Games and input-lag on flat panel TVs

[Jeff Kelly]

As some of you may have noticed I recently complained in the Mass Effect 1 thread about some of the issues I had with game play and kinda made an ass of myself in the process.

Especially I had trouble with one twitchy mini game that I always seemed to fail for no discernable reason.

Turns out that it was lag introduced by all of the nifty picture enhancement and processing algorithms used in modern TVs. Most of you may already know this but for the rest I wanted to put this out there.

Most picture modes in modern TVs add a lot of post processing to the picture to compensate for compression artifacts and noise and to enhance fast movement by inserting additional frames in the video.

As I had to realize this adds quite a lot of lag to the picture (can be as bad as 500 ms to 1 s but is more likely in the sub 200 ms range). Most TVs automatically adjusts audio output for that lag so that audio and video are still synchronised but for reflex based gameplay the delay can be too much. A hint from a friend made me turn off every enhancement algorithm that's used by my TV and this helped a lot.

As I was told some TVs might actually have a 'game mode' that does this automatically but with my new model I had to turn them off manually. I never noticed that because I only recently bought a new set and the old one didn't have such a sophisticated post-processing built in.

So for the people that were as ignorant of those facts as I was, if you have trouble with certain gameplay aspects maybe it's your TV.

[Sky]

Hmm, mine's not a flat-panel tv so I guess I'll ignore this. 

[Yegolev]

My guess is that you won't ignore it.

Hey, I was right!

[Trippy]

Hmm, mine's not a flat-panel tv so I guess I'll ignore this. 

Your DLP TV has a curved screen? Wow that's amazing! How's that working out for you? Also DLPs can have input lag as well.

[rattran]

I always turn that stuff off as the first step in tuning a tv with Avia and DVE. I find with Samsung, Panasonic, and LG (only ones I've gotten to calibrate) they look better without all the supercontrast/dynamic wotsis/dnie etc

[Morfiend]

I was having this same issue when I got my TV like 5 years ago. I found "game mode" and it fixed it.

[Pennilenko]

I love Samsung for their game mode that is built into most of their televisions.

[Pennilenko]

Hmm, mine's not a flat-panel tv so I guess I'll ignore this. 

Your DLP TV has a curved screen? Wow that's amazing! How's that working out for you? Also DLPs can have input lag as well.

I hate DLP, customers always want one though because they are so damn cheap.

[Shrike]

Quite frankly, I think people get too over-excited over input lag and give it more attention than it really deserves. Either that, or I'm incapable of seeing it. Dunno.

My personal expereince is with the Sony HX800. Grand TV. I run it with games with the same settings I use on movies. I notice no input lag to speak of. And that's with full processing on--motion flow, smoothing, the whole nine yards of stuff. Games play just fine, even things like Gears, ME2, Fallout, and Borderlands. Looks fantastic, too. My previous set was a Sony Trinitron and I've noticed no difference between the two on games.

Now this TV is a 3D capable one. I've read that 3D sets have much faster refresh or whatever for displaying 3D mojo and this might reflect on input lag. I suspect bullshit, but there it is.

[Minvaren]

Try playing rhythm games or fighters.  I never noticed it either until then.

I bought a relatively cheap flat-panel without a game mode, but the worst lag I get in any game with calibration so far is 2 frames (34ms).

[Shrike]

Try playing rhythm games or fighters.  I never noticed it either until then.

I bought a relatively cheap flat-panel without a game mode, but the worst lag I get in any game with calibration so far is 2 frames (34ms).

I played a fair amount of Soul Calibur 4 on mine. Still didn't really notice any real lag. Might fire it up again and pay more attention. Considering the amount of angst over this in various AV forums, I haven't really seen it to be significant for me.

[Ingmar]

It becomes really really really evident if you're playing something like Rock Band.

[Shrike]

I've heard that, but those aren't my kind of games, so I'll never know. 

Before I made the purchase I did, I did a lot of research on this stuff and HDTVs in general. What I found out was that most of what I'd read in places like AVS forums and assorted hardware gearhead sites was, in my opinion, hyperbole. People get way worked up over this stuff. More than it deserves, I think. It's about as bad as AMD vs. nVidia vid card disputes.

The general consensus was (is) that plasma is god and everything else is shit. You'll see this a lot. Plasma has its good points to be sure, but when it came down to it space considerations, cost, logistics of installation, and the old mark 1 mod 0 eyeball made the call to go LED backlit LCD. The Sony high end sets (HX800, LX909) simply looked as good or better than anything else out there--and that included some high end plasmas (though the Samsung 8000 and Panasonic VT25 were pretty impressive their ownselves). I looked at a metric shit-ton of TVs before I dropped cash, believe you me.

Now on the gaming end, I was aware of possible issues due to input lag and whatnot, but in practice I simply think it's overstated. For my personal use, I'm extremely happy with what I ended up with. Over on AVS, they have some pretty extensive threads poking at the input lag issue. Sonys generally come out looking pretty good here--most plasmas, too, but not all. What it came down to was you looked at specs, looked at physical TVs, then hoped it'd work out for you when you got it home. Basically, after a lot of research and eyeball time, I made the call to go with the HX800. If that set hadn't been available, I probably would have gone with the Panasonic G25 and just hoped it didn't ever need service (horrible rep here and I ran into that constantly when talking to retailers).