Panasonic GT60 input lag... is game mode the only resolution?

agw_01

agw_01

agw_01

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Hi guys,

I've just upgraded from my P42X10 to a P50GT60 and have noticed the input lag is pretty bad, much more than I ever noticed on the X10.

It doesn't seem to differ between HDMI sources (HTPC, BD player) although I've not watched much TV to compare against an integrated source. A bit of googling seems to suggest that turning on game mode is a way to resolve this, and it does.

However, surely this isn't the only answer? The input lag is very noticeable without game mode so why, when the TV is capable of good response times, give the user the choice to make it worse? Why would you want to turn it off and have noticeable input lag.

Are there any downsides to leaving it on all the time? TV having to work harder/hotter? Reduction in picture quality? Or is there anything I'm missing in my setup? Sure, the audio is out of sync on BDs, but even just moving the mouse cursor in Windows the lag is noticeable.

Cheers.
 
Game mode will turn off all post processing and effects to give you a faster response time.

Whether or not you'll actually notice any quality difference though is another questions.
 
As @UnworthyBean says, each of the additional picture processing modes adds a time delay.

There are anything from 50 to 60 pictures per second to process, and your GT60 is working at a much higher resolution than the X10. That one was a 1024x768 resolution panel, so roughly 790,000 dots each for the three primary colours. The GT60 is a 1920x1080 res panel. That's well over two million pixels per primary. In other words it's having to work 2.5 times harder because of the resolution alone.

If that alone wasn't enough, there's also a big difference in the numbers of processes between the two sets. The X10 really didn't have much in the way of active picture processing: P-NR and overscan, and I think that's about it. In fact, I'm throwing in overscan because it does mess up the pixel mapping, and that does have an effect on picture quality, but it's hardly "active" picture processing.

The GT60 has Ambient Sensor, Noise Reduction, MPEG Remaster, Resolution Remaster, Caption Smoother, Brilliance Enhancer, Intelligent Frame Creation, and 24p Smooth Film. Most of this stuff doesn't need to be on for Blu-ray. None of it is needed for gaming. Some of it might be useful for TV viewing depending on how good or crappy the signal is from your source.
 
Interesting stuff, thanks guys. So the less options I have turned on, the quicker the response times will be? Makes sense.

I'm not a huge fan of having loads of extra features turned on in the menus unless there's a proven reason why it's needed. I'd rather have an image as close to the source as possible without extra processing.

I've not really explored the menus so can't remember what I have and haven't turned on. I bought the TV a couple of years ago and it's sat in storage since, this is the first chance I've had to play about with it.

lucid, interesting points about the amount of processing the TV has to do to cope with the higher resolution, but you would have thought Panasonic would have used a processor that could cope with a few extra features turned on and still have minimal input lag. Could be put down to production cost or extra heat output I suppose.
 
I have everything turned off on my GT60 and there is zero input lag from all devices connected.

Let me know if you want me to check anything...
 
agw_01 said:
lucid, interesting points about the amount of processing the TV has to do to cope with the higher resolution, but you would have thought Panasonic would have used a processor that could cope with a few extra features turned on and still have minimal input lag. Could be put down to production cost or extra heat output I suppose.
Click to expand...

There's always an element of cost/performance ratio, but even so, picture processing takes time, and the picture can't be processed before it arrives.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys, I've only just had time to investigate. I only had 'Intelligent Frame Creation' turned on, its description mentions image smoothing. Talk about stating the obvious!

Turned it off and response times are much improved. Also when using my HTPC, text within Windows looks better too.

Point taken for the future... RTFM!
 
game mode is for gaming. other modes for tv/movies.

already explained above but you need to have different settings for different sources for obvious reasons like movies are only shot in 24fps, whereas sat tv can be higher, etc.

streaming will be different again.
 
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