origin of lag in lcd displays in stock

Display lag is a phenomenon associated with most types of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) like smartphones and computers and nearly all types of high-definition televisions (HDTVs). It refers to latency, or lag between when the signal is sent to the display and when the display starts to show that signal. This lag time has been measured as high as 68 ms,Hz display. Display lag is not to be confused with pixel response time, which is the amount of time it takes for a pixel to change from one brightness value to another. Currently the majority of manufacturers quote the pixel response time, but neglect to report display lag.

For older analog cathode ray tube (CRT) technology, display lag is nearly zero, due to the nature of the technology, which does not have the ability to store image data before display. The picture signal is minimally processed internally, simply for demodulation from a radio-frequency (RF) carrier wave (for televisions), and then splitting into separate signals for the red, green, and blue electron guns, and for the timing of the vertical and horizontal sync. Image adjustments typically involve reshaping the signal waveform but without storage, so the image is written to the screen as fast as it is received, with only nanoseconds of delay for the signal to traverse the wiring inside the device from input to the screen.

For modern digital signals, significant computer processing power and memory storage is needed to prepare an input signal for display. For either over-the-air or cable TV, the same analog demodulation techniques are used, but after that, then the signal is converted to digital data, which must be decompressed using the MPEG codec, and rendered into an image bitmap stored in a frame buffer.

For progressive scan display modes, the signal processing stops here, and the frame buffer is immediately written to the display device. In its simplest form, this processing may take several microseconds to occur.

For interlaced video, additional processing is frequently applied to deinterlace the image and make it seem to be clearer or more detailed than it actually is. This is done by storing several interlaced frames and then applying algorithms to determine areas of motion and stillness, and to either merge interlaced frames for smoothing or extrapolate where pixels are in motion, the resulting calculated frame buffer is then written to the display device.

De-interlacing imposes a delay that can be no shorter than the number of frames being stored for reference, plus an additional variable period for calculating the resulting extrapolated frame buffer; delays of 16-32ms are common.

While the pixel response time of the display is usually listed in the monitor"s specifications, no manufacturers advertise the display lag of their displays, likely because the trend has been to increase display lag as manufacturers find more ways to process input at the display level before it is shown. Possible culprits are the processing overhead of HDCP, Digital Rights Management (DRM), and also DSP techniques employed to reduce the effects of ghosting – and the cause may vary depending on the model of display. Investigations have been performed by several technology-related websites, some of which are listed at the bottom of this article.

LCD, plasma, and DLP displays, unlike CRTs, have a native resolution. That is, they have a fixed grid of pixels on the screen that show the image sharpest when running at the native resolution (so nothing has to be scaled full-size which blurs the image). In order to display non-native resolutions, such displays must use video scalers, which are built into most modern monitors. As an example, a display that has a native resolution of 1600x1200 being provided a signal of 640x480 must scale width and height by 2.5x to display the image provided by the computer on the native pixels. In order to do this, while producing as few artifacts as possible, advanced signal processing is required, which can be a source of introduced latency. Interlaced video signals such as 480i and 1080i require a deinterlacing step that adds lag. Anecdotallyprogressive scanning mode. External devices have also been shown to reduce overall latency by providing faster image-space resizing algorithms than those present in the LCD screen.

Many LCDs also use a technology called "overdrive" which buffers several frames ahead and processes the image to reduce blurring and streaks left by ghosting. The effect is that everything is displayed on the screen several frames after it was transmitted by the video source.

Display lag can be measured using a test device such as the Video Signal Input Lag Tester. Despite its name, the device cannot independently measure input lag. It can only measure input lag and response time together.

Lacking a measurement device, measurement can be performed using a test display (the display being measured), a control display (usually a CRT) that would ideally have negligible display lag, a computer capable of mirroring an output to the two displays, stopwatch software, and a high-speed camera pointed at the two displays running the stopwatch program. The lag time is measured by taking a photograph of the displays running the stopwatch software, then subtracting the two times on the displays in the photograph. This method only measures the difference in display lag between two displays and cannot determine the absolute display lag of a single display. CRTs are preferable to use as a control display because their display lag is typically negligible. However, video mirroring does not guarantee that the same image will be sent to each display at the same point in time.

In the past it was seen as common knowledge that the results of this test were exact as they seemed to be easily reproducible, even when the displays were plugged into different ports and different cards, which suggested that the effect is attributable to the display and not the computer system. An in depth analysis that has been released on the German website Prad.de revealed that these assumptions have been wrong. Averaging measurements as described above lead to comparable results because they include the same amount of systematic errors. As seen on different monitor reviews the so determined values for the display lag for the very same monitor model differ by margins up to 16 ms or even more.

To minimize the effects of asynchronous display outputs (the points of time an image is transferred to each monitor is different or the actual used frequency for each monitor is different) a highly specialized software application called SMTT

Several approaches to measure display lag have been restarted in slightly changed ways but still reintroduced old problems, that have already been solved by the former mentioned SMTT. One such method involves connecting a laptop to an HDTV through a composite connection and run a timecode that shows on the laptop"s screen and the HDTV simultaneously and recording both screens with a separate video recorder. When the video of both screens is paused, the difference in time shown on both displays have been interpreted as an estimation for the display lag.16 ms or even more.

Display lag contributes to the overall latency in the interface chain of the user"s inputs (mouse, keyboard, etc.) to the graphics card to the monitor. Depending on the monitor, display lag times between 10-68 ms have been measured. However, the effects of the delay on the user depend on each user"s own sensitivity to it.

