Does anyone know where you can get input lag measurements for your set?
I have a Sony Bravia XBR4 and was wondering how much input lag it introduces to the equation.
I've been doing a lot of research on this lag issue recently, as I got a new HDTV and then was told on a forum that it might be laggy for games. Concerned, I set out on a fact finding mission.
The best resource I found seems to be a very large thread on Shoryuken.com forums. The Streetfighter guys, so you know they would know lag. There's also some threads on AVS forums.
But to make a long story short, there seems to be very very little hard info or data on LCD lag. Nor any easy way for an average joe to test their own set. Virtually every test has been deemed unreliable by some members or other at Shoryuken. Their are lag tests in many Guitar Hero and Rock Band games built in. Once again though, many deem them innaccurate. There is the method running a timer on a CRT and LCD at the same time to see how much the LCD lags. Again, many say this is not accurate either. There's a method of filiming with a 60 FPS+ camera, this seems to be deemed the most accurate, but I doubt most people can do this. There also seems to be no clear recommendations on which HDTV models have low lag. There's just amazingly little hard info out there. Another issue is, many times pinning down what particular panel a LCD uses is nearly impossible. Sometimes the panel used may vary on
the exact same model of TV.
Some things said to help, hooking your console up by VGA (easiest on 360 which has a VGA cable), will often set your TV to PC mode, which is basically supposed to be a no processing at all mode or close to it (you basically want your TV to process the image as little as possible to reduce lag). But as always, this can vary by set and nobody has any hard info on it. If your TV has in any way a PC mode via HDMI as well, you may want to try to use it. So basically PC mode/VGA MAY help, but it may not, depending on model (and good luck trying to get info on any particular model). That's the frustrating thing with so many lag solutions. Also, many people complain that the picture looks like crap on PC mode, which I guess is supposed to be the idea.
Game modes are good, and surely reduce lag, but they apparently do not turn off all image processing, and again, results vary by manufacturer, etc.
PC monitors with TN panels probably have the least lag, theoretically. But, who wants to game on a tiny screen imo. This might be a good solution for a SF tourney, but I dont think the average joe wants to give up his 40+ HDTV just to reduce a little lag.