[Dom29]

Hi


I'm new to the forum so please don't be to hard on me.

I recently got a new TV the "Philips 42PFL7404H/12" and don't get me wrong this thing looks incredible when playing HD stuff, and SD looks ok. but the input lag during gaming is quite bad. I checked a site called digital versus, and it's 32" younger brother scored an average of 33ms input lag, whether this test was done from an interlaced or progressive source is beyond me, but either way i know the input lag is bad from personal experience playing games. so I've been looking for an external unit to try and resolve the problem. I've found a few units that look like they might do the trick but keeping it within budget looks tricky (about £200...$420ish)


The device (whichever sounds best really) would be used with mostly older consoles such as the Saturn, megadrive, PlayStation, PS2 etc all of which running mostly through rgb scart leads.


I've read up on the DVDO edge and it looks like a fantastic little device but it's slightly out of my price range at $500/$600. Then there's the xrgb series which is not only notoriously hard to find, but also (from what i hear) has slightly more lag than the DVDO edge.


I've found a few that look quite good but haven't been able to find much feedback on them, there's the LENKENG LKV391 which i can barely find any information on regarding input lag/latency times, but the thing that drew me to it was the low price and the fact that it's got a scart input directly on the box (convenience)

Then i came across the Atlona AT-LINE-EX which touts such things as "No audio or video delay! Converts in real time" and "less than half a frame delay" which theoretically makes it better than the dvdo edge in the latency/input lag department, only problem is, the user reviews online about the at-line unit aren't that good... overheating issues etc, but if they've sorted out these issues then i know which one I'll be getting.


Any help/info regarding these or other units would be much appreciated as I'm struggling here, also does anyone have any info regarding the VGA input on my model of TV and if using it avoids post processing issues.

thanks, Dom.

 

[DonoMan]

First of all, you're going to need to find out if that lag only happens for certain inputs and/or resolutions. If you use a scaler that has little lag and feed in an HD signal via HDMI, say, will the lag from the TV still be there?


For actual devices, you can find some reviews here: http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/ - pay attention to "240p" because you will need that support. If you want the best possible picture for your old systems, you'll need to use them with RGB. I use my Genesis (JVC X'eye, actually) with RGBS and it looks so much better.


The machines to look at are probably mostly just the DVDO Edge, the XRGB and the older Faroudja units (e.g. Omega One) on that site.


But, again, even with a low-lag scaler like the XRGB, your TV can still add its own lag.

 

[Dom29]

Thanks for the reply DonoMan, much appreciated.

through composite rca my ps2 was lagging really badly making some games unplayable, dreamcast through a standard arial lead (scart lead broken unfortunately) made jet set radio unplayable, and ikaruga felt like a was using an arcade stick with an enormous amount of throw. oddly it wasn't all that bad playing a few games on the saturn, through an rgb scart, although still lagging and niggling at the back of my mind. I'm gonna get a friend of mine to come up with his 360 and test out guitar hero through hdmi and see what happens, hopefully theres an improvement with native 1080p sources. i'd love to test the vga input, and see if theres an improvement but i haven't got anything at the minute other than my pc (which i don't have the cable for) that can natively output it.


I checked out the dvdo edge and it does seem to suite my needs in every respect but it's pricey as is the xrgb3 which seems to be the only one i can buy at the minute. just did a quick google on the faroudja omega one and list prices $1000 and up, also seems that it can only output at 480p/576p which would mean my tv has to scale that up to it's native resolution (1080p) further adding lag.


Again, thanks for the help DonoMan.


Does anyone have any information on the scalers i mentioned in my first post, the lenkeng unit is cheap (well cheaper than my other options) and natively has scart onboard which is handy, but i can't find anymore info on it regarding processor/lag etc. Cheers,

Dom.

 

[Fudoh]

I would very much suspect that your Philips TV is to blame and you'll hardly be able to really reduce the lag. Unfortunately Philips doesn't pay any attention to our gaming needs and builds TVs with up to 100ms of processing delay.