Display lag is most noticeable in games (especially older video-game consoles), with different games affecting the perception of delay. For instance, in PvE, a slight input delay is not as critical compared to PvP, or to other games favoring quick reflexes like

If the game"s controller produces additional feedback (rumble, the Wii Remote"s speaker, etc.), then the display lag will cause this feedback to not accurately match up with the visuals on-screen, possibly causing extra disorientation (e.g. feeling the controller rumble a split second before a crash into a wall).

TV viewers can be affected as well. If a home theater receiver with external speakers is used, then the display lag causes the audio to be heard earlier than the picture is seen. "Early" audio is more jarring than "late" audio. Many home-theater receivers have a manual audio-delay adjustment which can be set to compensate for display latency.

Many televisions, scalers and other consumer-display devices now offer what is often called a "game mode" in which the extensive preprocessing responsible for additional lag is specifically sacrificed to decrease, but not eliminate, latency. While typically intended for videogame consoles, this feature is also useful for other interactive applications. Similar options have long been available on home audio hardware and modems for the same reason. Connection through VGA cable or component should eliminate perceivable input lag on many TVs even if they already have a game mode. Advanced post-processing is non existent on analog connection and the signal traverses without delay.

A television may have a picture mode that reduces display lag for computers. Some Samsung and LG televisions automatically reduce lag for a specific input port if the user renames the port to "PC".

LCD screens with a high response-time value often do not give satisfactory experience when viewing fast-moving images (they often leave streaks or blur; called ghosting). But an LCD screen with both high response time and significant display lag is unsuitable for playing fast-paced computer games or performing fast high-accuracy operations on the screen, due to the mouse cursor lagging behind.

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One of the areas where the A-MVA panel does extremely well is in the areas of display lag and pixel response time. Just to recap, you may have heard complaints about "input lag" on various LCDs, so that"s one area we look at in our LCD reviews. We put input lag in quotation marks because while many people call it "input lag", the reality is that this lag occurs somewhere within the LCD panel circuitry, or perhaps even at the level of the liquid crystals. Where this lag occurs isn"t the concern; instead, we just want to measure the duration of the lag. That"s why we prefer to call it "processing lag" or "display lag".

To test for display lag, we run the Wings of Fury benchmark in 3DMark03, with the output set to the native LCD resolution - in this case 1920x1200. Our test system is a quad-core Q6600 running a Radeon HD 3870 on a Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 motherboard - we had to disable CrossFire support in order to output the content to both displays. We connect the test LCD and a reference LCD to two outputs from the Radeon 3870 and set the monitors to run in clone mode.

The reference Monitor is an HP LP3065, which we have found to be one of the best LCDs we currently possess in terms of not having display lag. (The lack of a built-in scaler probably has something to do with this.) While we know some of you would like us to compare performance to a CRT, that"s not something we have around our offices anymore. Instead, we are looking at relative performance, and it"s possible that the HP LP3065 has 20ms of lag compared to a good CRT - or maybe not. Either way, the relative lag is constant, so even if a CRT is faster at updating, we can at least see if an LCD is equal to or better than our reference display.

While the benchmark is looping, we snap a bunch of pictures of the two LCDs sitting side-by-side (using a relatively fast shutter speed). 3DMark03 shows the runtime with a resolution of 10ms at the bottom of the display, and we can use this to estimate whether a particular LCD has more or less processing lag than our reference LCD. We sort through the images and discard any where the times shown on the LCDs are not clearly legible, until we are left with 10 images for each test LCD. We record the difference in time relative to the HP LP3065 and average the 10 results to come up with an estimated processing lag value, with lower numbers being better. Negative numbers indicate a display is faster than the HP LP3065, while positive numbers mean the HP is faster and has less lag.

It"s important to note that this is merely an estimate - whatever the reference monitor happens to be, there are some inherent limitations. For one, LCDs only refresh their display 60 times per second, so we cannot specifically measure anything less than approximately 17ms with 100% accuracy. Second, the two LCDs can have mismatched vertical synchronizations, so it"s entirely possible to end up with a one frame difference on the time readout because of this. That"s why we average the results of 10 images, and we are confident that our test procedure can at least show when there is a consistent lag/internal processing delay. Here is a summary of our results for the displays we have tested so far.

As you can see, all of the S-PVA panels we have tested to date show a significant amount of input lag, ranging from 20ms up to 40ms. In contrast, the TN and S-IPS panels show little to no processing lag (relative to the HP LP3065). The BenQ FP241VW performs similarly to the TN and IPS panels, with an average display lag of 2ms - not something you would actually notice compared to other LCDs. Obviously, if you"re concerned with display lag at all, you"ll want to avoid S-PVA panels for the time being. That"s unfortunate, considering S-PVA panels perform very well in other areas.

Despite what the manufacturers might advertise as their average pixel response time, we found most of the LCDs are basically equal in this area - they all show roughly a one frame "lag", which equates to a response time of around 16ms. In our experience, processing lag is far more of a concern than pixel response times. Taking a closer look at just the FP241VW, we can see the typical one frame lag in terms of pixel response time. However, the panel does appear to be a little faster in response time than some of the other panels we"ve tested (notice how the "ghost image" isn"t as visible as on the HP LP3065), and we didn"t see parts of three frames in any of the test images.

After the initial article went live, one of our readers who works in the display industry sent me an email. He provides some interesting information about the causes of image lag. Below is an (edited) excerpt from his email. (He wished to remain anonymous.)

PVA and MVA have inherent drawbacks with respect to LCD response time, especially gray-to-gray. To address this shortcoming, companies have invested in ASICs that perform a trick generically referred to as "overshoot." The liquid crystal (LC) material in *VA responds sluggishly to small voltage changes (a change from one gray level to another). To fix this, the ASIC does some image processing and basically applies an overvoltage to the electrodes of the affected pixel to spur the LC material into rapid movement. Eventually the correct settling voltage is applied to hold the pixel at the required level matching the input drive level.

