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HDTVs + Input Lag = doubleyou tee eff
Sci-Fi Wasabi
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok, so I purchased a Magnavox 32mf337b LCD tv at work for a clearance price of exactly 500 dollars, new in the box. The magnavox displays looked considerably better than the olevia's which were the cheapest TV's we had.
I get it home and everything is fine. I tune my picture settings and hook my 360 up and everything is peachy. The strange thing is, this television is advertised as 720p 1080i, but works fine in 1080p. I'm not sure how that is even possible.
Anyways, so I play Halo 3 and everything is beautiful. However, I pop in R6: Vegas, and then something hits me. The game feels weird. I move the camera around trying to remember if it was always this way. Things are still synced up, but it's like my brain is perceiving things my eyes can't see. It was horribly distracting and I promptly popped in game after game seeing if they were all like this. I didn't notice a perceptible difference in most other games I tried.
Until I watched a DVD.
I had the 360 hooked up to my receiver by optical, but accidentally left the rca jacks plugged into the television itself. Once the movie started, I realized that the receiver was ahead of the audio coming from the television by a slight but notable margin. It produced a crazy echo effect. The television seemed to have played the audio perfectly to sync. However, the receiver was playing the audio faster than the television.
With the television muted, you can again, feel, the difference, rather than see it.
This shit is driving me crazy, and I know all HDTVs have some lag in the visual conversion process. But it seems like no matter what resolution settings I use, the problem stays the same. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? I felt kind of blindsided by this phenomenon, as it doesn't seem to really be reported anywhere. I guess I thought 8ms was quick enough, but I must have been wrong.
I get it home and everything is fine. I tune my picture settings and hook my 360 up and everything is peachy. The strange thing is, this television is advertised as 720p 1080i, but works fine in 1080p. I'm not sure how that is even possible.
Anyways, so I play Halo 3 and everything is beautiful. However, I pop in R6: Vegas, and then something hits me. The game feels weird. I move the camera around trying to remember if it was always this way. Things are still synced up, but it's like my brain is perceiving things my eyes can't see. It was horribly distracting and I promptly popped in game after game seeing if they were all like this. I didn't notice a perceptible difference in most other games I tried.
Until I watched a DVD.
I had the 360 hooked up to my receiver by optical, but accidentally left the rca jacks plugged into the television itself. Once the movie started, I realized that the receiver was ahead of the audio coming from the television by a slight but notable margin. It produced a crazy echo effect. The television seemed to have played the audio perfectly to sync. However, the receiver was playing the audio faster than the television.
With the television muted, you can again, feel, the difference, rather than see it.
This shit is driving me crazy, and I know all HDTVs have some lag in the visual conversion process. But it seems like no matter what resolution settings I use, the problem stays the same. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? I felt kind of blindsided by this phenomenon, as it doesn't seem to really be reported anywhere. I guess I thought 8ms was quick enough, but I must have been wrong.
Sci-Fi Wasabi on
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I'm not sure there's much that you can do to alleviate the problem - I think some HDTVs have a "game mode" which tells the image processor thingymajiggle to do less fancy processing, and just output a (slightly lower quality) image to the LCD as fast as it can - but I'm not sure how standard that is. Then again, I don't own an HDTV and am getting all of this info essentially second hand so I could be way off.
TV pass through limits my connection options but fixes the audio sync issue. However, while playing guitar hero, even with lag calibration, it is much more difficult to play. Does anybody have a solution to this problem? Surely more gamers have HD sets and have met with this unfortunate side effect.
I have a no lag 46 inch CRT HDTV and when I do buy another TV the lag issue is going to be #1 on my list of things to check
Is returning the TV an option? Magnavox is among the worst TV brands on the market. I think even Olevia is considered better. FYI, you shouldn't always judge the TV by the picture you see in the store, especially if that store is a place like Walmart. Factory settings on most TVs are shit, and you need to adjust them manually anyway.
I don't think that a serious lag like you're describing is that common with decent HDTVs. No TV that I've had, or that anyone I know has had, has exhibited anything as bad as what you're describing.
Magnavox is really that bad? I thought they were just re-branded philips displays.
Update: Guitar Hero 2 works PERFECTLY if I route my optical directly to the receiver (which gives everything a sharp delay in audio compared to a direct connection to the television itself) and set the lag calibration to 0ms. I mean, the timing is SPOT on, definitely as good as a CRT. However, if you play a DVD with that same configuration you can tell somethings up with the audio sync. Routing audio back through the television fixes that problem.
The Wii is completely lag free in 480p. It runs like a dream. So it isn't like this TV lags on up-converting. I'm so confused and tired. Jesus.
Is there anyone here who has an Olevia television, who has heavily scrutinized it for gaming performance? I paid 300 dollars less than the MSRP, and I do have 90 days to return it, but still. Not even an Olevia is this cheap.
That same delay I've faced when I'm at my parents with the aforementioned Samsung and an LG audio reciever. I could not get it to work, through any combination of fiddling.
Also, while your TV says it does 720p, 1080i, and you claim 1080p, it's actually all just 720p. LCD panels have a native resolution which they run at, mine and yours is 720p. It will accept and display 1080i/p signals just fine, but there is some scaling going on. My recommendation is to set everything to 720p (360, cable box, PS3, etc.)
They used to be, but they no longer have any affiliation with Philips.
Sure, I think everything is set to 720p.
I guess my problem is the 360 lags no matter what, but a 480p source like the Wii is, as far as I can tell, perfect. That contradicts everything else I've heard, which is that the further away from the native res you go, the more lag you get. In my case, it almost seems the opposite.
I guess I'd spring for an Olevia if there was some surefire way of knowing there will be no noticable lag. It seems like no one around here is going to let me bring any consoles in, and it isn't like I'd be able to do the experiment without a control method anyways.
Actually when I was working a CC we had no problem with people coming in to test hardware on a TV. As long as you bring all the cables (so the associates don't have to try and dig them up) then you should be good. Although make sure the TVs you are testing are accessible and not mounted on the wall or some display.