Does your TV have a VGA input ? It's usually the VGA input which is the quickest because it's built to display graphics and text without any major processing after all and often doesn't involve a deinterlacer in the processing path.

 

[Dom29]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Fudoh /forum/post/18253568


I would very much suspect that your Philips TV is to blame and you'll hardly be able to really reduce the lag. Unfortunately Philips doesn't pay any attention to our gaming needs and builds TVs with up to 100ms of processing delay.


Does your TV have a VGA input ? It's usually the VGA input which is the quickest because it's built to display graphics and text without any major processing after all and often doesn't involve a deinterlacer in the processing path.

Hi Fudoh thanks for the response

yeah i agree that the tv is definately to blame. the input lag for the 32" version of the same TV was measured at 33ms, but i don't know if this was measured progressively or not. this seems about right because when i did the calibration test in guitar hero 3 and 4 (through composite) i was averaging about 35/45ms delay, although the test isn't the most accurate it does give a rough indication.


yeah, it has a vga input but i'm yet to make use of it as i have nothing that can natively output VGA, other than my pc, but i'm lacking the vga to vga connector to test it out with at the moment. I'd love to see the results of consoles that can output progressively, like the ps2 or gamecube via component and see if theres an improvement, but again i'd need to get the cables first, cheers.

Dom.


EDIT: looks like i can post these links now, so people can actually see the devices i was talking about in the first post. the LENKENG LKV391

official site Here

and the Atlona AT-LINE-EX official site Here

 

[hexcode99]



Quote:
Originally Posted by DonoMan /forum/post/18250254


First of all, you're going to need to find out if that lag only happens for certain inputs and/or resolutions. If you use a scaler that has little lag and feed in an HD signal via HDMI, say, will the lag from the TV still be there?


For actual devices, you can find some reviews here: http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/ - pay attention to "240p" because you will need that support. If you want the best possible picture for your old systems, you'll need to use them with RGB. I use my Genesis (JVC X'eye, actually) with RGBS and it looks so much better.


The machines to look at are probably mostly just the DVDO Edge, the XRGB and the older Faroudja units (e.g. Omega One) on that site.


But, again, even with a low-lag scaler like the XRGB, your TV can still add its own lag.

That is an interesting article. Too bad it doesn't cover the DVDO EDGE. So does the DVDO EDGE support 240p/288p input? If so, does it do a better job then the XRGB-3?


And were all original PlayStation 1 games 240p/288p or 480i? I know the PS3 upscales PS1 games to 480i/480p no matter what. So if you want the original 240p display, can you use a PS2 or do you need a PS1?

 

[HDgaming42]



Quote:
Originally Posted by hexcode99 /forum/post/18265690


That is an interesting article. Too bad it doesn't cover the DVDO EDGE.

What are you talking about? I'm guessing you didn't find that article interesting enough to read... There is plenty of info on the EDGE.

 

[hexcode99]

Ah, yeah, it does. I guess I overlooked it (noticed the iScan VP50pro but not EDGE) Thanks.


EDIT:

After looking over the article, it looks like the XRGB 2/3 is the far better choice for gaming then the DVDO Edge.

 

[HDgaming42]



Quote:
Originally Posted by hexcode99 /forum/post/18266101


Ah, yeah, it does. I guess I overlooked it (noticed the iScan VP50pro but not EDGE) Thanks.


EDIT:

After looking over the article, it looks like the XRGB 2/3 is the far better choice for gaming then the DVDO Edge.

I have both an EDGE and an XRGB-2+, and I use the XRGB. It doesn't scale, so I use an Optoma HD3000 for that--cutting out the EDGE entirely for legacy gaming.

 

[hexcode99]

Why not use the XRGB for legacy gaming and the EDGE for scaling? Do you use the EDGE for anything?

