LG Marketing guys should apply greater efforts to make "opinion formers" & expert users (like yourself) happy. Your comments, reviews and videos are seen & respected by many others - and thus impact sales. So - the fact that LG can't be bothered to respond or assist you any further is even more disturbing.
http://www.mbaskool.com/business-concepts/marketing-and-strategy-terms/12550-opinion-formers.html

The LG-31MU97/b is potentially a great product. But, given the intermitent technical problems and complete lack of support, it has been marked a fail by a significant segment of their target audience. (Which may impact other LG products too). However, the monitor market is evolving fast - and alternative (true)4k monitors should show up soon.

 

[SaxPlayer]

Calibration

As promised, here's how my calibration exercise went:

I received my DataColor Spyder 5 Pro and plugged it in, wanting to try LG's True Color Pro calibration software. However, it didn't recognise it. To be fair to LG (which is hard for many on this thread, I know) they only list the Spyder 3 and 4 as compatible. The Spyder 5 has only been out for a week or two.

I used DataColor's own calibration software instead, which worked fine. To be honest, I was quite pleased to be using a third party tool as I can be sure it'll tell me how it is, if you know what I mean. I was quite surprised at how much the calibration altered my display. At the very end of the process it shows a graph and you can compare your monitor's abilities against NTSC, sRGB and AdobeRGB. The LG encompassed all of the AdobeRGB parts of the graph, which was pretty impressive.

The downside of using Spyder's software is that the display is altered using an ICC profile. If True Color Pro had worked, the calibration from that would've been stored inside the monitor itself.

I decided to contact LG via a live chat to ask about True Color Pro. The person I typed with said he thought it should work. I said it definitely doesn't, so he's going to pass that info on to the dev team.

At least he said he would.

The other thing I asked him about was how to stop True Color Pro putting an icon in my menu bar. I don't want to take the program off my system in case I can ever use it, but I also don't want it using resources on my system. He said (get this) "talk to Apple about removing software". I pointed out that as it's LG's product Apple probably wouldn't be that interested, and surely LG should know how to uninstall an LG piece of software. He responded to say that he didn't know much about Macs.

That's the kind of answer I used to get over a decade ago when I had a Mac and everyone else seemed to use Windows. The bad old days.

Luckily I'm not a complete idiot so I found something in the /Library/LaunchAgents folder I could remove and that fixed the problem.

My LG customer support experience was in line with darkenergymedia's, although to be fair to him, his problems are Mount Everest compared to my mole hill.

 

[ScratchyMoose]

I used DataColor's own calibration software instead, which worked fine. To be honest, I was quite pleased to be using a third party tool as I can be sure it'll tell me how it is, if you know what I mean. I was quite surprised at how much the calibration altered my display. At the very end of the process it shows a graph and you can compare your monitor's abilities against NTSC, sRGB and AdobeRGB. The LG encompassed all of the AdobeRGB parts of the graph, which was pretty impressive.

Hi AJClayton,

Did the software give you a Delta E figure. That tells you how 'true' the colours are, and i think any value less than one is not discernible with the human eye. It'd be great to know what you're getting!

Many thanks

 

[SaxPlayer]

Hi AJClayton,

Did the software give you a Delta E figure. That tells you how 'true' the colours are, and i think any value less than one is not discernible with the human eye. It'd be great to know what you're getting!

Many thanks

I had a look and if I'm reading it correctly, that feature is only available in the Elite version of the Spyder 5 software. I have the Pro version. The hardware is the same, apparently, whatever you buy however the software ramps up in price and Delta E looks to be an "Elite only" feature.

According to the factory calibration report that came with my monitor, it scored well under 2 for Delta E across the board. The graph goes 0, 2, 4 so I can't be more precise than that. It would've been nice to independently verify it, though.

 

[ScratchyMoose]

According to the factory calibration report that came with my monitor, it scored well under 2 for Delta E across the board.

That's a very good sign thanks for posting!

 

[Reality4711]

Touching Wood

So far after a couple of weeks use I have no real problems.

The odd black screen just after start up but no more or less than other probe I've had in the past with non Mac stuff.

I would like to confirm 60HZ just for my info. but do not know how ??

I run at 3008x1586 with no operational issues. It is a 'B' with a March production date.

My opinion is that this display is operating within its described parameters so no complaints. However having sent back the first one (not new-as described) I find from trawling the web that many of the problems encountered seem to have been solved; not by service departments or help lines but by a quick replacement of the faulty item. To me the retailers are bypassing their responsibilities as far as after sales help is concerned and dumping that on 'LG'. Obviously they as manufacturer are best place to help with technical problems but given that their responses have been in the most part woeful perhaps a continual stream of returned product is the only way to get across to the retailer and LG the real affect of their laziness and shoddy attitude. Which is obviously loss of profit and higher operational costs. If words do not help then actions may.

