[Synnae]

I've never heard of such a thing before, but my friend just said that some LCD TV's produce lag on SNES games. Is that true? My other friend denied it, but I don't know who I should trust.

It's just that I have a CRT TV and I plan to buy a LCD one soon to play my sd2snes stuff. But after hearing this I got slightly worried.

So, can you guys confirm if it's true?

[Bahamut ZERO]

I do all of my gaming/computing/hacking off a Samsung LCD TV, and I've yet to experience random lagginess out of older games (SNES included).


Granted, I've never played SNES of an sd2snes, so that may or may not be a factor in the equation.  But off of the real hardware and emulators on wii/computer games run fine (granted there's a bit of a trailing effect when using older cables, but it's nowhere near as bad as say trying to play off a PSP).

[kuja killer]

Yea it's true.

it's more about "input lag" really. My brother got me a stupid LCD TV for christmas a few months ago (2014) --- i never wanted one in the first place, he doesnt know anything about specs, gaming nothing...he apparently just picked whatever was cheapest at walmart...

it turned out to be a "emerson" that literally NO TV/tech-related forums ever talk about...and there's absolutely nothing in any types of "input lag databases" websites that list hundreds of different model numbers for the top brand names about. "emerson" no where to be found.

Anyways...it absolutely sucks shit for playing my games anyway. Specifically any megaman games ...on the Wii or Xbox 360 (anything else too) -- because there's such an annoying delay when pressing buttons until seeing the action on TV.

It's near unbearable to play megaman 9 or 10 on.

CRT's dont have any lag whatsoever, so i still use a CRT TV luckily for my gaming needs, so im not permenately stuck at least.

But fuck LCDs ....in my opinion

[FAST6191]

I fear your friend is confusing several concepts.

The TV is not going to send a spike back down the signal line and somehow make a game run slower than it would under "normal" conditions.

What does happen is twofold.

Basic physics means there is some latency between signal going out an it being displayed on the screen. This is the inherent lag with screens and year LCDs can be higher than older CRTs which were dumb analogue devices, I would not read too much into this though. Some "gaming" PC monitors will tell me stories of how fast they are in this regard but most of it will be the stuff mentioned in a second.

Some LCDs also do an additional step with various types of image processing (be it scaling, deinterlacing, some kind of filter, colour alteration.....). Doing this in real time is hard and TVs are made with cheap components (no decent processors for it all), however if I am watching a DVD/cable then I don't care that the picture is 500ms older than the one the DVD player/cable box put out and this is far cheaper to do. 500 ms (half a second) is horrible for a PC or game though. To this end many LCDs will have a "game mode"/PC mode/no processing mode that disables this, some even do it automatically for newer devices.

The only other thing to note is CRT is not a good picture generation method as far as fidelity goes, however a good dev can learn to use noise and as such they did. More on that http://bogost.com/games/a_television_simulator/

[Synnae]

Oh, so it's an input lag problem. I would never guess such a thing could even happen.

Can you guys recommend me a good LCD TV model that won't have such a problem? I just gotta make sure I buy the right thing.

[Lenophis]

An LCD/LED is always going to have input lag...always. There's no getting around it. Aside from testing the thing for yourself to see how bad it is, there isn't much in the way you can do to find out how bad it is. You may be able to find reports about makes/models online, but every year spawns more and more, so it's probably difficult to keep up.

Your best bet is a CRT, as stated previously.

[STARWIN]

Of course, it also depends on the games you play to some extent. Any game that requires a fast reaction is going to suffer a lot from input lag, but turn-based games will be about as playable as before.

It is difficult to be certain that what you are buying is acceptable for you. The best and most convenient way to measure input lag is to do reaction time tests using the monitor in question. There are some sites for that in the internet; if in the shop it is possible, it would be very useful to run a series of reaction time tests (like 20-40 clicks perhaps) on the monitor, and then check the average result. One average result like this is useless, but once you get more of them from different monitors, you can start seeing which monitor is best out of the tried ones.

[Bregalad]

It's true sadly. (also latency is the correct word, not lag, which would mean overall slowdown of the game), but it depends on the TV.

