bunnydojo

I'm sorry if this question has already been answered, but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere and "lag" "wii" "dlp" and "tv" are all

clckworang

I have a Samsung DLP TV and have never had any lag problems with the Wii, PS2 or XBox. I used the composite cable for the Wii for a while before upgrading to component. I didn't have any issues with either cable. I bought my TV around Thanksgiving time, so maybe the newer Samsung models fixed the problem. Regardless, I've been very happy with my TV's performance when gaming thus far.

dvdsteve2000

I have a 61" DLP that is almost 2 years old. I haven't had any problems with the Wii, 360, or the PS3. I have had some trouble with some SD DVDs when I played them on my old DVD player. I also get some 'lag' when watching HDTV (Comcast), but the channel continuously tries to 'fix' itself which is pretty annoying.

S2

Save Ferris

When the older DLPs had lag it was related to the type of connection. Not all brands/models of DLPs had this problem though.

tbird2340

Thread hijack...

Prime.. Did you find cooler friends?? Do you have us on ignore??

Save Ferris

dood my xbox is still on the way to texas for repair/replacement.

It took forever to get them to send me a shipping box.

GreenMonkey

Any scaling or deinterlacing to the native rez of a digital set is going to cause *some* amount of lag. Whether it is noticeable to you or not...

What is normally the killer is the deinterlacing. I'd say it accounts for 70% of the lagtime. It seems to be what people notice the most when it comes to lag.

So since the Wii is mostly 480p you should have very little scaling lag. The scaling takes less time than the deinterlacing.

A few Wii games are 480i only (Rayman Raving Rabbids for example) so watch out for lag there.

Ocelot

I got a Samsung DLP 56", more than two years old, nope, no problems...

but now that someone mentioned Raving Rabbit Wii, i did notice some lagging, but i always thought that was due to loading, since there's no lagging when i play the game. Got bored on the brain mini game, couldn't do it at all, gave up the game completely...

Oh, i used component for my Wii and PS3, never tried the PS2, so i can't say it doesn't happen for the PS2. As for the PS3, the only oddity i spotted is God of War (the 1st game), i had it on Progressive Scan, from time to time (certain areas in the game), the screen kinda refresh itself or something, it was not terribly bothersome, but can't stop thinking about it (saw the same thing when i play Heroes of MM on the PC, i think it's a graphic scaling problem).

It could also be a problem for Zelda TP, i had hard times fishing to get the bottle... It tooks me few hours!!!! I read many posts and tips, did exactly what people said, but still having problems with fishing. The game took pity on me i guess, i caught the first fish out of frustration. I thought the hard part was over, but no, you need two god damn fish! So, there went another frustration episode... For many times, i thought because of the component cable or big screen DLP, there's something missing on the screen to "guide" you to fish properly?

PixyJunket

There will be lag on any TV with a "native resolution" when playing something not in that resolution. So, unless you've got a 480p TV, there will be slight lag playing it on an HDTV. DLPs are noted as being the worst offenders for lag, in fact. Since the issue is a non-issue for TV and movies, there isn't much attention on it.. and most of your average mainstream gamers will never notice it either.

Sharp just released two LCDs that feature a new processing unit to eliminate upscaling lag; I posted about it but everyone was most interested in posting useless whining posts about how useless 1080p was at 32" or how 32" was too small for HD at all, more proof that shows the attention to detail your average mainstream gamer has.

alxreys

I finished playing God of War 2 on a Samsung DLP TV (1080p) with component cables and I never noticed any lag with your so called "worst offender".

PixyJunket

That's fine. It is there though, whether you notice it or not.

alxreys

We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Sorry, but after so many years of playing games on different TVs/with different cables there is no way someone is going to tell me that I can't notice lag on a game.

PixyJunket

This page does a great job on detailing HDTV lag:
http://hdtvlag.googlepages.com/home

The lag is literally milliseconds, which is why most people will never notice. The problem really hits with games that require very precise timing. Again.. even then your average mainstream gamer will still probably never notice. But it's there, and I'm simply responding the original question presented.

The above page only shows results for LCDs though.

Here's another FAQ on it:
http://www.hdtvarcade.com/hdtvforum/...showtopic=4536

So just how bad is the lag?
Although there is no real way to measure, and the numbers vary based on the HDTV, the average HDTV seems to lag roughly 6 frames, or 1/10th of a second when processing 480i material. DLP HDTVs seem to be a bit worse, some people claiming lag up to 15 frames, or 1/4th of a second. If these numbers will not affect your gaming habit, don't worry about it too much. Casual gamers probably will not notice a lag this small; you can stop reading and get back to gaming if that's the case. The most affected gamers will be those who play ultra-time sensitive games such rhythm games, sports games with swinging/kicking meters, shooters, or fighting games. If you fall into one of these categories, please read on.