It"s very complicated math taking place in the ASIC in real time. It works well but with an important caveat: it requires a frame buffer. What this means is that as video comes into the panel, there is a memory device that can capture one whole video frame and hold it. After comparing it to the next incoming frame, the required overshoot calculations are made. Only then is the first captured frame released to the panel"s timing controller, which is when the frame is rendered to the screen. As you may have already guessed, that causes at least one frame time worth of lag (17ms).

Some companies discovered some unintended artifacts in their overshoot calculations and the only way they saw to correct these was to allow for their algorithm to look ahead by two frames instead of one. So they had to up the memory of the frame buffer and now they started capturing and holding not one but two frames upon which they make their complex overshoot predictions to apply the corrected pixel drive levels and reduce gray-to-gray response time (at the expense of lag time). Again, it works very well for improving response time, but at the expense of causing lag, which gamers hate. That in a nutshell is the basis of around 33ms of the lag measured with S-PVA.

Not every display uses this approach, but this could account for the increase in display lag between earlier S-PVA and later S-PVA panels. It"s also important to note that I tested the Dell 2408WFP revision A00, and apparently revision A01 does not have as much lag. I have not been able to confirm this personally, however. The above also suggest that displays designed to provide a higher image quality through various signal processing techniques could end up with more display lag caused by the microchip and microcode, which makes sense. Now all we need are better algorithms and technologies in order to reduce the need for all of this extra image processing -- or as we have seen with some displays (particularly HDTVs), the ability to disable the image processing.

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I don"t think it will cause you to lose fps. If you are running the GT120 and the games at highest setting, that is your problem, not the LCD. If you get a standard LCD with a 60 or 75 Hz refresh rate, and your games fps is already higher than that, you wouldn"t notice anyways... the human eye can"t keep up over those refresh rates anyways. If your games are lagging, tone down the settings a bit or change the resolution. I still run a 9800Gt in my q8300 system... I turn off AA and set the resolution to 1280x720p or 1600x900 for most games and the quality settings are still on high and most games are over 60fps anyways. Even if your game and GPU can achieve 120 fps, a standard LCD can"t refresh more than 60 fps anyways.

Display lag is a phenomenon associated with some types of LCD displays, and nearly all types of HDTVs, that refers to latency, or lag measured by the difference between the time a signal is input into a display and the time it is shown by the display. This lag time has been measured as high as 68ms, or the equivalent of 3-4 frames on a 60 Hz display. Display lag is not to be confused with pixel response time.

For older analog cathode ray tube technology, display lag is extremely low due to the nature of the technology which does not have the ability to store image data before display. The picture signal is minimally processed internally, simply for demodulation from a radio frequency carrier wave (for televisions), and then splitting into separate signals for the red, green, and blue electron guns, and for timing of the vertical and horizontal sync. Image adjustments typically involved reshaping the signal waveform but without storage, so the image is written to the screen as fast as it is received, with only nanoseconds of delay for the signal to traverse the wiring inside the device from input to the screen.

For modern digital signals, significant computer processing power and memory storage is needed to prepare an input signal for display. For over-the-air or cable-TV, the same analog demodulation techniques are used, but after that the signal is converted to digital data which must be decompressed using the MPEG codec, and rendered into an image bitmap stored in a frame buffer. This frame buffer is then procedurally written to the display device. In its simplest form this processing may take several microseconds to occur.

While the pixel response time of the display is usually listed in the monitor"s specifications, no manufacturers advertise the display lag of their displays, likely because the trend has been to increase display lag as manufacturers find more ways to process input at the display level before it is shown. Possible culprits are the processing overhead of HDCP, DRM, and also DSP techniques employed to reduce the effects of ghosting - and the cause may vary depending on the model of display. Investigations have been performed by several technology related websites; some of which are listed at the bottom of this article.

LCD, plasma, and DLP displays, unlike CRTs, have a native resolution. That is, they have a fixed grid of pixels on the screen that show the image sharpest when running at the native resolution (so nothing has to be scaled full-size which blurs the image). In order to display non-native resolutions, such displays must use video scalers, which are built into most modern monitors. As an example, a display that has a native resolution of 1600x1200 being provided a signal of 640x480 must scale width and height by 2.5x to display the image provided by the computer on the native pixels. In order to do this while producing as few artifacts as possible, advanced signal processing is required, which can be a source of introduced latency. Interlaced video signals such as 480i and 1080i require a deinterlacing step that adds lag. Anecdotally, display lag is significantly less when displays operate in native resolutions for a given LCD screen and in a progressive scanning mode. External devices have also been shown to reduce overall latency by providing faster image-space resizing algorithms than those present in the LCD screen.

Many LCDs also use a technology called "overdrive" which buffers several frames ahead and processes the image to reduce blurring and streaks left by ghosting. The effect is that everything is displayed on the screen several frames after it was transmitted by the video source.[citation needed]

Showing the existence of input lag requires a test display (the display being measured), a control display (usually a CRT) that would ideally have no display lag, a computer capable of mirroring output to two displays, stopwatch software, and a high-speed camera pointed at the two displays running the stopwatch program. The lag time is measured by taking a photograph of the displays running the stopwatch software, then subtracting the two times on the displays in the photograph. This method only measures the difference in display lag between two displays and cannot determine the absolute display lag of a single display. CRTs are preferable to use as a control display because their display lag is typically negligible. Also, video mirroring does not guarantee that the same image will be sent to each display at the same point in time.

In the past it was seen as common knowledge that the results of this test were exact as they seemed to be easily reproducible, even when the displays were plugged into different ports and different cards, which suggested that the effect is attributable to the display and not the computer system. An in depth analysis that has been released on the German website Prad.de revealed that these assumptions have been wrong. Averaging measurements as described above lead to comparable results because they include the same amount of systematic errors. As seen on different monitor reviews the so determined values for the display lag for the very same monitor model differ by margins up to 16 ms or even more.

