LG has quietly dropped DTS audio support for its 2025 TV line-up, with speculation mounting whether a newer surround sound format – Eclipsa Audio – could soon replace it.

TV reviewer Vincent Teoh reported that LG had dropped DTS support in its 2025 TVs, and that assessment was then backed by other tech specialists including those from eCoustics.

Teoh discovered the omission when testing the LG G5 and examining its EDID – the metadata used to communicate between display devices and video sources – which revealed that there is no DTS:X encoded audio.

DTS codec is the most significant rival to Dolby and its extended Dolby Atmos technology. Atmos support remains for LG TVs. Eclipsa Audio which is built on an open-source framework and is free to use, unlike Dolby which is licensed.

 

Eclipsa Audio is an audio format developed by Google and Samsung, and is royalty-free. The sale of every TV, streaming device, or soundbar compatible with content created using a Dolby format results in a small payment to the US company.

This isn’t the first time that LG has dropped DTS support, which also requires royalty payments, for its TVs. It did so in 2020, but brought it back in its 2023 and 2024 TV line-up.

The decision to drop DTS support comes as most popular streaming platforms rely on Dolby and Atmos, with the IMAX Enhanced on Disney+ being the exception. But that didn’t seem to be a strong enough use case for LG to keep DTS support.

 

There are now questions being raised as to whether LG will drop DTS from its soundbars too.

As ChannelNews recently reported, Samsung enlisted the support of Google and the Alliance for Open Media whose members include the likes of Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, THX, and Nvidia to develop Eclipsa Audio.

Dolby Atmos is a spatial audio format that enjoys massive adoption across movies, TV shows, and most recently, music recordings under the Dolby Atmos Music brand, it’s also become synonymous with spatial audio.

Despite these threats to Dolby’s dominance, don’t expect to see Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos disappear anytime soon. The roll out of Eclipsa Audio is set to be slow, but it will grow as more brands adopt it.