LG is adding support for the Eclipsa Audio format to its 2026 models, as well as certain 2025 televisions. It is an alternative to Dolby Atmos, delivering spatial streaming sound, and was notably developed by Samsung and Google.
According to a report from FlatpanelsHD, all 2026 LG TVs will support Eclipsa Audio, and support has been added to the following 2025 TVs via a free update: the LG G5, LG C5, LG CS5, and LG QNED9M.
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Samsung said it’s not expanding into areas where Dolby Atmos isn’t already widely used or is prohibitive. “Dolby is not seriously involved in gaming, and they are not involved in in-car audio,” said Allan Devantier, vice president of the Samsung Audio Lab (although I should add that Dolby is definitely investing a lot in in-car audio – see the Cadillac Optiq this year).
Analysis: a surprise, given LG’s caution with other formats
Some TV brands, like TCL and Hisense, like to embrace a ton of formats, which helps make their TVs feel like an incredible value. LG is generally much more circumspect about such things.
The company has sometimes supported DTS audio formats in the past, but this has been switched on and off – it’s currently disabled. LG also told me at a recent event that it still has no immediate plans to support Dolby Vision 2, and reps weren’t sure if 2026 TVs might even be updated to support it in the future.
This decision was based on the lack of Dolby Vision 2 content currently – LG said it would consider support when there are things to watch that make full use of the format.
Now, it can be noted that both DTS and Dolby Vision 2 require paying a fee to be included in a bundle. So there are good reasons for a company not to support them if they don’t think it’s a problem to exclude them.
However, HDR10+ support does not require a fee, but LG has always vehemently opposed it, focusing only on Dolby Vision HDR. In the past, LG’s response has generally been similar to Dolby Vision 2: there wasn’t enough content to justify adding support.
More recently, HDR10+ has been added to more streaming services (including Apple TV+ and its movie rentals, Disney+ in some countries, including some Hulu content, and Paramount+ on some content), so last year I asked LG to add support, given that it’s now more widely available.
The company said it still doesn’t see the point, saying that almost everything available in HDR10+ will also be available in Dolby Vision. He also said that he thought his own tone-mapping processing was superior to HDR10+, removing the need for it, and that it was simply likely that he would never support it.
So why is Eclipsa different? Well, I suspect it has to do with something I mentioned above: YouTube. YouTube doesn’t support Dolby Atmos, and I suspect it never will. YouTube is also more popular on TVs than even Netflix and Disney+. And TVs have become the most popular way to watch YouTube, even surpassing phones.
If people start to expect and enjoy things on YouTube with the more immersive Eclipsa Audio, then LG doesn’t want to remain a platform where you don’t get the best sound from the most popular streaming app. Especially since Samsung already supports Eclipsa Audio and Google TV supports Eclipsa means TCL, Hisense and Sony will surely all include the format. And if Samsung is working with Amazon, we can assume Fire TVs will be able to support it at some point.
LG could afford to be “left out” of HDR10+ because, as it rightly said, Dolby Vision was the only game in town for so long in practice, and still remains the biggest player. But Eclipsa Audio will make an impact in places Atmos will likely never reach. So it makes sense for LG to join Samsung in an upstart format, for once.
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