 

[Dom29]

ok bit of an update, i got the dreamcast vga box and there doesn't appear to be any apparent lag (well not any that i'm aware of) which is fantastic, ikaruga played just like it should, and it really brings through the details in other games that i otherwise would have missed on a standard definition TV (or through scart on my lcd). Only problem, with it being a cheap DC vga box the picture has a wobble running up and down the picture, kind of like interference, it could just be my vga to vga lead being inexpensive also. Shame but theres not really an alternative vga box in that department (other than making my own) to avoid this is suppose.


so i guess this means that there isn't alot of post processing via the vga port on this tv, so i might be in luck with an external scaler/processor

 

[Fudoh]

There really isn't too much difference in the DC VGA boxes. There's on conversion happening inside the box. It's basically just shortening two pins on the output to switch the DC into native VGA mode. This said, I would try a better (shorter, better shielded) VGA cable first, before looking out for another VGA box.


For your vintage system you might want to look into something with VGA output then. If you can affort it, the XRGB-3 would definitely be your choice. 480i deinterlacing from a PS2 aside, it does a fantastic job on your all sources and adds zero lag to your TV's processing. The XRGB-3 recently got an english language firmware version as well. You can find more info about it in the XRGB wiki at http://junkerhq.net/xrgb/index.php/XRGB-3 .


On the less expensive side you could look at a HDBoxPro along with a Scart RGB to Component transcoder, but it doesn't reach the XRGB's quality nor does it provide zero lag processing.

 

[HDgaming42]



Quote:
Originally Posted by hexcode99 /forum/post/18267737


Why not use the XRGB for legacy gaming and the EDGE for scaling? Do you use the EDGE for anything?

My XRGB-2+ doesn't scale, so it's either use the TV (looks terrible) or use an external scaler.


I use the EDGE for movies/television because it has better deinterlacing/cadence detection, and I don't notice the ringing nearly as much on live video. I use the Optoma for legacy gaming as I like my old school graphics blocky without ringing.

 

[hexcode99]

If I ever found a HD3000 I would need a device to sync up the video and audio and output from a single HDMI cable. As of now I have an EDGE which features audio input, so I could feed video into HD3000 for scaling and the audio into EDGE plus the video output from the HD3000 into EDGE as well. However, if the EDGE will add ringing to an incoming 1080p source even though EDGE is set to output 1080p, I might not want to use it. I don't really watch movies/TV, so if I returned the EDGE, what would be something I could feed the HD3000's output into that has audio and will sync everything up and not damage the video then output video/audio over HDMI? I take it would be some kind of receiver.

 

[Fudoh]



Quote:
However, if the EDGE will add ringing to an incoming 1080p source even though EDGE is set to output 1080p, I might not want to use it.

it won't. The ringing is caused by scaling and processing. For 720p In / 720p out and 1080p in / 1080p out you're fine. Just 480p in / 480p out won't work this way.


Besides: have you tried changing the lip sync on the Edge by +/- 20 ms ? I'm quite sure that you can't tell the difference.

 

[hexcode99]

Thank you. But why won't 480p in/out work the same way? I haven't messed with the audio sync, but since I would be feeding two devices into the EDGE that themself each crate lag, I need something on the final stage to resync everything.

 

[Fudoh]



Quote:
Thank you. But why won't 480p in/out work the same way?

please ask ABT about that. I find this highly unfortunate as well. I would have loved to use the Edge for transcoding 480p YUV to 480p HDMI, but it doesn't work without any processing.

 

[hexcode99]

Interesting, thanks for the information.

 

[hexcode99]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Fudoh /forum/post/18365979


please ask ABT about that. I find this highly unfortunate as well. I would have loved to use the Edge for transcoding 480p YUV to 480p HDMI, but it doesn't work without any processing.

I was just thinking, on your gaming website you rank the EDGE top dog for true 480i content. However, what do you do with it? I mean, if you deinterlace it to 480p, do you upscale it to 720p/1080p or just output as 480p? I mean, since EDGE processes 480p and if you upscale, you get ringing/haloing?

 

[Fudoh]

You have an Edge at home, why don't you simply try ? I have it upscaled to 1080p. The reason for this is that the video deinterlacing on moving images is a quite blurry affair (don't forget that the actual resolutions on moving parts of the image gets reduced to 240 lines), so I'm basically using the upscaling to counter the softness. The results are good.