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OK, I have finally concluded an exhaustive search for a new television. Over this search, I would look at dozens of TVs at a handful of stores, and I would even buy three. So what’s the problem? Aren’t most TVs these days affordable and have great pictures? Well yes. The problem wasn’t can a TV display a great picture, it was how fast can it do it.
You see, HDTVs these days have native resolutions of 1080 x 768 (pixels that is). Now, if a signal is coming from your Blu-Ray player, PS3, HD cable service, or any other high definition source, then it’s easy to take the 1080i/p signal and display each piece of information in its proper pixel. However, what if the incoming signal is a *gasp* standard-definition signal? Now a standard-definition signal is only 480 x 320. That means that the signal only has enough information to fill less than 20% of the screen. Now I won’t ***** about interlaced vs progressive or anything, but the irrefutable fact is that the TV needs to “make up” for this lack of information. It needs to use algorithms and such to fill in the spaces.
Now, what does this have to do with the Wii? The problem with the Wii is that is only outputs in standard-definition. You get 480i with composite video and 480p with component. So, it takes a finite amount of time to “fill the gaps”. Now manufacturers list response times on their specifications, but this is high-def to high-def response, not low-def to high-def. The first TV that I purchased, before realizing all of this was a Hitachi 46″ LCD.
The input lag from the Wii was immediately noticeable. I took it back and got a 46″ Vizio. Again, it was horrible. It’s like you’re pointing your remote at the left side of the screen, and the cursor would make it’s way over when it felt like it. After this, I started taking a quantitative procedure.
I seen on a website how one guy made a video basically of just a timer. That could then be output to a television. A picture is then taken and the two images are compared against each other. The setup for my final TV is shown below.
So what we did is hook a portable DVD player via composite video (since composite is 480i, the same as the Wii) to the TV. Since my timer only goes to the nearest hundredth of a second my results should only be valid plus minus 5 milliseconds or so. I did test each TV several times and average the results. Anywho, notice on this picture that the two images are identical. There is no upconvert lag on this television. On the Vizio I had, there was 40ms lag, and the Hitachi I started with had an impressive 60ms of lag! So, the final TV I got, which was the ONLY HDTV I found to have no lag was the Panasonic TC-P50G25, 50″ plasma. A friend of mine has a three-ish year old Panasonic plasma which has no lag either. So, here are some results:
Ok, so hopefully I have no typos there. There were a few things to notice and learn. While this certainly wasn’t an extensive study, some conclusions can be drawn, though not conclusively proven. They are:
edit: To put the lag in a more qualitative view, it’s kind of like this.
You see, HDTVs these days have native resolutions of 1080 x 768 (pixels that is). Now, if a signal is coming from your Blu-Ray player, PS3, HD cable service, or any other high definition source, then it’s easy to take the 1080i/p signal and display each piece of information in its proper pixel. However, what if the incoming signal is a *gasp* standard-definition signal? Now a standard-definition signal is only 480 x 320. That means that the signal only has enough information to fill less than 20% of the screen. Now I won’t ***** about interlaced vs progressive or anything, but the irrefutable fact is that the TV needs to “make up” for this lack of information. It needs to use algorithms and such to fill in the spaces.
Now, what does this have to do with the Wii? The problem with the Wii is that is only outputs in standard-definition. You get 480i with composite video and 480p with component. So, it takes a finite amount of time to “fill the gaps”. Now manufacturers list response times on their specifications, but this is high-def to high-def response, not low-def to high-def. The first TV that I purchased, before realizing all of this was a Hitachi 46″ LCD.
The input lag from the Wii was immediately noticeable. I took it back and got a 46″ Vizio. Again, it was horrible. It’s like you’re pointing your remote at the left side of the screen, and the cursor would make it’s way over when it felt like it. After this, I started taking a quantitative procedure.
I seen on a website how one guy made a video basically of just a timer. That could then be output to a television. A picture is then taken and the two images are compared against each other. The setup for my final TV is shown below.
So what we did is hook a portable DVD player via composite video (since composite is 480i, the same as the Wii) to the TV. Since my timer only goes to the nearest hundredth of a second my results should only be valid plus minus 5 milliseconds or so. I did test each TV several times and average the results. Anywho, notice on this picture that the two images are identical. There is no upconvert lag on this television. On the Vizio I had, there was 40ms lag, and the Hitachi I started with had an impressive 60ms of lag! So, the final TV I got, which was the ONLY HDTV I found to have no lag was the Panasonic TC-P50G25, 50″ plasma. A friend of mine has a three-ish year old Panasonic plasma which has no lag either. So, here are some results:
Code:
Brand Model Size Type Price Tested At 480i Upconvert Lag (ms)
LG n/a 50″ Plasma $950 15
Panasonic TC-P50S14 50″ Plasma $898 10
Hitachi L46S603 46″ LCD $898 60
Samsung LN4B550 46″ LCD $899 17
Samsung UN4666300 46″ LED-LCD $1529 20
LG 46LD550 46″ LCD $1099 40
Insignia NS-L46X-10A 46″ LCD $798 20
Samsung PN50B53052F 50″ Plasma $1099 12
Samsung PN50C550G1PXZA 50″ Plasma $1169 ~10
Panasonic TC-P50S2 50″ Plasma $1099 20
LG 50PJ350 50″ Plasma (720p) $797 20
Samsung UN4666500 46″ LED-LCD (3D-ready) $2099 40
Toshiba 42ZV650U 42″ Plasma $947 20
Samsung PN50C590 50″ Plasma $1299 <10
Panasonic TC-P50G-T25 50″ Plasma $1349 0
- Plasma TVs perform significantly better than LCD at the 480 upconvert lag.
- The LED backlighting makes no difference in the upconvert lag.
- Higher-end LED do not perform better than baseline models.
- Panasonic and Samsung are BY FAR the best plasma sets for upconvert lag.
- Last year (2009) Samsung performed much worse that this model year. Look at the PN50 series (C is 2010 year, and B is 2009)
- Plasma higher end TV perform better than baseline. Look at the Panasonic TC-P50S series vs TC-P50G series.
edit: To put the lag in a more qualitative view, it’s kind of like this.
- 10ms is hardly noticeable. Lag only affects precision games, racing, fighting, shooting, etc. However, when playing those games, you do get pissed off.
- 20ms is noticeable on all games. All games piss you off.
- 30ms makes most games very difficult to play.
- 40ms makes games nearly impossible to play.
- 60ms – Hitachi seriously? How the **** do you expect anyone to play a game with 60ms of input lag.