Hdtvs Vs Crts For Tournaments

Ooofmatic

Ooofmatic

World Warrior
I brought this up in the chat, and we had an interesting debate (that went nowhere really), but I'd like to discuss it in a thread instead.

It's almost 2011 now and I think it's safe to say that HDTV's are in the homes of the majority of people who own PS3's and Xbox 360's. It helps that in the past few years they have become much more affordable (especially the smaller ones).

As most know, CRT TV's have no lag period. And HDTV's have a slight lag, every HDTV make varies with its lag. And because of that lag, most tournaments are run on CRT's, and most of the hardcore players prefer to practice on CRT's. And as we know, the hardcore players are a minority. The majority of gamers have HDTV's. Many people have thrown out their CRT's. You'll also have a hard time finding a retailer that's selling new CRT's. They are going the way of the VCR and at this point HDTV's are phasing them out.

And yet despite the graphics not being as crisp, having to lug a fat TV to a tournament instead of a thin HD one, and having an irritating high pitch noise whenever they are turned on, people prefer to sacrifice all that for no lag. Which is completely understandable. I myself grew up with CRT's and I was always a firm believer of competitive FG play being on CRT's. But at this point I think it's time we move on.

The benefits of HDTV's are that they are thin, more people who go to tournaments will be inclined to take their small hdtv with them on the bus or plane to be used in the tournament. The graphics are crisper, so it's easier to recognize certain moves, and it's a more pleasant viewing experience for spectators. And lastly, they are what's in now. New players to the game will most likely primarily play on HDTV's and not even own a CRT. Yet CRT's being tournament standard will cause these players to mess up JF's and other timings that they may have gotten down on their HD's. So using HD sets might be more appealing to the newer crowd.

Now lastly when it comes down to it, it's about the lag. It is known that different HDTV's vary in their lag, so some may say that this will cause a problem for players. But from my experience the difference in lag between a CRT (no lag) and an HDTV (slight lag) is greater than the difference between an HDTV, and a different HDTV. So those who play at home on their HD's and have their JF's down on them will have a harder time going to a tournament and doing them on a CRT than they would if they had to play on a different HDTV. So maybe sacrificing playing with no lag, for crisper visuals and more compact tv sets will actually be worth it.

I personally exclusively play on HDTV's at home now, and I'm thinking of throwing my ugly ass old CRT's out. I mainly just can't stand the high pitch screech on them, and I can play just fine on my HDTV and land my JF's just fine on it, and when I play on other HDTV's with a very slight barely noticeable change in lag, I can still land my JF's. It's just once I switch to CRT that I start having problems after I'm used to HDTV's. So at this point I'd rather be playing on HDTV sets at tournaments.

I just want to know what the community thinks on the subject.
 
There isn't a standard... and there doesn't need to be a standard. In fact, with HDTVs, you CAN'T make a standard unless you say all tournaments must run this SPECIFIC model and brand HDTV, otherwise every tournament will have different lag standards. A TV is a TV, if it lags, then too bad; the lag is equal for both players. Run your tournaments on whatever TV you want, if players complain, tell them to STFU... thats what I do.

You can say, new players use HDTV, so we should use HDTVs to accommodate them. Well thats impossible, unless you are using the same exact model and brand HDTV they are using. Hell, maybe they have an HDTV with zero lag; they do exist (they are called Digital Signage and they are very expensive). Now you want to bring in an HDTV that does lag? Well that doesn't accommodate them at all!

A tournament organizer will do the best they can to provide a rich experience for their players. If their player base want CRTs, then they should supply CRTs. If their player base wants HDTVs, then they should supply HDTVs. Forcing tournament organizers to go out and buy half a dozen HDTVs, when they have dozens of CRTs laying around, which we all know are better for the tournament scene, will effectively kill their ability to run tournaments.

OOF, for some reason you've always had this tendency to create mountains out of molehills... to start arguments and strive for "standards" where there isn't a need for one. Most CRTs don't have the "high pitch screech"; its only low quality brands like ProScan and RCA that have them.
 