PixyJunket

Try a PS2 game at 480p to see how bad the lag is noticeable with that, if possible (and assuming your prior tests were with 480i games). 480i is the worst resolution for lag issues since it has to both deinterlace and upscale the image. If 480p is acceptable for you then you should have no issues with Wii as 99% of the games should be 480p compatible (I think I read that Rayman was not, for some reason).

GreenMonkey

I think the problem was really just the deinterlacers that Samsung and RCA were putting in the DLPs. It's not the DLP tech itself but cheapass deinterlacing/scaling, or TV-optimized deinterlacing. I had a DLP projector for years (Infocus X1) and I have another one (Optoma HD72) and lag with the Faroudja deinterlacer/ Pixelworks scaler chip combo is VERY minimal (I've compared my NES/SNES over s-video simultaneously against a 27" CRT).

I don't think you would notice lag on a game like God of War. It's more of an issue if you're a pro FPS gamer, or playing a fighting game with the occasional millisecond timing type move (Street Fighter, Tekken, etc).

For that matter, LCDs hooked up via DVI at native rez on a PC lag behind an analog CRT for some weird reason. You can find pics showing it. It differs from LCD to LCD - 2ms to as much as 14-20ms. Pro gamer types notice this.

There's always *some* lag with HD stuff. Noticing it depends on your threshold of reflexes and the particular deinterlacer/scaler setup. I admit I can only notice lag on one single move on Tekken Tag (a kick/throw guard circumvent thing Lee does) - IIRC the move has a 2-frame window to hit it in and I could barely do it with a 50% success rate on a CRT.

Many newer DLPs and other HDTVs have a "game mode" that reduces the lag significantly. I assume it's just doing much faster deinterlacing/scaling instead of trying to optimize the picture like it was showing video.

PixyJunket

Bingo.

Other games to note would be music games at the highest levels and manic/bullet-hell shooters. Again, it's still a matter of playing these games at pro levels to be affected by the lag.. that or if you've got an acute sense of detail and can notice it with less time-sensitive games.

clckworang

OK, I know this is a bit off-topic, but while we're kinda on the subject, can someone explain a bit to me the difference between 480i and 480p, advantages and disadvantages kind of thing? I'm still very new to the HD realm and some of it is still going over my head.

dvdsteve2000

480i:
Interlaced

Standard Television signal, at least in the US, can also be called 480i. The "i" in 480i stands for "interlaced". This means that for the standard US style TV, that the TV set will have 480 lines going down the screen, and will interlace them - meaning that it will only show every other line (240 of the 480) during the first 1/60 of a second when it scans the screen; then it will "light up" the alternate line (other 240 lines) the next 1/60 of a second. So every 1/30 of a second, one would see a full screen of 480 lines of TV picture. Why is HDTV better? Well HDTV can simply be called 1080i (a common HDTV version) - meaning that it will show you 1080 lines going down the TV screen instead of 480. Again the "i" stands for "interlaced" meaning that on one scan every second line is "lit up" on the TV and on the next scan, the alternate lines between those are "lit up". So - HDTV will be a better signal - since it gives us "more information per unit of time" about what the original video signal was. Another way of saying this is that the signal simply allows more detail than the original TV signal - since it is simply "bigger" and carries more information.

There are also some other HDTV standards in addition to 1080i. They are 720i and 720p. Again, they offer more lines of resolution vertically on the TV screen than the standard 480i normal TV set picture.


480p:
Progressive Scan

Those of us who have purchased DVD's of late have seen a feature called progressive scan. Is that good we might ask? You bet! Normal TV signal progressive scan might be called 480p - where the "p" stands for progressive scan. How does this work? Well, at one time, most people thought the human eye could only detect 24 or 30 frames a second, and hence that is the speed for some motion pictures or television. However, that is the speed at which we tend to see the illusion of "fluid motion". A second question might be - would a better picture seem "clearer" or "more detailed" to us? Yes! Our eyes are in fact good enough to see more detail than 30 frames a second. Recall that the normal TV picture is interlaced (the "i" in 480i) and that each other line is lit up going down the screen - and the alternate lines are lit up on the next pass. With progressive scan (also called 480p at times - the "p" meaning "progressive scan") all of the lines of the TV screen are lit up each time the TV image is sent to the screen for display. Our eyes detect that as a much more stable and detailed picture.

There are some dealers who sell progressive scan DVDs calling them simulated HDTV. Can you see why? Of course they operate differently. But if a 480p progressive scan picture lights up twice as many lines as 1 normal TV picture of 480i, that 2 to 1 improvement may look similar to the eye as a 1080i signal that again has slightly more than twice the lines of a 480i line signal. While 480p progressive scan is definitely not the same as a 1080i HDTV signal, it may look like almost similar quality to a person.

clckworang

Thanks you SOO much for that, dvdsteve2000. I hope I'm not the only one who was able to learn something from that. So, with my Samsung DLP TV, I know it's 720 and HD ready and stuff. I guess that means it would be 720p and that also means that I should set my other components (like the Wii, my DVD recorder) to read, like, 480p when applicable?

pinata242

Absolutely. 480i < 480p < 720p.