LCD TV’s and Video Game Lag.

Will you be using it for gaming? You may need to do some more research.

I recently caved and upgraded from a projection style TV to a flat panel LCD TV. I was sold by the 3D package deal. I ended up buying the LG 47LW5300, It had great reviews, and it was very well priced. I did a lot of research and looked through a lot of reviews before I finally bit the bullet. It came with a Blu-Ray player, so I bought a movie my girlfriend and I could watch and take advantage of the new tech I just bought, and the image was amazing. The next day I wanted to try out playing on the Xbox 360. I put in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to try playing it online in all of it’s 1080p glory. I did horrible, I figured I was just having a bad day. Weeks went by and I could not play the way I used to, and I linked it back to when I got the new TV. I kept telling my girlfriend, “ever since I’ve gotten my new TV, I cannot play a good game” She just laughed thinking nothing of it, but I was convinced it had to have something to do with the TV.

So I looked it up finally, and my heart sunk. I found out that flat panel TVs have a delay or “lag” in them, the TVs have to process the image before sending it to the screen, and it can take up to one whole second to reach to screen. Now, when you are playing online, that one second is literally life and death. After doing a bit more research, I found that all flat panel TVs have this lag, and it doesn’t correlate to the price of the TV either, some of the most expensive flat panels actually have some of the worst lag. The TV companies don’t advertise this because this lag means nothing if you are watching TV or a movie, you just have to do some digging to find out which TVs have more or less lag.

When You plug your gaming console in with HDMI or even composite wires, the TV has to upscale the image to 1080p. So there are three ways you can “fix” this issue, none of them are ideal considering they defeat the purpose of buying a new HDTV.

• You can connect your console using RCA cables, I’ve found most TVs do not have to process the image coming from an RCA cable because its low resolution.
• Most newer TVs have a “game mode” which reduces lag, which mine had, and it reduced the lag, but not as much as I’d hoped.
• (This is what I do) Whenever you play online, go to the settings in your console and change the display resolution to 480 to reduce the lag. There is still lag, but not nearly as much.

I did a lot of research as I said, and this lag never showed up in reviews I read, so make sure you search specifically for image lag for the specific model TV you are looking at.