Your TV or monitor might support Dolby Vision, but not all games or video players implement it correctly. This can result in a black screen that you cannot escape from, unless you hard-reset your PC or manage to reboot (by switching monitors). I’ve experienced this with Need For Speed / NFS: Heat on my LG Oled-TV and here’s how to fix this very annoying error.
Use ‘Custom Resolution Utility’ to disable Dolby Vision, and avoid the black screen
This little piece of software (info) can trick your videodrivers by pretending your monitor doesn’t support Dolby Vision, so it will run the game in standard HDR. Here’s how to do it (video below):
- Download Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) 1.5.1: Official download link / mirror
- Extract the .zip file and run CRU.exe
- When opened, make sure the correct display is selected (at the top) and select the “extension block” in the bottom
- Click “Edit”. A new panel pops up. Now select (in the Type: CTA-861, under data blocks) ‘Dolby Video’ and click delete, then ok. and ok again to close CRU.
- No we’ll restart the video driver with these new settings. Run restart64.exe and wait a few seconds.
And that’s it! Once the driver restarted it should be safe to launch your game or movie now. There’s more good news: in my experience, you do not need to repeat this process after every reboot!
I hope this helped you. Feel free to let me know in the comments how you solved your issues.
15 thoughts on “Fix Dolby Vision black screen issue in games like Need For Speed Heat”
This caused my LG TV to lose video input. I rebooted the PC and got video input again, but it didn’t change anything. Dolby is back and still have a black screen with HDR enabled.
It’s stupid because on first boot, the game came up just fine with HDR10. Played for hours, but now after closing the game (have to alter f4 instead of selecting exit or I’ll have to reboot my PC) black screen every single time. It always launches in Dolby. I’m absolutely sick of having troubleshoot games on PC.
Hi Crooked, I experienced the exact same scenario as you (first run perfect, then always black screen with forced reboot…) and also had to try this trick a few times initially to get things working perfectly. Needless to say it really drove me crazy as well. But since my driver is fooled the Dolby Vision is no longer an option, launching NFS Heat has worked for me every time, without ever opening this tool again.
But I hear you, this kind of troubleshooting should never be required to run any game :-/ Hope you manage to get things working eventually. I was pretty close to asking for a refund myself too.
This worked for me. Nothing else did. Thanks man.
This is great, but what about all of the other games that are capable of using dolby vision properly, how do I get it back for them after I’m done with this trash game that doesn’t play nice???
Hi Steve
Disclaimer: Haven’t tried this myself — But I’m quite sure you can just reset the (original) driver with the reset-all.exe function, or you could try exporting the original settings, delete the dolby vision -restart driver- and then import them when you’re done and restart the videodriver. These options should work fine… Good luck!
Hi!
I have no “Dolby Video” option to delete on my LG C1 CTA 861 extension block.
What can I do ?
The only thing that works for me is to turn my 2 screens ON and launch the game on the screen 2 (TV).
Hi, what you can try is to reboot with *just* your LG C1 TV connected and/or update your video drivers to see if the extension block (re)appears then. I remember it also took a few times before I saw the block myself, but eventually it showed up. Good luck!
You saved my day! It works!
How do you reverse the process if you want to add Dolby Digital back?
How can i add it back after?
I’ve always played NFS Heat on my LG C1 without any issues, now all of a sudden this is happening. At least I’m relieved that I’m not the only one dealing with it, I was worried something was wrong with my graphics card.
For me, instead of Dolby Vision, it had an entry “Vendor Specific Video Data Block 0x00D046” which is the other name for Dolby Vision. So I deleted that and clicked restartx64, but there was no video input… Then I manually shutdown and restarted and checked in the cru tool and that entry was not there, now the game ran perfectly!
Thanks a lot for this additional, helpful information!
There is no black screen issue in game, if HDR is turned on in windows. The game works normally. There’s no need for this.
It is possible that eventually EA, Microsoft and/or Nvidia may have patched a solution today, either through game updates, Windows updates and/or driver updates. But to be honest, my first boot also worked fine… only the next time I launched the game, this issue occurred for me.