I'm quite bored today.
In my quest to find the "best" progressive scan TV for Wii, Gamecube, and all other past-gen stuff without lag, I've had to educate myself about the finer points of television and just how they work. There's actually a lot to know, and I've found it all very interesting. Particularly, why certain TVs (mostly of the HD sort) lag when playing certain console games, which at the core is caused by non-matching resolutions from source to display, and also superfluous video processing/enhancement.
One can group distinct video signals and devices into three different standards:
Standard definition TV (SDTV) - what you've had in your house for as long as you can remember. SDTVs display only interlaced video at a vertical resolution of 480 lines, refreshing 59.94 times a second in NTSC (shorthanded to 480i60). In PAL/SECAM, this is 576 lines of interlaced video, refreshing 50 times per second (576i50). Actual video may not be rendered at the maximum "framerate." Most current NTSC console games for example, render at 30 fps due to limits in graphical processing power and the fact that 30 fps fits nicely into the NTSC signal's refresh rate.
What is interlaced video?
Interlaced video consists of alternatively displaying only the odd lines of resolution for one frame, and the even lines for the next, for every time the screen refreses. These interlaced frames are now referred to as "fields." Persistence of vision, the high refresh rate, intentional blurring of the video, and afterglow of the previous image makes the interlace effect inobvious to an untrained eye.
Interlaced video's purpose is to meet bandwidth limitations of the TV signal, as it uses half the bandwidth of equivalent video that uses progressive scan. Interlaced video also only requires minimal connection standards to work. However, the interlace effect creates visual artifacts such as interline flicker (also called twitter). Interlaced video is blurred intentionally to mask this effect, as in the Deflicker option of Melee. However, this blurring comes at the cost of image clarity.
Enhanced Definition TV (EDTV) - A step upwards from SDTV, but not sharp enough to be considered High Definition TV. EDTV uses the same display resolution as SDTV, but displays video using progressive scan. So instead of only the odd lines, then the even lines of video being displayed, it shows every line, all the time. This results in a much sharper, accurate picture, also unnecessitating intentional blur that is used for interlaced video. The Wii and Gamecube both output EDTV as a maximum resolution for games that support it (most do), but requires at least component video connections to work. In NTSC, the EDTV signal is 480p60. PAL/SECAM uses both 480p60 and 576p50 depending on the application.
As the cost of HDTV technology is always getting cheaper, enhanced-definition televisions are becoming a rare commodity, as they are considered an obsolete use of progressive scan TV. This obviously excludes Wii owners.
High Definition TV (HDTV) - You hear everyone talking about this. This is the major advancement in home theater video. What HDTV basically offers is the ability to display video with many more distinct pixels in a given space than SDTV or EDTV, resulting in more lifelike and less blocky picture quality. The ATSC standard has defined consumer HDTV in three different resolutions, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. 1080p is often advertised as "Full HD". As an added bonus, HDTV resolutions are naturally widescreen. As far as console games, HDTV is beyond the Wii's capability. The Xbox 360 and PS3 can render games in HD resolutions, the Xbox 360 going up to 1080i and the PS3 to 1080p.
Remember, an HDTV is only as good as the video source you're using. An HDTV won't work a miracle on your composite video hookup, which is that little yellow-ended cable that 90% of you use for video output on your consoles. In fact, using this on an HDTV likely causes more harm than good due to the need to upconvert the video, causing... LAG!
Why do HDTVs and EDTVs lag?
All HDTVs have a thing known as a "native resolution," which is whatever resolution the TV is limited to displaying to. Any non-matching video signal must be upconverted or downconverted to match the TV's native resolution using an onboard scaler. Often times, an HDTV only has one such native resolution, which is usually progressive, such as 1080p or 768p. By contrast, a composite video hookup for Wii/Gamecube uses 480i. The HDTV cannot display interlaced video directly, so the onboard scaler must "deinterlace" the video feed so that all of the lines of video are filled. This takes a finite amount of time that is quite noticeable to the viewer due to the processing involved. Deinterlacing is the major culprit of lag on HDTVs, and also EDTVs. If your video output is already progressive, then the deinterlacing process is skipped.
In addition to deinterlacing, the HDTV also must resize the video to fit the new resolution. If you were to 1:1 pixel map a standard 640x480 resolution to a 1080p HDTV, you'd only take up 15% of the screen space. The HDTV's onboard scaler is again used to resize the video feed through interpolation of pixels. This also takes processing time, albeit not nearly as much as deinterlacing would. This process is less than perfect, and may cause distortion in the resized image, especially when focusing on small objects.
A third but rarely problematic factor that can contribute to HDTV lag is artificial image enhancement. This includes features such as digital noise reduction. Turning these and other superfluous image enhancers off will fix this.
I'm still looking for an LCD EDTV with the following criteria for Wii and past-gen:
Widescreen
around 26"
Can take 480i/p without lagging
good integrated speakers
minimum of ghosting/motion blur
Nothing that meets this seems to exist, which leads me to wonder if I should consider TV design for serious Wii fans who also happen to be videophiles.
This thread really doesn't have a point except you can share your questions about TV and video sources, and we can do our best to answer each other. Like I said, I got really bored today.