You also have to remember that the average person isn't like us. They aren't technophiles. They don't understand the difference between a Sony/Samsung television and a Panasonic/Sharp television. They see that the Panasonic/Sharp are much cheaper, so they get those. A CRT would have 0ms of lag... while a Sony/Samsung may have somewhere between 14ms and 36ms. Thats at most a 2-3 frame adoption...

But then you have the "new" players who aren't technophiles with shitty Panasonic/Sharp televisions that have 80-120ms of lag (my mother has one, they are unplayable). Are you saying you want tournament organizers to run tournaments on these absolutely shitty televisions simply because its more inline with the televisions most people have? A 5-8 frame adoption is just insane.

The adoption level to go from a 80ms television to a 36ms television is far worse than going from a 36ms television to a 0ms television. Not to mention, its the "pro" players who would notice the lag. Do you think the average "new" player even understands their TV has 80ms of lag? 80ms to 0ms may as well be just as bad as 80ms to 36ms. Its such a large adjustment to begin with that a little more isn't going hurt than any worse than it already has.
 
I get where you're coming from. My main thing with it is that I can transition from one HDTV to another HDTV with the slight variation in lag, and not have any problems with my JF's and timing. But the transition from HDTV to CRT is more apparent so it's harder to do so.

I just kind of want to throw out my CRT's and not have to use them again. And with tournaments being held on CRT's, I have to stop playing on my HDTV, and bring out my CRT from storage to practice on. But if HDTV's were being used in they tourney, the lag even if it was slightly varied would be very similar to my HDTV and I wouldn't feel the need to adjust my timing.

Maybe it's just me. =\

/Edit/ Just read your previous post. It kind of makes sense, but at home I have a Sony and a Dynex (shittier brand), I can transition between the two without a problem. So I'm still not convinced.
 
OOFMATIC said:
/Edit/ Just read your previous post. It kind of makes sense, but at home I have a Sony and a Dynex (shittier brand), I can transition between the two without a problem. So I'm still not convinced.
Click to expand...
Actually... even though Dynex is a shittier brand, it uses the fastest technology. Dynex TVs always look "washed out" because they don't use the technology you see in most HDTVs, they use TN film technology, which is the tech you see most often in computer monitors (in fact, I don't think BestBuy sells any computer monitors that aren't TN film). I myself bought an IPS monitor, which has some of the deepest and richest colors, but it makes sacrifices by having about 60ms of lag.

While TN (Twisted Neumatic) film is the lowest quality of LCD panel you can get, the advantage is that its very easy to engineer without having to do any post processing. The less post processing you have, the less lag you have. The Dynex TV you have, probably has even less lag than your Sony. Most TN film monitors these days have less than 14ms of lag. Its also why the OFFICIAL HDTV of Evo is actually a computer monitor, and not an HDTV.

Remember, Input Lag is NOT the same as Response Time.
 
I see. Thanks for informing me. I guess I was wrong on my assumption that it's easier to transition between varying HDTV's than between HDTV's and CRT's. Which was my main reasoning behind not wanting to use CRT's at tournaments anymore. Hopefully as technology progresses there will be more affordable HDTV's with minimal lag, so that in the near future we can finally fully phase out the use of CRT's.
 
OOFMATIC said:
I see. Thanks for informing me. I guess I was wrong on my assumption that it's easier to transition between varying HDTV's than between HDTV's and CRT's. Which was my main reasoning behind not wanting to use CRT's at tournaments anymore. Hopefully as technology progresses there will be more affordable HDTV's with minimal lag, so that in the near future we can finally fully phase out the use of CRT's.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, I don't think its going to happen anytime soon. IPS (Inter-plane Switching) is actually gaining in popularity because of the iPad (they use e-IPS) and people are liking the rich and deep colors. OLED is even slower than IPS and thats getting pretty popular too.

