Input Lag: A Scientific Experiment (Epson 8350, 3010, 5010 & more) - Page 6

Anyone get any updates from Epson about any possible firmware updates to help the lag? It's really the only thing stopping me from purchasing. I'm going to pull the trigger on a Panasonic in February if I don't hear any update news from Epson.

Keith,

What's your budget and what other options have you explored?

I measured the lag on the 3010 compared to the Acer 9500, like "scientifically". I also played some games on both. It is one thing to say the 3010 lag is at least 80 ms. - as it is - and another thing to say it is horrible. I don't think I am hurting anyone when I say I found the lag acceptable on Batman and on Uncharted 3 but not acceptable on Pinball. I had early written that the 3010 was not good for games unless your game was Sudoku, but I have changed my opinion on that. I think it is widely agreed the 3010 & 5010 are not good for online shooters. But, the 3010 has such vivid and accurate color it is worth some compromise on lag to many of us who play games casually. I don't think we are going to stop saying so even when told to stop.

Your rant started funny but quickly became abusive and presumptuous

not sure why you say the "no lag" camp is doing disservice ? we don't see it for what we use it and are reporting facts and we are not stopping you from reporting what you see for your specific gaming style

also people should have become smart my now about not buying PJ's you cant return without hassle....now that is asinine ! Go read all the PJ forums on HD33 and 9500...folks who have issues are bending over back to get them fixed with crappy customer service ! 3010 on the other hand can be bought on Amazon for $1350 or BB for $1400 both of which offer excellent return service.

in fact people like you who use 3010 for a very specific purpose and see a lot of lag (not that there is anything wrong with it) and who discount it are doing disservice to a lot of potential buyers who are looking at it primarily for 3D-capability. I see many people on holding off buying without even trying it for themselves as you scared them off about this so called lag which you yourself claim is not measurable with a 3D-graphics games which accounts for majority of causal gamers. If you only care about 2D graphics, go buy a 2D projector.

Please dont spread wrong information to serve your agenda.

I respect defiancecp on the other hand as he is very clear about the facts in terms of where the lag shows up and where it doesn't. His is a lot more informative view where potential buyers can look at his info and see if they will be affected by it. Infact i was initially worried about it after reading his very first reviews on the lag but took the plunge only to be pleasantly surpries that I dont see it as much as other do for my style of gaming. I now am enjoying it for a variety of reasons - best said by Trick "best value add" !

Damn it, I just hoped you would all stop.

I don't have an agenda other than the facts. I don't sell these things, nor do I recommend anything specific unless I'm asked. I owned a bunch of Epsons, all of which had excellent lag - the best, in fact. Pardon me for being mad when Epson did a 180 and ruined that for many people.

As for 80ms not being horrible - what do you consider horrible, and what affordable projector is worse...?

Let's view this a little from Epson's point of view. In order to provide the necessary components and processing for improved 2D and 3D image performance, lag understandably worsened. The vast majority of those purchasing a 2D/3D projector are doing so for movie watching and, secondly for TV watching. Epson, I'm sure, weighed the tradeoffs and opted to focus on 2D/3D movie/TV image performance rather than the small minority who would use the projectors for online FPS gaming. Reducing lag significantly would require major processing and component reworking and would likely negatively reflect on 2D/3D movie image quality. Doing so really doesn't make sense considering that most who buy these projectors want the best 2D/3D movie performance possible.

If gaming is a major use of the projector - and not just gaming but ONLINE first-person-shooter gaming - then obviously you don't want the Epson projectors designed for maximum 2D/3D movie image quality which results in increased lag. There are many other projector choices out there.

I just tried my Xbox 360 on my Epson 3010E (wireless) and didn't notice the lag. Tried, Duke Nukem Forever, JASF and Battlefield 3.

Couldn't they just put in a "game mode" that turns off the features that make the lag so bad? Most LCD televisions have this.

Exactly. Like Panny and Sony do with their projectors.

... Altan

You can manually turn off the "features" such as FI and DI, etc., which DOES reduce lag, but still leaves about 80ms, which indicates to me that some of the processing producing the lag in inherent in the chip design itself and cannot be readily turned off. Realistically, the only time a 80ms lag would be an issue is for online quick reaction games such as first-person-shooters involving SERIOUS gamers. All other gaming should be just fine with an 80ms lag. The number of potential projector customers focusing primarily on serious ONLINE FPS gaming is probably less than 1% of projector buyers. Epson is certainly not going to address the lag issue when such a small number are concerned about the issue.

Being able to notice lag has a lot to do with the game being played. I had a plasma which had ~80ms input lag. When I played Modern Warfare and Left 4 Dead on the plasma, I didn't notice any lag. When I played Megaman 9 and MLB: The Show on it, the games were unplayable. How were they unplayable? Megaman 9 often requires you to jump at the very edge of the ledge; thus you have to wait until the last second to jump. Whenever I try to jump at the very last second, I would fall off the ledge because of the lag. As for MLB...try asking a big league hitter to hit a 100mph fastball when the pitcher is 11' closer to the plate! (100mph fastball travels ~11' in 80ms).

When I played Tekken on a friend's CRT TV, I was always able to block this particular low roundhouse kick he did. When we played on my Mitsubishi HD1000 projector which had 48ms of input lag, I was never able to block that kick. It was weird because I didn't notice any lag while playing Tekken, but I was never able to block that darn kick.