Not so satisfying as getting good/service but in the long run, in this case possibly the only way.

Free exchanges are the norm from leading retailers especially from the web and each one costs the retailer. They in turn will have (if they have any sense) a faulty return deal with the manufacturer which in turn costs.

So send it back quickly and keep doing so 'til you either get a good one or they give you your money back out of a need to control cost.

Usually my thoughts get little response. So I don't expect much from this but I think it is sound reasoning.

Regards

Sharkey

 

[SaxPlayer]

So far after a couple of weeks use I have no real problems.

The odd black screen just after start up but no more or less than other probe I've had in the past with non Mac stuff.

I would like to confirm 60HZ just for my info. but do not know how ??

I run at 3008x1586 with no operational issues. It is a 'B' with a March production date.

My opinion is that this display is operating within its described parameters so no complaints. However having sent back the first one (not new-as described) I find from trawling the web that many of the problems encountered seem to have been solved; not by service departments or help lines but by a quick replacement of the faulty item. To me the retailers are bypassing their responsibilities as far as after sales help is concerned and dumping that on 'LG'. Obviously they as manufacturer are best place to help with technical problems but given that their responses have been in the most part woeful perhaps a continual stream of returned product is the only way to get across to the retailer and LG the real affect of their laziness and shoddy attitude. Which is obviously loss of profit and higher operational costs. If words do not help then actions may.

Not so satisfying as getting good/service but in the long run, in this case possibly the only way.

Free exchanges are the norm from leading retailers especially from the web and each one costs the retailer. They in turn will have (if they have any sense) a faulty return deal with the manufacturer which in turn costs.

So send it back quickly and keep doing so 'til you either get a good one or they give you your money back out of a need to control cost.

Usually my thoughts get little response. So I don't expect much from this but I think it is sound reasoning.

Regards

Sharkey

Hi Sharkey

Glad it's going well for you. Completely agree with all your comments.

To check the refresh rate. Choose "About this Mac" from the Apple menu and then click on "System report". Under "Graphics/Displays" you'll be able to select the graphics card and see the refresh rate.

Here's mine - as you can see running at 60Hz.

 

[Reality4711]

Hi Sharkey

Glad it's going well for you. Completely agree with all your comments.

To check the refresh rate. Choose "About this Mac" from the Apple menu and then click on "System report". Under "Graphics/Displays" you'll be able to select the graphics card and see the refresh rate.

Here's mine - as you can see running at 60Hz.

Checked it and 60Hz it is. Thank You.

Glad I have put reasonable argument.

Regards

Sharkey

 

[toomanyipods]

It's so annoying when a company sends you something that was so obviously "second hand". I remember buying a new electric razor once and when I opened it, it didn't have any protective covering on it and when I flipped the top open it had hairs in it. You can imagine my reaction. I know your monitor didn't have hairs in it, but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

I went through 4 scanners with Epson that way. Bought one brand new, and it didn't work out of the box.

They convinced me to to the warranty exchange vs returning it to Amazon. They kept sending me old scanners, which didn't work, number one, but most were well worn to horribly abused. They hadn't even bothered to clean them up.

----------

Dropped support? No offence, but I don't think you're right about that. All they've done is to make the page more generic:

In other words, Apple have improved things so that they don't have to provide a long list of supported displays. (They only have to for the old MST displays.)

Got a call escalated to engineering about this display three weeks ago. Apple's answer? "Because it's not a supported monitor, we can't make any promised."

Answer pending as to why they dropped it from their list.

 

[rdav]

Not Supported?

Got a call escalated to Apple engineering about this display three weeks ago. Answer? "Because it's not a supported monitor, we can't make any promises." - Answer pending as to why they dropped it from their list.

That's not good customer-service practice from Apple. And what about all those who ordered the LG-31MU97 before it was (quietly) removed from the officially supported monitor list - and replaced with more general language? (Not that the prior specification made that much difference).

However, suspect that the next round of Apple-Device GPUs will handle true 4k@60Hz much better.

 

[Darby67]

And what about all those who ordered the LG-31MU97 before it was (quietly) removed from the officially supported monitor list - and replaced with more evasive/general language?

No such thing occurred. One reasonable thing is happneing, no need to continue with the conspiracy theory.

 

[lisagurl]

This last security update wiped out the use of my USB hubs. Now USB only works on the nMP as the hubs on the displays and external hard drive no longer work.

Also since the last up date the startup does not hold my display settings. When is Apple going to get it right?