To minimize the effects of asynchronous display outputs (the points of time an image is transferred to each monitor is different or the actual used frequency for each monitor is different) a highly specialized software called SMTT or a very complex and expensive test environment has to be used.

Several approaches to measure display lag have been restarted in slightly changed ways but still reintroduced old problems, that have already been solved by the former mentioned SMTT. One such method involves connecting a laptop to an HDTV through a composite connection and run a timecode that shows on the laptop"s screen and the HDTV simultaneously and recording both screens with a separate video recorder. When the video of both screens is paused, the difference in time shown on both displays have been interpreted as an estimation for the display lag. Nevertheless this is almost identical to the use of casual stopwatches on two monitors using a "clone view" monitor setup as it does not care about the missing synchronisation between the composite video signal and the display of the laptop"s screen or the display lag of that screen or the detail that the vertical screen refresh of the two monitors is still asynchronous and not linked to each other. Even if v-sync is activated in the driver of the graphics card the video signals of the analog and the digital output will not be synchronized. Therefore it is impossible to use a single stop watch for display lag measurements, nervertheless if it is created by a timecode or a simple stopwatch application, as it will always cause an error of up to 16 ms or even more.

Display lag contributes to the overall latency in the interface chain of the user"s inputs (mouse, keyboard, etc.) to the graphics card to the monitor. Depending on the monitor, display lag times between 10ms and 68ms have been measured. However, the effects of the delay on the user depend on the user"s own sensitivity to it.

Display lag is most noticeable in games (especially older video game consoles), with different games affecting the perception of delay. For instance, in World of Warcraft"s PvE, a slight input delay isn"t as critical compared to PvP, or to games favoring quick reflexes like Counter-Strike. Rhythm based games such as Guitar Hero also require exact timing; display lag will create a noticeable offset between the music and the on-screen prompts. Notably, many games of this type include an option that attempts to calibrate for display lag. Arguably, fighting games such as Street Fighter and Tekken are the most affected, since they may require move inputs within extremely tight windows that sometimes only last 1-3 frames on screen.

If the game"s controller produces additional feedback (rumble, the Wii Remote"s speaker, etc.), then the display lag will cause this feedback to not accurately match up with the visuals on-screen, possibly causing extra disorientation (e.g. feeling the controller rumble a split second before a crash into a wall).

TV viewers can be affected as well. If a home theater receiver with external speakers is used then the display lag causes the audio to be heard earlier than the picture is seen. "Early" audio is more jarring than "late" audio. Many home theater receivers have a manual audio delay adjustment which can be set to compensate for display latency.

Many televisions, scalers and other consumer display devices now offer what is often called a "game mode," in which the extensive preprocessing responsible for additional lag is specifically sacrificed to decrease, but not eliminate, latency. While typically intended for videogame consoles, this feature is also useful for other interactive applications. Similar options have long been available on home audio hardware and modems for the same reason.

LCD screens with a high response time value often do not give satisfactory experience when viewing fast moving images (They often leave streaks or blur; called ghosting). But an LCD screen with both high response time and significant display lag is unsuitable for playing fast paced computer games or performing fast high accuracy operations on the screen due to the mouse cursor lagging behind. Manufacturers only state the response time of their displays and do not inform customers of the display lag value.

The process that occurs from when the user presses a button to when the screen reacts is outlined below (steps which have negligible response time contributions have been omitted). Each step in the process adds response time (commonly known as "input lag"), which varies from minor to noticeable.

1: Controller sends signal to console For wired controllers, this lag is negligible. For wireless controllers, opinions vary as to the effect of this lag. It is likely that opinions vary due to each user"s sensitivity to lag, model of wireless controller and the other equipment in the signal chain (i.e. the rest of their gaming setup).

2: Network lag (online gaming only) Since the console must know the current location of other players, there is sometimes a delay as this information travels over the network. This occurs in games where the input signals are "held" for several frames (to allow time for the data to arrive at every player"s console) before being used to render the next frame. At 25 FPS, holding 4 frames adds 40ms to the overall input lag.

3: Console processes information and sends frame output to television A console will send out a new frame once it has finished processing it. This is measured with the frame rate. Using Gran Turismo 5 as an example, the maximum theoretical framerate is 60 FPS (frames per second), which means the minimum theoretical input lag for the overall system is 17ms (note: the maximum real world FPS in 3D mode is 40-50 FPS). In situations where processor load is high (e.g. many cars are on-screen on a wet track), this can drop to 30 FPS (16 FPS for 3D mode) which is equivalent to 32ms.

4: Television processes frame (image correction, upscaling, etc.) and pixel changes colour This is the "input lag" of the television. Image processing (such as upscaling, 100 Hz, motion smoothing, edge smoothing) takes time and therefore adds some degree of input lag. It is generally considered that input lag of a television below 30ms is not noticeable, discussions on gaming forums tend to agree with this value. Once the frame has been processed, the final step is the pixel response time for the pixel to display the correct colour for the new frame.

Typical overall response times Overall response times (from controller input to display response) have been conducted in these tests: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-lag-factor-article?page=2 It appears that overall input lag times of approximately 200ms are distracting to the gamer. It also appears that (excluding television input lag) 133ms is an average response time and the most sensitive games (first person shooters and Guitar Hero) achieve response times of 67ms (again, excluding television input lag).

When you"re using a monitor, you want your actions to appear on the screen almost instantly, whether you"re typing, clicking through websites, or gaming. If you have high input lag, you"ll notice a delay from the time you type something on your keyboard or when you move your mouse to when it appears on the screen, and this can make the monitor almost unusable.

