Plaidophile

I'd be curious to see how that TV does on an actual input lag test in "game mode"...

According to reviews that measure it, it still has 30-40ms, apparently.

Well, I know what TV I'm not getting, then.

What I simply can't understand is why it's so hard to get an LCD TV to go into "display what I send you goddamnit" mode. I mean, seriously, I shouldn't have to pull out my secret decoder ring to figure out which settings should go to 0, 50, or 100 to make it do the right thing.

(I mean, a "tone" setting? Really? That sort of thing went out with composite video.)

I wonder if anyone in San Francisco rents lawns to get people off of.

Apparently the Dolby Digital spec also includes a dynamic range compression mode, which my new stereo can be set to honor, because "the audio engineer intended it at this compression level." So why doesn't the engineer just compress the damn audio stream?

It's silly how the more money I spend on things trying to provide a cleaner, more direct signal, the more they get in the way and muck them up to "enhance" them.

It seems that probably the best bet is to set the TV to "game mode" (which does as little processing as possible - although there's still a lot that has to happen in order to get a 240Hz refresh, which ends up delaying it somewhat which is why there's 30-40ms of lag even in that mode) and set the stereo to AFD Auto, which just decodes the stream directly and processes it for whatever speaker configuration is present. And I could almost do it if it weren't for every component trying to "help" by changing its settings whenever the signal format updates!

My previous stereo (also a Sony!) was nice and hands-off. Honestly, the only reason I upgraded it was because I wanted to be able to pass a 3D signal through it without having to deal with all sorts of crap (unfortunately, Sony's HDMI 1.3 implementation specifically strips out HDMI 1.4 control signals - a dumb passive switch would have worked out better!), and having an audio return channel from the TV to the stereo doesn't hurt any either.

On the other hand, reviews I've seen from high-end home theater crowds say that the default cinema matrixing mode that the "theater" button selects is actually the best way to handle audio for movies. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Because really, at the end of the day, I have to trust that the people making this stuff know what they're doing and the end-to-end is actually set up to do things right. There's definitely too much crap for me to keep track of anymore.

If I could just get the TV to permanently stick in "game mode" I think I'd be happiest, though. Maybe there's a way to turn its auto-scene-select crap off. There's a hell of a lot of settings I haven't messed with yet.

Input lag on modern screens probably has more to do with the physical properties of the LCD and the kind of time response they can get, regardless of how many times per second the input is "influencing" it.

All this shit started when panel designers realized they could game the ISO GTG spec if only they could somehow predict the next few frames, and precharge each pixel accordingly. The next step of course was to agree never to mention their dirty secret, anywhere.

Well, yeah, that's what I was talking about with the refresh rate. You need to know the next couple of frames' worth of pixel values in order to "oversteer" it. The thing is that without that, you get all sorts of horrible smearing. First-generation cheap-ass TFT screens were absolutely lousy.

Most LCDs are of course made for watching recorded content, and not interactive uses. Personally, I don't find that input lag bothers me, but maybe just because I'm used to it - I've been gaming on LCDs for over a decade now, and mostly play games where you have to think ahead instead of reacting instantly anyway. Even on the old old LCDs which didn't do oversteering, they may have had no input lag but the end result was still that the actual image on the screen would lag behind somewhat, just because of the slow smeary response.

I find it hilarious how so many of the input lag complaints are from people who are playing rhythm games. If you're even looking at where the notes are hitting the event line, you're doing it wrong!

It's still a shame that SED never made it to market. Maybe OLEDs will eventually get cheap enough. They kick LCD's butt in every possible way except price (and arguably longevity, but who the hell really has the same TV for more than 5 years anymore?).

My BenQ G2400W gets about 3ms input lag, and doesn't suffer from smearing in the slightest. It does suffer from the vertical viewing angle solids-are-gradients thing, but even there, it's better than most TNs in its price range. It was a nice find. My next screen will be an IPS, though.

As for actual TV-sized TVs, I don't have a damn clue what I'm getting anymore. :S

I find it hilarious how so many of the input lag complaints are from people who are playing rhythm games.

Unless the TV is matching the audio delay to the video delay.

True, HDMI provides latency information and the stereo often tries to match that up. But it's easy to turn the A/V sync off on every device I've had.

Oh, also, if you want very low latency, right now your best bet is probably a DLP. Although that has other issues, too (you're sensitive to input latency, I'm sensitive to rainbow shimmers). Most rear-projectors are okay but those have viewing angle issues. Front-projectors run the expense gamut, and getting one that does full HD and has a decent amount of light and doesn't have rainbow shimmer problems means spending a lot of money, and having high recurring bulb replacement costs and a noisy fan that runs whenever your TV is on.

I'm still using the same TV I had (I think) 8 years ago. It's sometimes good to let other people figure out what the problems are with the new technologies. On the other hand, if I watch an HD program on TV the edges are usually missing. Planning to get a new TV after I move next time.
-bill