 

[SaxPlayer]

This last security update wiped out the use of my USB hubs. Now USB only works on the nMP as the hubs on the displays and external hard drive no longer work.

Also since the last up date the startup does not hold my display settings. When is Apple going to get it right?

That sounds strange. My OS X is up to date, including all patches, and I'm not experiencing any of the problems you describe. What security update are you referring to?

 

[lisagurl]

Safari 8.0.6

 

[SaxPlayer]

Safari 8.0.6

Hmmm. OK. I find it very unlikely that an update to a piece of non systems software (in this case Safari) would have an impact on things like your USB hub or display settings. That's like buying a new washing machine and blaming it for your fridge packing up just because both things happened at around the same time.

Having said that, Apple are a law unto themselves so we should never rule anything out. I have a quantum relationship with them myself - I both love them and hate them at the same time.

 

[toomanyipods]

Got a call escalated to engineering about this display three weeks ago. Apple's answer? "Because it's not a supported monitor, we can't make any promised."

Answer pending as to why they dropped it from their list.

Response from Apple engineering, via support:
I received a response from the engineers. ... Engineering couldn’t confirm whether or not the product was pulled from an older support list. If it was, it would have been for the reason of incompatibility. The engineer didn’t go into further detail on that matter.

The engineer advised that if using a variety hdmi cables doesn’t do the trick the only thing we can do is wait for an update to the OS.

I realize this is not an ideal or even workable solution for you at this time.

To Apple's credit, he went further and expressed his sympathy, and offered help in other areas. Apple does go further than other companies, but this monitor leaves me frustrated.

In addition to the drop-outs, the monitor no longer is detected on startup. Everytime I start up, I look at my secondary monitor sideways for login. Then I must turn the LG off, then on (switching the input does not work). Then, I need to reconfigure the display location and move the menu. Argh!!

 

[SaxPlayer]

Response from Apple engineering, via support:
I received a response from the engineers. ... Engineering couldn’t confirm whether or not the product was pulled from an older support list. If it was, it would have been for the reason of incompatibility. The engineer didn’t go into further detail on that matter.

The engineer advised that if using a variety hdmi cables doesn’t do the trick the only thing we can do is wait for an update to the OS.

I realize this is not an ideal or even workable solution for you at this time.

To Apple's credit, he went further and expressed his sympathy, and offered help in other areas. Apple does go further than other companies, but this monitor leaves me frustrated.

In addition to the drop-outs, the monitor no longer is detected on startup. Everytime I start up, I look at my secondary monitor sideways for login. Then I must turn the LG off, then on (switching the input does not work). Then, I need to reconfigure the display location and move the menu. Argh!!

I've got my pedantic head on, I admit it, however Apple didn't remove the LG from their support page, they re-worded the support page to make it more generic, most likely because of the sheer number of 4K monitors that are now available.

Sharkey had problems with his display, got it swapped out for replacement and it worked fine. Mine's working fine too. Perhaps you should consider a swap out yourself? It seems really likely from the comments on this thread that there are a bad bunch of monitors out there. I'm not sure you're looking for the correct culprit here, if I were you I'd be looking at the LG for the cause rather than OS X.

Just saying. I'm now going to take cover...

 

[lisagurl]

It has got to be the OS because my LG works fine and my second screen Samsung SA850 that worked fine all along has problems starting up at it full default mode. Each startup it jumps to a magnified setting that is not programed in the display settings. The other issue is that all along the USB hub on both screens was working and then one day they stopped as the USB connections on the nMP is working.

Something in the new OS to speed up start time through the system startup of the nMP out of whack and I think it has something to do with the high speed drives. We need another update to fix this issue.

 

[SaxPlayer]

It has got to be the OS because my LG works fine and my second screen Samsung SA850 that worked fine all along has problems starting up at it full default mode. Each startup it jumps to a magnified setting that is not programed in the display settings. The other issue is that all along the USB hub on both screens was working and then one day they stopped as the USB connections on the nMP is working.

Something in the new OS to speed up start time through the system startup of the nMP out of whack and I think it has something to do with the high speed drives. We need another update to fix this issue.

Have you tried unplugging one of the displays? My USB hub is fine but I'm only running one screen.

 

[lisagurl]

I have a MCE hard drive also with blue ray and a hub. Both my mouse and keyboard are also USB and the printer. The startup and sleep OS has some problems as MY nMP also got hot when it was sleeping. I turned off the settings that do backup and check for messages when sleeping. It has not got hot since.

Apple has not fully tested all combinations and conditions as I do not have a lot of respect for their programing lately. They are getting like Microsoft.