In my quest to find the "best" progressive scan TV for Wii, Gamecube, and all other past-gen stuff without lag, I've had to educate myself about the finer points of television and just how they work. There's actually a lot to know, and I've found it all very interesting. Particularly, why certain TVs (mostly of the HD sort) lag when playing certain console games, which at the core is caused by non-matching resolutions from source to display, and also superfluous video processing/enhancement.
One can group distinct video signals and devices into three different standards:
Standard definition TV (SDTV) - what you've had in your house for as long as you can remember. SDTVs display only interlaced video at a vertical resolution of 480 lines, refreshing 59.94 times a second in NTSC (shorthanded to 480i60). In PAL/SECAM, this is 576 lines of interlaced video, refreshing 50 times per second (576i50). Actual video may not be rendered at the maximum "framerate." Most current NTSC console games for example, render at 30 fps due to limits in graphical processing power and the fact that 30 fps fits nicely into the NTSC signal's refresh rate.
What is interlaced video?
Interlaced video consists of alternatively displaying only the odd lines of resolution for one frame, and the even lines for the next, for every time the screen refreses. These interlaced frames are now referred to as "fields." Persistence of vision, the high refresh rate, intentional blurring of the video, and afterglow of the previous image makes the interlace effect inobvious to an untrained eye.
Interlaced video's purpose is to meet bandwidth limitations of the TV signal, as it uses half the bandwidth of equivalent video that uses progressive scan. Interlaced video also only requires minimal connection standards to work. However, the interlace effect creates visual artifacts such as interline flicker (also called twitter). Interlaced video is blurred intentionally to mask this effect, as in the Deflicker option of Melee. However, this blurring comes at the cost of image clarity.
Enhanced Definition TV (EDTV) - A step upwards from SDTV, but not sharp enough to be considered High Definition TV. EDTV uses the same display resolution as SDTV, but displays video using progressive scan. So instead of only the odd lines, then the even lines of video being displayed, it shows every line, all the time. This results in a much sharper, accurate picture, also unnecessitating intentional blur that is used for interlaced video. The Wii and Gamecube both output EDTV as a maximum resolution for games that support it (most do), but requires at least component video connections to work. In NTSC, the EDTV signal is 480p60. PAL/SECAM uses both 480p60 and 576p50 depending on the application.
As the cost of HDTV technology is always getting cheaper, enhanced-definition televisions are becoming a rare commodity, as they are considered an obsolete use of progressive scan TV. This obviously excludes Wii owners.
High Definition TV (HDTV) - You hear everyone talking about this. This is the major advancement in home theater video. What HDTV basically offers is the ability to display video with many more distinct pixels in a given space than SDTV or EDTV, resulting in more lifelike and less blocky picture quality. The ATSC standard has defined consumer HDTV in three different resolutions, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. 1080p is often advertised as "Full HD". As an added bonus, HDTV resolutions are naturally widescreen. As far as console games, HDTV is beyond the Wii's capability. The Xbox 360 and PS3 can render games in HD resolutions, the Xbox 360 going up to 1080i and the PS3 to 1080p.
Remember, an HDTV is only as good as the video source you're using. An HDTV won't work a miracle on your composite video hookup, which is that little yellow-ended cable that 90% of you use for video output on your consoles. In fact, using this on an HDTV likely causes more harm than good due to the need to upconvert the video, causing... LAG!
Why do HDTVs and EDTVs lag?
All HDTVs have a thing known as a "native resolution," which is whatever resolution the TV is limited to displaying to. Any non-matching video signal must be upconverted or downconverted to match the TV's native resolution using an onboard scaler. Often times, an HDTV only has one such native resolution, which is usually progressive, such as 1080p or 768p. By contrast, a composite video hookup for Wii/Gamecube uses 480i. The HDTV cannot display interlaced video directly, so the onboard scaler must "deinterlace" the video feed so that all of the lines of video are filled. This takes a finite amount of time that is quite noticeable to the viewer due to the processing involved. Deinterlacing is the major culprit of lag on HDTVs, and also EDTVs. If your video output is already progressive, then the deinterlacing process is skipped.
In addition to deinterlacing, the HDTV also must resize the video to fit the new resolution. If you were to 1:1 pixel map a standard 640x480 resolution to a 1080p HDTV, you'd only take up 15% of the screen space. The HDTV's onboard scaler is again used to resize the video feed through interpolation of pixels. This also takes processing time, albeit not nearly as much as deinterlacing would. This process is less than perfect, and may cause distortion in the resized image, especially when focusing on small objects.
A third but rarely problematic factor that can contribute to HDTV lag is artificial image enhancement. This includes features such as digital noise reduction. Turning these and other superfluous image enhancers off will fix this.
I'm still looking for an LCD EDTV with the following criteria for Wii and past-gen:
Widescreen
around 26"
Can take 480i/p without lagging
good integrated speakers
minimum of ghosting/motion blur
Nothing that meets this seems to exist, which leads me to wonder if I should consider TV design for serious Wii fans who also happen to be videophiles.
This thread really doesn't have a point except you can share your questions about TV and video sources, and we can do our best to answer each other. Like I said, I got really bored today.