For gamers, low input lag is even more important because it can be the difference between winning and losing in games. A monitor"s input lag isn"t the only factor in the total amount of input lag because there"s also delay caused by your keyboard/mouse, PC, and internet connection. However, having a monitor with low input lag is one of the first steps in ensuring you get a responsive gaming experience.

Any monitor adds at least a few milliseconds of input lag, but most of the time, it"s small enough that you won"t notice it at all. There are some cases where the input lag increases so much to the point where it becomes noticeable, but that"s very rare and may not necessarily only be caused by the monitor. Your peripherals, like keyboards and mice, add more latency than the monitor, so if you notice any delay, it"s likely because of those and not your screen.

There"s no definitive amount of input lag when people will start noticing it because everyone is different. A good estimate of around 30 ms is when it starts to become noticeable, but even a delay of 20 ms can be problematic for reaction-based games. You can try this tool that adds lag to simulate the difference between high and low input lag. You can use it to estimate how much input lag bothers you, but keep in mind this tool is relative and adds lag to the latency you already have.

There are three main reasons why there"s input lag during computer use, and it isn"t just the monitor that has input lag. There"s the acquisition of the image, the processing, and finally actually displaying it.

The acquisition of the image has to do with the source and not with the monitor. The more time it takes for the monitor to receive the source image, the more input lag there"ll be. This has never really been an issue with PCs since previous analog signals were virtually instant, and current digital interfaces like DisplayPort and HDMI have next to no inherent latency. However, some devices like wireless mice or keyboards may add delay. Bluetooth connections especially add latency, so if you want the lowest latency possible in the video acquisition phase, you should use a wired mouse or keyboard or get something wireless with very low latency.

Once the image is in a format that the video"s processor understands, it will apply at least some processing to alter the image somehow. A few examples:

The time this step takes is affected by the speed of the video processor and the total amount of processing. Although you can"t control the processor speed, you can control how many operations it needs to do by enabling and disabling settings. Most picture settings won"t affect the input lag, and monitors rarely have any image processing, which is why the input lag on monitors tends to be lower than on TVs. One of these settings that could add delay is variable refresh rate, but most modern monitors are good enough that the lag doesn"t increase much.

Once the monitor has processed the image, it"s ready to be displayed on the screen. This is the step where the video processor sends the image to the screen. The screen can"t change its state instantly, and there"s a slight delay from when the image is done processing to when it appears on screen. Our input lag measurements consider when the image first appears on the screen and not the time it takes for the image to fully appear (which has to do with our Response Time measurements). Overall, the time it takes to display the image has a big impact on the total input lag.

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It"s false argument to begin with and while I"m glad the Op is fighting back. We need to get out of the mindset a display has input lag, to me it doesn"t it"s literally only displaying the signal given to it and since it has no awareness of your inputs I see it as a dumb notion to link the two.

An ungodly crt like gdm-fw900 has no competition stock or tweaked even compared to oled at 1080p. The same for princeton monitors when the few of them existed for customers and not just big companies or very pricy clients could be gotten. I say that from experience and I"ve yet to see any flat panel in my history post crts or sed demonstrations that have topped either.

how about if we have topic like this we inform people a little more of options in the past that LCD and flat panels made us regress in, such as high refreshrates. That"s huge caveat to leave out to people that CRTs had no problem with high refreshrates even in the 90s. Not only that refreshrate as we now know from the blur buster studies has a direct impact on the pixel persistence of lcd, thus even for lcds it would seem dumb to me not mention that that factor would change at higher rates. I don"t even need to debate this part that"s a fact and it should be highlighted that 60hz alone in pixel persistence is 16MS. There"s no doubt that in high refreshrate test or ulmb test LCD would have even less input lag, which would only help the argument they aren"t as weak as crts in this area. I know this cause I use said such products and immediately see the difference vs shit 60hz.

I don"t like the tone because while 60hz is common it is not the top of the mountain and not even close. We have 440hz monitors that exist but the test only answers the question at 60hz, which is bare minimun these days they phased out 15hz/30hz screens a long time ago. I laugh when people use the words standards as if we should ignore the larger implications of what the information is telling us. Just like I call out bad networking standards or polcies I will do the same on a subject in which consumers can easily enjoy better benefits of a better display.

Simply due to the nature of the topic I think this should be highlighted and explained well so that the typical fud on this subject even what you acknowledge doesn"t become more muddled.

Don"t get me wrong the claim you make is real and should be fought back but we should also highlight the flaws of said such debate on either end. As a lightboost lover I can"t let this stand and I given my ample technical reasons why.

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Yes we all know that CRTs have the lowest input lag of any display ever made. The problem with this longstanding fact is that any non-CRT screen is shunned by smashers as if they might contract the bubonic plague instantly upon use.

There has been talk of LCD monitors being used at upcoming international events such as Evo. This talk, as expected, has elicited a negative reaction from many smashers. The primary goal of this article is to outline just how close these monitors can get to the response time of a CRT, what the effect of lag is on gameplay, and to dispel some myths people have about LCD monitors.

In order to determine if a particular monitor lags, people will often try the subjective strategy. That is, they ask a smasher to play on a monitor and comment on how it feels. This strategy usually results in comments such as:

Fantastic responses! We have determined nothing. One major problem here is that smashers tend to placebo hard as soon as something that isn’t 2 feet in depth is placed in front of them. The other major problem is that humans are actually really bad at determining small fraction of a second differences.

With that said, it makes sense to attempt an objective strategy. With some help from Mofo, I developed a method for objectively testing lag on any type of screen. One of the beautiful things about this method is that it actually uses melee itself as part of the test. This means that we can say for a fact that every single possible source of lag has been accounted for.