No one can deny the published lag numbers being posted. The question is what can you live with? If you only play casual FPS, then 80ms is not a hindrance. If you want to finish Megaman or hit a 100mph fastball, then you absolutely must pay close attention to the input lag numbers.

To be clear, you're speaking of the 5010 or 6010, right? It's been observed on the 3010 that no amount of feature selecting/deselecting changed the lag. And I think the best estimates for the 3010 put it closer to 100 ms than 80 ms.

You are correct, I was referring to the 5010/6010 series.

So what's the appeal of the 3010 compared to the practically-free 8350 for gamers? Brightness and 3D ability?

Well, you are ignoring me. STOP IT!

Does your laptop have display port or DVI? I will buy you the dongle, if you don't have one/don't want to buy one.

And you don't have any switches on hand? How have you managed to use the OFSO? Is your 3010 table mounted directly on top of your AVR? Are you using an AVR? Or is the OFSO directly between your BD player and the 3010? If using an AVR, can I assume the cable length between the game system and the AVR doesn't matter, just the one between the AVR and the 3010?

I'm grasping at straws here, man! My AE500 is on its last legs and I need to figure out its replacement 'ere long!

3D. Maybe not to some, but it's a huge factor to me.

It has the blue VGA connected that allows me to connect it to projector

sorry i dont use any switch....

i connect PS3 directly to 3010 with 50ft or 6ft or 1 ft cable

what i plan to do is if i can get a laptop with hdmi, i will just connect it to PJ with 50ft vs 6ft vs 1ft and compare relative lag between laptop and PJ for each of the cases....i know i cant measure absolute lag...but i can tell if OFSO is helping or not

you know what if i were you i would get it from Amazon for their incredible $1350 price and try it out yourself....this PJ surprises me on a daily basis....have been watching SD-DVDs and never before have i felt so gratfified with picture quality...it doesn't look like a computer image with pixelation etc...it looks like a very natural film image and you often forget that you are watching a DVD and not a bluray....also with bluryas the quality is so top notch that many times you fell like you are not watching a projected image but look at something real (even in 2D).

also what kind of games do you play ?

You remember that I had one for two weeks and returned it, right? I know what I'm missing out on. I loved that projector. Except the lag. The lag made it a non-starter for me.

I play all sorts of games. I think I could get on with the lag for almost all of them. Except, somewhere in the back of my mind, everytime I died or everytime I didn't do so well in an online match, I'd be wondering how much of it was a factor of the lag. And I wouldn't enjoy it.

I can't drop that kind of money on a new projector and feel that sense of remorse everytime I turn it on to play games.

i feel for your limbo-landness ! Cant get HD33/9500 due to RBE, cant get 3010 for lag ! I will do my best to see if OFSO is a savior !

hopefully Epson will make everyone here happy with their FW patch !

PRECISELY!


Help me, falafla! You, or a FW patch from Epson, are one of my two hopes!

what i meant is you cant try the OFSO yourslef and thoroughly test it to your satisfaction and return it if it still bothers you

or may be you can get a free-8350 just for games (not sure how though!) and 3010 for 3D

Ah... I'm almost at that point, but not quite yet.


Did I mention that I was married?

I consider zombies to be horrible.

I do think a projector would have to be broken to have worse lag than the 3010, though.

And maybe it is more than 80ms., but only maybe. I measured the 3010 to be consistently 50 ms. slower than the Acer 9500. Also, with my processor, I set the lipsync to 80 ms. to get the best match between audio and video on cable and Blu-Ray. On my equipment, 100 ms. delay puts the audio further out of sync while 80 ms. looks right.

I haven't been following his thread.. what lag times have been measured on the 3010 and the 9500?

The 5010 was consistant at 80ms, none of he various modes reduced the lag time. The Sony hw30 in gaming mode was between 20 and 30 ms.

The 3010 had the same amount of lag that the 5010 does. The 9500 times are in page 1-5 of this thread. I'm just too lazy to look it up right now because I'm responding on my phone.

3010 measurements are ranging from 80 ms. to 100 ms.

9500 I measured to be 50 ms. faster than the 3010, so that makes it 30 ms. to 50 ms. lag for the 9500.

FWIW, I measured the latency on my Epson 8345 (same as 8350, it would seem) running through a Sony HT-CT550 with RockBand 3 (the guitar having audio and optical sensors for measuring lag for calibration). The results for both audio were consistent between tests, and were in the range of 42-48ms. Well, actually, one was 42ms and one was 48ms, but I can't remember which was audio and which was video.

Either way, that's low enough lag, and close enough between audio and video, to be perfectly fine in my books.

This projector replaced my old 37" LG LCD television, which had originally been bought because it had the lowest latency of anything else on the market at the time, and the TV had more latency than this.

You got that 8345 running through a receiver, do you? Did you try it direct? That projector has far less lag than you're testing, unless the Rock Band test is awfully pessimistic.

What's the best option to get audio to the receiver if you are running video directly to the viewing hardware? I've read that optical doesn't have the necessary bandwith to pull full umcompressed audio through it. Would an hdmi splitter be better? I'm sure there is some lag associated with doing that also. I need to test my receiver on my tv to see what the difference is to see if its even worth it.

I did also notice the numbers for the 8345 do appear higher than what I have seen elsewhere.

For the purposes of this thread, we don't care about audio lag, but since you're not sure which was which, we'll take both.

I think I could like with 48.


I think RB is a little pessimistic. It could be the delay in the wireless controllers as well, but it's a constant.

My 3010 lag test with RB3 with auto-cablibrating guitar had video lag at 108 ms.