Gaming with an LCD panel (lag)

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arr4ws

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I am very concerned about something i experienced yesterday . I played guitar hero on the Wii at my friends house on his brand new lcd panel. I have to say i'm not good at guitar hero , but not as bad as yesterday. I think his LCD lags a lot .

Is there any way to cut the lag when playin with a LCD hdtv?

his model was a LG 42LC7D http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/lg-42lc7d/4505-6482_7-32385734.html

thanks for any input.

p.s.: he hooked the wii with the regular in the box cable
 
LCD lag? I doubt it. You wouldn't even notice those 15 milliseconds or so in a game like guitar hero. I think the game/controller/screen wasn't calibrated right.
 
I believe OP doesn't mean refresh rate lag(which be the display blurring when trying to show high-speed changes), but display lag, as in the TV isn't having trouble showing things at full speed, but is instead taking the input, taking time to process, then showing it when it's ready.

The display may be taking too long to process the input into output so it lags behind the realtime. This is meaningless for TVs, except a tiny delay in channel surfing, because it's just buffering and then displaying smoothly. Buffering is not viable with gaming since it's all changing in real-time and you need to keep up.

As for GH2 specifically, there is a calibration option in the menu that allows you to calibrate the game to compensate for your TV's lag, (also a good way to get a good general idea of how much you're getting).

However, most decent modern TVs feature a "gaming mode" where the TV prioritizes real-time display instead, sometimes at the cost of some of the TV's display chip features like dynamic contrast being lost in favor of standard contrast to reduce processing.
 
exactly what i meant kelbear

thanks a lot , i will check that out
 
This actually can be apparent in normal TV as well when using a separate audio system. Sometimes the audio will lag behind or ahead of the video feed as one or the other can be processed at different rates. That is why some audio equipment has a delay feature that allows you to adjust a delay into the audio source so it lines up with the TV.

Its not really easy to find if your TV has a problem with this or not as it is not really a specification per say. But usually TVs that do more processing will have more of a delay. Its amazing how the audio being just a few ms off from the picture can be detected when watching by looking at people talking and such...amazing what our brains can do ;)
 
It's not really the fact that it's an LCD so much as the fact that it's an HDTV that could put some lag into the equation. I've seen some HDTVs that lag HUGE (think 100ms+) because of post-processing. In other words, if they receive a 720p signal, the TV will work to convert the signal to 1080p...and lag in the process. This is why a lot of HDTVs actually have "Gaming Modes" which do away with the upscaling and a lot of the lag.
 
No HDTV exists that has no input lag. It simply varies from model to model, even the ones with "gaming mode" have some lag. Samsung models may have a gaming mode which "reduces" the average lag by 33%, but they fail to specify the actual value.

In short use the calibration of the game to compensate which just basically gives you a bigger window to hit the button from when you see it to when the button press is allowed to occur.

If you really want to know how bad the lag is, hook it up to a PC and have the PC also hooked up to a CRT monitor. Take some snapshots with a camera. The best screens have lag that varies from single digit ms to 30ms. The worst offenders can be off by as much as 100+ms. I have a 50inch samsung that makes using a mouse an effort in futility at times, I won't even bother to measure the lag on that one. Sharp's Aquos GP1U line has special inputs that bypass traditional image processing units and use IC's which go directly to a fast scaler. Even then, there is still a good avg 1fps it is off by.
 
Hmmm...my Toshiba Regza (32in using HDMI) has never suffered from anything like what you describe, be it game mode on or game mode off.
 
I think one thing people have to also remember is that you're likely accustomed to a little lag in games over the years. It's pretty rare that a game does something the exact millisecond that you hit a button. People probably don't notice it's there because you're auto-compensating for it. Even so, I still don't think most TV's are that bad. I haven't met too many players that are so great that they're hampered by it.
They play the Tekken championships on HD screens now and there are moves that literally require 1 frame execution on reaction only and there are still plenty of players who can do 'em. I think it's a mileage may vary kind of thing.
Of note, games like CS at the VERY highest levels still insist on a CRT. If there is minimal lag, that would be the ultimate game where you'd notice it.
 
Me too, played wii guitar hero on big wide screen lcd and felt like there was lag..maybe wii?
 
As a regular DDR player this kind of thing throws me right off. Had to search long and hard for a panel that had both minimum lag and the image quality / specs I was after.
 
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