As players, the lag we are sensitive to is the time between when an input is pressed to the time when the game’s reaction to that input appears on screen. In simpler words, lag is when stuff happens later than it should.

The game itself, however, cannot physically react to inputs immediately when they are received. This is because the game operates in discrete frames. For example, a character’s move can only ever begin on a frame, it cannot begin at any point in between. That said, players can and do press buttons in the time between frames. This means that if the A button is pushed to jab, the game will only begin the jab startup in a variable amount of time between 0 ms and 16.66 ms (length of one frame) – it will not start the jab immediately upon receiving the input.

The way this reality interacts with button combinations is rather interesting. It means that even if, on two separate occasions, the same two buttons are pressed with precisely the same delay in between, the same result is not guaranteed.

They understand the margin of error and press inputs in consequence to this. In the above graphic this would mean adding some time between button presses to guarantee the timing is always met

The point to make here is that, even on a monitor that is lagless, lag still exists in some way. A fully lagless experience is impossible. One way or another, players are capable of dealing with some lag. Lag induced by a laggy screen, however, is an added constant on top of this variable lag – the effect of which will be explored later.

The original concept for determining the latency of a monitor was to somehow detect the time difference between when an input is pressed to when a particular frame shows up on screen. Unfortunately, this approach is iffy at best for the reasons described in the previous section. The result of such a test would be (true lag) + (time until next frame) where time until next frame is between 0 and 16.66 ms. Luckily, there is another signal that is separate from the video and yet is related to it time wise – sound.

Let’s consider Captain Falcon standing on FD about to falcon punch. When the b button is registered by the console, the console will send the video frame information consistent with displaying a falcon punch as well as the sound information containing the famous words “FALCON PUNCH!”. The sound and the video will always be sent out by the console at the same times respective to each other, irrespective of where the input landed in the subframe region.

When the video signal reaches the display, it is first processed, and then displayed. This processing time is effectively the lag of the monitor – it will cause the two signals, audio and video, to appear desynchronized. It is the amount of time of this desynchronization that will be measured to determine lag.

When a player pauses a match in melee, two events happen nearly simultaneously: a white decal surrounds the screen and a high pitched sound is played, both denoting the pause has happened. These are both very strong and easy to recognize signals.

The audio output of the console is hooked up to an Arduino. The arduino lights an LED upon the detection of an audio signal. This effectively turns an audible signal (sound) into a visible signal (light).

When this test is executed on a CRT, the gold standard for response time, a time difference is obtained from step 4. This time difference is the expected value required if another system is to be called truly lagless.

When this test is executed on a laggy monitor, the time difference will be greater than what was seen on the CRT. The audio output will be detected at the same time but the pause decal will show up at some time later. The lag of this TV can then be calculated by the formula:

There are a few sources of error in the testing method. In order to improve the accuracy of the results, the test was executed multiple times on each monitor and the results averaged. That said, there is likely still about plus or minus 1 ms of error for the LCD results.

CRTs have less error associated with their measurement because determining when the video signal has appeared is less subjective. On an LCD, as can be seen in the gif above, the decal shows up in an incomplete fashion before the signal is accepted. This is done to provide a more fair comparison to the CRT – on which the top part of the decal is instantly fully clear.

If you have ever been introduced to the website www.displaylag.com, you might wonder how it is possible for the results to be so low with the RL2455HM.

The RL2455HM monitor displays a frame from top to bottom. This method of showing a frame is identical to how a CRT displays a frame. Display lag database uses the average latency across three zones (top, center, and bottom). Using this metric, even a CRT would not have zero lag – it would have 8.3 ms of lag. This is because it takes a full 16.66 ms to display the entire frame from top to bottom. In this particular case and in many others, when comparing to a CRT it is more fair to subtract about 8 ms from the number reported by Display Lag.

Because CRTs actually take time to display a whole frame, it is technically possible for a flat screen monitor to appear faster than a CRT. Given a small initial delay such as the RL2455HM + LGP and a faster refresh rate, it may be possible for the center of a frame and certainly the bottom of a frame to appear on screen earlier than it otherwise would on a CRT.

It is important to make a distinction between events that are affected by monitor lag and events that are not. Events that are executed via muscle memory timing, pressing one button at the correct timing after another, such as a wavedash are very easy to execute even on very laggy monitors because they do not utilize much visual prompting.

Let’s consider a person who can successfully power shield a laser 95% of the time. Assuming that human reaction follows the gaussian pattern, a gaussian response that could meet this success rate has a mean at 1 frame before the laser hits and a variance of about 72.25 (ms). Introducing the lag of the monitor and assuming that the distribution is shifted over by an amount equal to the lag, the probability of a successful power shield only drops to 93.7%.

Now a 95% success rate on a power shield is rather good. Let’s assume the person is still good but not super human – they have a lower success rate of 50% caused by an increase in variance. Given the same amount of lag, their success rate only drops to 49.7%. The takeaway from this is that given a higher variance, larger variation in a person’s ability to respond in a given amount of time, the effect of monitor latency diminishes.

It is also possible for the mean to not be perfectly centered along the target area. For example, consider a person has the same variance as described in the first example – a variance which signifies the person is quite proficient at hitting a 2 frame window. Now consider that this person tends to power shield late, late enough that their success rate is only 62.3% on a lagless system. With the lag added, this person’s success rate would drop to 49.1%. This scenario is just about the worst case given this kind of variance. The best case scenario is when the lag actually helps the player. If the same person had a tendency to hit early instead, their success rate would actually increase from 62.3% to 74.2%.