Unfortunately, input lag seems to have fallen on the wayside as the average consumer doesn't really see the difference. Even Samsung's T240B, which is considered to have been the lowest lag consumer level TN Film LCD monitor ever made (with only 5ms of lag) has been out of production for a long time now. It's successor, the T240HD has 50ms of lag. The Official EVO monitor has 8ms of lag if I recall correctly, thats still half a frame.

If you really want a zero lag HDTV, you must go Digital Signage through BNC (analog) instead of digital... digital connections create lag, its just that simple. Analog signals are usually raw, but digital signals in 1s and 0s have to be translated... translation causes lag. Then of course, you're looking at about $1000 for a 20 inch television... not cheap.
 
AriesWarlock said:
Aren't PC monitors a better choice? Less expensive, HDMI, 5 ms or less (since some years ago).
Click to expand...
If you read my post... I've already said that even the fastest PC monitor is still 5ms... and they don't even make that model anymore.

When a monitor says "2ms refresh rate", that does not mean 2ms of input lag. No monitor has EVER revealed their input lag publicly in a spec sheet or on a box, people always have to test it themselves. Refresh rate is how long it takes for a pixel to go from white to black, and back to white again. It has nothing to do with input lag.

As I said before, the fastest PC monitor is a TN Film LCD... the Samsung T240B at 5ms. Samsung doesn't even make it anymore, the new T240HD has something like 50ms of input lag. Yes TN film is better, but thats why the quality is usually so low on pc monitors.

Ideally, the best choice is a Digital Signage Monitor, with ANALOG (read: NOT HDMI!) RGB BnC connections. Digital connections such as HDMI inherently create lag because of conversion and reconversion. Analog has always been better than digital, and will always be better than digital. The reason we use digital is because of compression. It takes a lot less bandwidth to send a digitally compressed signal than an analog signal.
 
Jaxel, out of curiosity would retail stores likely carry Digital Signage Monitors? What other place can you buy those types of monitors?
 
The reason I like analog (VGA/Component) is because the shit works, works well, and 90% of people wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway. Long cable runs are generally guaranteed to work decently if not perfect barring particularly shitty cables. The all digital workflow tends to be far more troublesome. Go a little too long and oop awwww your signal is gone time to buy a $100+ repeater.

Buzzwords. Always ruining stuff for people who know their shit.

Anyway, yeah, buy a cheap PC monitor if you want a decent chance of getting a screen with decently small lag. It's pretty much almost always the expensive stuff that lags the most because of the amount of processing those things do to the image which you often can't disable.
 
How much lag do Vizio's usually have? Not you got me scared Jaxel, I pretty much practice all the time in HDTV'S I probably wont hit a single JF in regular TV's
 
my LG monitor also has a very small response time. i can switch between it and my CRT on SC and SF and notice no difference.

edit; it's the one linked to above, only slightly smaller 8-)
 
As I said before... RESPONSE TIME =/= INPUT LAG!

Response Time (sometimes called Refresh Rate) is the time it takes for a pixel to go from white to black, and back to white. A slow response time creates something called "ghosting". No monitor/television manufacturer has EVER released their input lag ratings; because if they did, no one would buy their TVs.
 
what i know:

my vizio 22 inch has zero noticeable lag. many many great players have played on it and agree.

my vizio 32 inch has lag that i notice. they are the same model and the same brand, and came from the same year.

what does this mean? i have no clue.
 
Well some of the older CRT's can lag too, but I still prefer them over HDTV's. The situation like what happened at the quakecon tourney was very dissapointing and scary if that's how all HDTV tourney's is gonna be. Those TV's where laggy as hell.

Imo I say stick with the CRT's, and do the force 1080i thing and get to as little as possible lag as a last resort. Cause when I do a 4 A+B A bomb post GI for a RO and my opponent is still looking at me due to the slight lag I will be pissed.

CRT's all the way baby, let's keep it ole' school! Lol
 
On my LG they call it 'Thru Mode' or 'None Delay' so I would think that's a mode that lets the signal go through as fast as it can.
The directions say "Not use the Frame-Buffer memory to prevent the picture delay. It can use in GAME MODE to prevent picture delay."
Seems like that would be input lag.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back