Before we had a simple Panasonic TV, and surprisingly enough, it was perfect even for retro games the latency was not noticeable and there was no issues whatsoever, so I wondered why everyone was whining over LCD TVs to be horrible for old games.

Unfortunately my dad had the great idea to give this TV to someone else and buy a new one, Samsung brand, very high end model, which has a zillion of functions for doing super-awesome signal processing etc... And man, there is a huge latency on analog inputs. Even if I disable all the effects the latency is still here.

I heard from a friend (which works involves doing electronics for this kind of stuff) that it's because of de-interlacing algorithm, and it cannot be disabled.

Now this is fine for playing RPGs (although a little annoying in the menus), but for action games you can forget immediately.

Finally my guess (I'm not 100% sure) is that, ironically : The cheapest and low-end is your LCD TV, the better it is to play retro games. High end models are those that will try to "correct" the input signal, and create a very noticeable latency.

[henke37]

I never understood why it's called input latency, it's the output that's delayed.

[KaioShin]

Many TVs have options to reduce or disable post-processing steps that cause delays. It's often called game mode or some such. You'll just have to try it out. Good reviews also mention if input lag is present or not.

I never understood why it's called input latency, it's the output that's delayed.

Your input is causing said output

[MegaManJuno]

Even some of the ones that do offer a reduced latency "game" mode, can still have noticeable lag in games that require quick reflexes.

I went back to replay some of the Mega Man series last year. The Yellow Devil in Mega Man 1... on my old Samsung LCD (early 2000s model), even in Game mode, was nigh impossible due to the timing required for the jumps. I got a new Sony LCD last year that was rated as one of the lowest lag times in Game mode. Went back to MM1 again after that and the fight was like night and day.

So, if you want to play quick-reflex games on an LCD, then yes, do research on the input lag first, or you'll be sorry. 

[Grimoire LD]

...Does this also apply to classic games played on newer systems through the virtual console or the playstation store?

[FAST6191]

...Does this also apply to classic games played on newer systems through the virtual console or the playstation store?

At the base level. Yes, yes it does. There is a reason computer monitors are sold with latency values (even if they use something stupid like grey to grey) and such like.
However some TVs have a slightly better "game mode" that is detected by the HDMI EDID (or whatever it is called for HDMI) than can be activated manually or is available for analogue inputs. Not enough to bank on if you are playing with a random TV but worth noting in passing.

As for the "best TV" discussion. I reckon one of those large CRTs that went at least to 720 res and had component inputs, assuming you have the desk/floor space that is. So many of them have I had to pass up.

[MegaManJuno]

...Does this also apply to classic games played on newer systems through the virtual console or the playstation store?

Yes, the input lag is dependent on the TV itself, not the source. The source can add additional lag on top of that though.

Take, for instance, the PS3. If you have the system set to upscale PSOne Classics, it's documented that this adds more lag to the mix on top of whatever your TV does on its own. In this case, turning off the PS3's upscaling will result in less lag. But, on the other hand, some HDTVs don't really do the best job upscaling 480p content (again my old Samsung sucked terribly in this regard), so the image may or may not look worse.

[kuja killer]

yea totally agree'd with your guys comments to his question.
here's my example from Dec 25, 2014

I have 1st place for every single level in the entire game for Megaman 10 leaderboards on the Xbox 360 except commando man. Every single other level, the 3 "special stages" im 1st place on.

I did all this on a CRT TV obviously. I spent over 3 years getting all my records.

Now when i got this stupid LCD tv for christmas in 2014 and when i tested it out...i cant so much as even pass the very FIRST hallway on Sheepman stage. i die at the spikes near the end of the hallway nonstop all the time. I can "feel" that stupid annoying lag that crap LCD tv is doing.

Now i go back and put the cables back in my CRT TV "without" turning off the xbox or anything.
Play sheep man --- i can do all my pixel-perfect jumps and actions perfectly 100%.

But not on the piece of crap LCD. It doesnt have a "game mode" or any special settings besides brightness, contrast, sharpness and those basic types. Seriously

That was my experience(s)

[Grimoire LD]

I was wondering why I suddenly seemed fairly terrible at Super Mario Bros when I bought it for the Virtual Console, I recalled being pretty good at it when I was younger. The lag discussion makes a great deal of sense.