Notice that in the example where the percent of success dropped from 62.3% to 49.1%, the person was not extremely proficient at hitting the window to begin with. In contrast, when the success rate was 95% to start, the percent of success dropped a very small amount. A person proficient at hitting a 1 or 2 frame window either has a mean that is very close to centered on that target window, or has a very small variance. That said, there is a limit to how small a human’s variance can be. If a person has a 95%+ success rate hitting a 1 or 2 frame window, it is likely safe to assume it is caused by a well placed mean. Hence, players that can hit these timings very often will be very minimally affected by the added latency.

Now let’s talk about if the lag was a bit worse. Let’s consider a monitor that is slow by one full frame, 16.66 ms. In the first example with the 95% success rate person, their rate on this monitor would drop all the way to 50%. That is, 93.7% on a 2.86 ms monitor, 50% on a 16.66 ms monitor. This highlights the fact that there is a major difference between a monitor that is pretty good and one that is very good. Most monitors that people have tried would likely fall under the “pretty good” category at best. Do not allow past experiences with other monitors to influence your conception of these “very good” monitors.

All the calculations in this section were made under the assumption that the human does not adapt to the new lag. It may also be possible that the brain notices the slight offset and corrects to some degree. If the brain does do some correction, then the difference would be even smaller than described.

By the reasoning outlined in the previous section, minor lag does not appear to be a major factor for player performance. That said, I ask the reader, have you ever heard someone claim that some CRTs lag? Why do people think this? In my test results, CRT 2 is a 14 inch CRT. I have heard many negative comments about CRT 2. People just don’t seem to like it, often claiming that it lags. As shown by the results, the lag difference is essentially non-existent – it is well within the error of the test. So then, why do people not like it?

My theory is that people are also sensitive to image distortion. CRT 2 has a very clear image, but being a small monitor, it has a rather rounded screen. This rounded screen causes the image to appear somewhat distorted. This is very minor and difficult to notice but it may be the cause for the hate it has received.

The takeaway here is that lag is not the only problem with a screen. When an image looks different than another, it can throw a player off. This precise issue leads to one of the most powerful arguments for having a pro-LCD position. All the screens are the same. No more swapping back and forth between small CRTs and large CRTs. No more old, ugly, discolored CRTs. No more terrible terrible audio. The same image – same experience – every time.

It is true that very fast monitors such as the RL2455HM have some problems. Periods of fast movement can lead to minor ghosting. But overall the image quality is extremely good. After a few hours of using one, I fully expect a player to be used to it and be capable of ignoring any of its image defects.

We have seen that major tournament hosts and companies are reluctant to use CRTs. Maybe having an assortment of unique, archaic TVs gives their venue an unprofessional look. Maybe obtaining CRTs from the community is a hassle. Regardless of the reason, it is certainly a point which weakens these entities’ desire to host smash events.

That said, maybe they will accept our CRTs this year. But what about the next? And then the year after that? I expect if you are reading this you have a desire to see smash grow. CRTs are dead technology. Can we not adapt to changing technology? What kind of image does that portray to people that are not part of our scene?

There’s no game quite like melee. The fluidity of movement and execution skill cap enable a brilliant form of art we’ve come to worship. The love is real, the potential for growth is now.

Everyone has noticed the growth which our exposure at Evo provided. These big events are paramount to our continued growth. If dealing with an extremely small amount of delay helps aid that cause, how can you not support it? This small amount of lag, by the way, is bound to reduce even further as the technology improves. Maybe our exposure at these big events and our willingness to try new technology will encourage companies like BenQ or Asus to come out with new monitors that are even better for our use – monitors with support for native component input, or even maybe composite inputs.

To those that own these set ups or plan on getting one, I implore that you configure them properly and invite people to try them. For those that haven’t tried them, I encourage you to give it a fair chance. Who knows? You may find that these convenient monitors are not so bad after all.

There"s one subtle-yet-significant factor that some gamers neglect; input lag. In more technical terms, this is the (usually slight) delay between the GPU sending a frame to a TV or monitor and the screen actually broadcasting that frame.

Or in short—it"s a delay from pressing a button to the actual game or image on the screen reacting. In tech and gaming circles, it"s generally believed that roughly 15ms(milliseconds) of input lag delay is suitable. But paradoxically, some flashier, potent TVs of the modern era can get in their own way in certain respects—with features and settings that can hamper this. Luckily, there are methods—some rather simple—to eliminate much of this input lag.

While many modern TVs come with a slew of picture-altering settings and filters, these don"t always work in favor of a great gaming experience. In fact, they can sometimes be a detriment. Dig deep into the picture settings for labels such as "MPEG Reduction","Noise Reduction", and the uniquely-named "Mosquito Noise," and flip them off.

These reduction features and picture settings—while they may seem enticing to play with—can yield a bit of input lag as they tinker with the signal between the console"s video output and the TV screen.

It may seem unorthodox and unlikely to really move the needle, but in fact, some gamers have reported a slight-but-noticeable improvement in input lag just by trying out different inputs.

And luckily, most newer TVs have no shortage of HDMI inputs to tinker with. There is always the chance that the input in use is just a bit spottier than an unoccupied one. It might be a small difference, but given the precision, speed, and fast reaction time that gaming often demands, even a few milliseconds less of delay can make a difference.

Let"s face it, most serious gamers are likely to ditch the usually-inferior TV speakers and opt for more dynamic, heavy-duty sound systems. But for those that prefer to be economical on this front—it might be worth investing in external speakers or a soundbar.Not only will the games sound better, but they"ll also feel a bit sharper, adding even more to the immersion factor.

Utilizing a separate audio system is less taxing on the TV, which means more instantaneous images and motion on-screen. Gamers have reportedly noticed a difference of around 8mswith regards to input lag.

