Best tv type for gaming?

[K0rN_b4LL]

Bit of a long winded story so bear with me.

Last year I bought a 40" Samsung LED form Hhgregg to replace the older model (they didn't make that one anymore) I broke while raging at Halo Reach. (not playing that game again) I noticed the picture looked wierd and the controls were all over the place, then when looking through the settings I came across the MotionPlus feature. As soon as I turned that off the picture went back to normal and the controls were almost working like they were supposed to, but there was a noticable input delay. Turns out that the 100 Hz processing speed that was advertised was only through the MotionPlus feature that altered the picture, the tv itself only had like a 50Hz processor. Even when I had it on tv the picture and sound were off. So I took it back and got a 50" LG plasma instead that had 600 Hz. (when I explained everything to the clerk this is what he recommended) So I thought "Wow! That's alot of Hz. There shouldn't be any delay at all with this thing!"

Oh, the innocence of ignorance.

So I get home and set it up and plugged the 360 in. Immediately I noticed that there was still input lag. (though it was just for inputting commands and stuff, the picture was lining up with the sounds this time around so for TV it worked great) I got a newer HDMI cable and changing the settings around and that stuff got the lag down to almost nothing but it was still noticable just barely. Offline it wasn't much of a problem but when playing online (which is what I spend most of my time doing) it made a bit of a difference. For the longest time I though "maybe it's just me" and continued to fiddle with settings and stuff but couldn't get it any better. Recently at the Gears of War 3 midnight release I was talking with another guy and he mentioned that plasmas were horrible for gaming since they have some kind of signal delay. I pulled my folks computer monitor from upstairs and plugged it in and sure enough there was an improvement. So I called LG tech support and he put me through a bunch of stuff but none of it worked and now I'm stuck with a slightly laggy tv that cost me $1200 last winter.

So what I need to know is what is the best kind of tv to get if you are gonna be doing alot of gaming? Also what kinds of performance stats should I be looking for when I'm picking them out?

 

[IdleMind]

First thing is first: MS delay does not = Input Lag.

No TV or monitor actually advertises their input lag.

The only ZERO lag TV are CRT's.

That said, there are acceptable alterntives- for example the EVO Monitor:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-na&AID=10521304&PID=4003003&SID=21ow8ffsdr4r

That is proven to have 1/2 (one HALF) frame of lag. If you want to game on HD, I think it's pretty much the most cost effective and obvious solution.

Beyond that, running a game outside of it's native resolution also causes input lag. Make sure you always run the game on the correct resolution settings.

-Idle

 

[K0rN_b4LL]

Cool thanks for the info. Is the native resolution different for each game or is it console specific? (Ya can tell I'm woefully ignorant on this stuff)

 

[IdleMind]

Native resolution is game specific rather than console specific.

Don't worry about the ignorance of it; most of us found out the hard way. I used to run tournaments on HDTV's that weren't low-lag... so I understand how you feel.

-Idle

 

[iKotomi]

If your TV has a "Game" mode, make sure you have this on, as it will disable a lot of post-processing features. For most TV's, this won't turn off everything, but it's better than nothing. Just remember to turn it back on when you're watching movies or something. I leave my monitor on game mode all the time, but that's just me being lazy.

While newegg is a great company, I recommend buying monitors either from a place like Amazon or Costco, or at a brick and mortar store. The main reason being their dead pixel policy. I'm not sure what Asus' own return policy is, but newegg requires you to have 8 dead pixels in order to get it exchanged, and for most people, just 1 dead pixel is a deal breaker and is a common enough problem.

If you're buying from Amazon, wait for them to have the product in stock, rather than buying from a 2nd party seller. They usually have the evo monitor going for 150-160 dollars after rebates.