Unless you want to use these for actual video-viewing purposes (ie watching HDTV off an antenna), you should probably consider 24" monitors. They don’t have built in HDTV tuners, so their price can be a lot lower. If you go that route you’ll need to make sure you get ones that support 1:1 pixel mapping or are actually 1080p - monitors normally have 1200 lines vs 1080, and the monitor will stretch the picture to fit (and introduce processing lag). 1:1 pixel mapping will keep it in ratio and just throw up black bars, or there are some 1080p monitors around, although they’re less common.
Something else to consider, depending on how you’re planning on staging the matches, is viewing angle. LCDs that run TN panels (which are pretty common), can have very narrow viewing angles, to the point where anything but looking at them head on results in very poor image quality (inverted colors + other distortions).
If you’re just planning on having them for competitors to use, cool.
I actually went through this whole process when I was picking out my monitor since I was going to hook up my 360.
$359.99 on Newegg right now, maybe lower for buying 16 at once?.
This was my second choice for monitor - but my first is far more expensive so I think that’s out. I have a friend who bought this one, and while I didn’t test the actual lag (he didn’t care, and it was already tested by a reputable site) the image quality is top notch for a TN screen.
This is the monitor I’ve been using over a year for my X360 and PS3, the HG-281DPB from Hanns-G. The monitor rates at 3ms, but from my tests in RB2, it runs at about 6ms at 1080p. This is due to the monitor running a native resolution of 1920x1200, not 1920x1080 (and there is no 1:1 function on the monitor, so there will be minor vertical stretching at 1080p).
There’s also something really goofy with how the monitor accepts 1920x1200 from the X360 in VGA mode, so it doesn’t look right and you have to run a lower resolution (and incur more lag; however the scaler seems alright as at 1680x1050 the monitor tests out at about 16ms of lag, or “only” one frame). This problem does not occur when using HDMI.
The biggest benefit: the monitor is cheap. They’re fairly bare-bones, so they run about $350 on Newegg. The monitors also have good viewing angles; the image keeps proper brightness and color even at some crazy angles. The couple of SF4 tournaments I have brought this setup to I have had zero lag complaints. You may be able to do better, but I doubt you can do this good cheaper.
Ok I borrowed my friend’s copy of RB2 and I didn’t see any automatic calibration option… there was a manual audio/visual lag calibration setting which told me to press a button when an oscillating needle hit the sides of a meter. 0ms-9mz lag according to the test (did the test 4 times). This was done through component cables sine the tv wouldn’t accept hdmi (probably some stupid DRM related problem). Is this the right test?
Edit: just got hdmi to work…0 - 10 ms lag
To be honest, I don’t trust these tests, but I do trust that my tv works fine.
For automatic calibration, you need the Rock Band 2 guitar that came with the game. Not a Rock Band 1, or third party guitar, but the official Rock Band 2 one.
I have a Sharp GP1U and a friend of mine has a GP2U. They both lag. I’ll show tests along side my Panasonic HDTV (HD 480p/1080i) if anyone wants to see.
If you’re looking for a much less expensive alternative to HD TVs, you may want to consider a monitor with HDMI or even DVI input. I’m currently using a 19 inch Dell monitor (Dell SE198WFP 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Energy Star Compliant) and I’ve tested it with several games with no lag in any of them. It supports 1080i and 1080p. Couple that with some cheap speakers using the normal PS3 A/V and you got yourself a very inexpensive setup. Even the slightly bigger versions 22" and so on aren’t that much more expensive. However I’m not sure if the other models support 1080 resolution, or are lag free as I haven’t tried them personally, nor have I researched them. But if you will just be using the screens for HD gaming ONLY (not worrying about the television functions) this might be something to look in to.
These “suggestions” are all too familiar…people posting about how their TVs have “a little” lag or “not much lag,” quite similar as to the hundreds of people who still post about how they cannot combo Boxer’s Ultra after a headbutt. Just tons and tons of people who know so little about the whole issue of input lag and how careful we ought to be when trying to be scientific…
Response time is not the same as input lag, but even as I type that, there will be 5 more people to clutter up the thread with offerings of TVs that have a 2ms response time…
And yet even more will come out and proclaim their TV as “lagless” with no substantial proof other than their unwashed peasant senses…
The “official” HDTV thread is a good example of how things, despite good intentions, can just go ugly…
I wish I could present a solution that isn’t like “only so-and-so can post because he knows the most,” so exclusionary and corrupt with favoritism…hopefully someone can just either come up with the perfect monitor, or find a different way to clean up the clutter…:sad:
i’m gonna help as much as i can with this, because there’s a good chance i may go to evo this year.
first and foremost, most people here don’t seem to recognize that black-to-black response time is NOT the same as input lag. thank you wepeel for calling people out on this. for those of you who don’t know the difference, this wikipedia article should explain it adequately. if you’re the tl;dr type, input lag is a delay of the actual signal being sent to the tv caused by, among other things, upscaling (and if you don’t know what that means, just withdraw yourself from this conversation altogether).
apart from the test that some games come with, there are other ways to test input lag. most common and effective is the timecode method. you start by outputting a native 480i signal from a laptop to a CRT to calculate how much the laptop is lagging, and then do the same thing to an lcd display, adding whatever lag the laptop’s screen has to the lag of the lcd tv. it’s best to take a picture with both displays in sight, that way you get as accurate a reading as possible (for more info on this testing method, refer to this and this).
i’m afraid i can’t make any personal recommendations on lcd’s since i don’t own one (can’t freaking stand them). however, i would also strongly suggest that you stick strictly to analog video connections (vga if possible, though component works as well) because they bypass all that hdcp garbage which is known all-too-well to cause input lag. even on my dlp, i can see a noticable difference in response between my 360 hooked up via hdmi vs. my 360 hooked up via component (yeah, this is conjecture, but it’s also common knowledge that hdmi and the hdcp it entails are a large factor in input lag).
hopefully, this info will help evo staff and some concerned srk members find the perfect lcd (on a somewhat related note, i really hope you’re not planning on running ggac on anything but a 4:3 crt).
my friend has one. i convinced him to buy it and he said it feels a lot better than his other tv(a plasma of some sort) i would give it less than a frame of lag. only problem is he bought it from newegg and it has a few dead pixels… and they wont replace it… those fuckers.