Much like a large computer monitor, you can lower the resolution on their TVs for smoother, snappier gameplay—assuming they don"t mind the slightly more muddled visuals. Most all TVs (especially modern ones) will have options to change the aspect ratio within a "display," "options," or "settings" menu.

Serious gamers may want to consider sacrificing that crisp 4k at least temporarily and dial back the resolution one notch for those particularly tough, action-packed titles. After all, most players managed with 1080p or lower during the 2000s and even into the 2010s—why not now?

Most modern sets come with at least a few power-saving options, which can be resourceful and green. However, when it comes to precise, fast-paced gameplay, they don"t really do it any favors.

Look into the various picture-related settings andbe sure that any sort of power-saving features and ambient screen dimming is off. Simply disabling this can net an extra 10msor so.

Short for "HDMI Consumer Electronics Control", this setting is a feature that provides compatibility with other devices. Basically, when it"s on, other CEC-enabled devices can command, control, and otherwise recognize the TV. While this mode is typically disabled by default, it might be worth digging into those advanced settings and making sure it"s switched off.

Many have reportedly noticed around 10msthat"s instantly shaved off when this function is not in use. Not too bad considering this is more or less a peripheral feature that"s not very crucial.

Motion modes or motion smoothing can help slicken and smoothen the quality of video—though it also yields a bit less sharpness in terms of gaming input response. This can usually be found somewhere on the "picture mode settings," or "picture options" of one"s TV.

Simply turning off motion smoothing can easily knock off a few dozen milliseconds—and make for a crisper, more responsive input lag, taking off around 30ms or less.

The biggest feature or adjustment when it comes to cutting back on input lag, is, not surprisingly, "Game Mode." This is a setting that"s becoming more and more common, though it still isn"t exactly universal. It"s essentially a pre-programmed batch of settings that are optimized for the best gaming experience, and this includes slim input lag.

Like most other options, each brand and TV model will be different in terms of placement on the menu—and effectiveness. But generally speaking, "Game Mode" can be found in either "picture" or "general" settings. Sometimes users will have to venture a bit deeper to find it. For instance, many Samsung TVs circa 2020 will need to go into General > External Device Manager > Game Mode Settings.

Your monitor’s display settings may increase the delay between inputting commands and seeing the result on your display. Some display parameters are configurable, while others are built into the hardware and cannot be changed.

The first thing to look at is your monitor’s refresh rate. A higher refresh rate increases the number of individual frames that your monitor displays per second. Displaying more frames per second reduces the delay between inputting a command and seeing its result on the screen, shaving valuable milliseconds off input lag.

Next, look at how your PC and display are connected. Wireless displays introduce more latency than wired ones, especially at high resolution display settings. If you’re using a wireless display, try switching to a wired connection, if possible.

Not all wired connections provide the same response time benefits. Some displays (especially Smart TVs) add processing effects like visual noise reduction to AV input, which adds to latency. To avoid this, check to see if your TV features a “Game Mode” that minimizes input lag by bypassing video signal processing.

Keep in mind that every TV and monitor has a unique, hardware-defined input latency. This is the amount of time that it takes the display to receive, process, and show incoming data. It is built into the hardware of the screen itself and cannot be changed.

Manufacturers don’t generally advertise their products’ latency delays. Instead, they focus on “response time,” which measures how long it takes for individual pixels to change color. It’s easy to confuse these two, but response time doesn’t have a significant impact on input lag.

Many new, gaming-ready displays have an input latency of 10-15 milliseconds. There are third-party websites that conduct and list monitor input latency scores, so it’s possible to verify how much of your input lag is built in.

When playing certain video games, it isn"t just every second that counts - it"s every millisecond. The difference between "now" and "a fraction of a second from now" can be the difference between victory and defeat. This difference -- the time between when an event occurs and when you see it occur -- is called lag. While lag cannot be eliminated, reducing it is key to a great gaming experience.

The term "lag" can refer to any time difference. However, we"re primarily concerned with input lag. This is the time difference between when a video signal arrives at your projector and when that picture is displayed on the screen. All digital projectors, regardless of their specifications or intended use, will incur some amount of input lag. That"s just the nature of digital video processing -- the projector has to take a stream of ones and zeroes and reconstitute it as an image. When that image isn"t in the projector"s native resolution, it has to be scaled, and that can add processing time. If you"re using advanced features like frame interpolation or smart sharpening, those frames of video must be analyzed in sequence and altered before reaching the screen, which adds processing time. Automatic irises adjust themselves based on the average illumination in a scene, which (you guessed it) adds processing time. In other words, there are a lot of things that can slow down an image in transit.

When lag is particularly bad, you will likely notice that something is wrong. When watching movies or video, you might notice that the sound arrives before the picture does, so people"s lips don"t match their words, or you hear gun shots in action movies before the character on screen has actually fired. When playing video games, you"ll press a button and notice a significant delay before the game responds - or you"ll respond to a timed prompt on screen, and despite thinking you"ve nailed it, you miss your cue.

Input lag is of special importance when working with video games because games are interactive. If you"re just watching movies or video and input lag is severe enough to cause lip-synch errors, you can correct it with an audio delay that slows down the audio track until it is in synch with the video. You can"t do that with games, though, because games require your input in response to what"s shown on the screen. If you delay the audio, it doesn"t remove the core problem - you find out about events after they"ve already happened.

While input lag gets a lot of attention, it is not the only source of gaming lag. A May 2009 article in Eurogamer called Console Gaming: The Lag Factor revealed that console games can be inherently laggy. In Eurogamer"s testing of console games, those running at 60 frames per second had an inherent lag of 67 milliseconds (4 frames), while 30 fps games had a minimum inherent lag of 100 milliseconds (6 frames). That"s in addition to any lag added by your display (their testing included a check against a reference CRT monitor -- not perfect,