2

I was playing Destiny online yesterday night with a couple of friends and the matches annoying. Aside from connections, there was something really strange going on: one of those two friends of mine was playing with my "same" connection, meaning we have the same ISP subscription (so same network download & upload speed), same router and we live in the same building (so we're equally far from the nearest ISP's network node). We even have the same router's ports opened, but every time we were having hard times in game, he was receiving game images one second or so before me.

The only thing that differs is the TV: I have a 40" Samsung Full-HD and he has a 50" Hisense LTDN50K680XWSEU3D. So I remembered about frame rate, Hz and response time and googled everything. I found that TVs with higher Hz are better cause they show smoother images BUT the human eye only detects changes about every 1/25th second (so it's near 80Hz).

After this long premise, my question is simple: what's the best Hz amount for a perfect gaming experience? My friend's Hisense TV has 400Hz and a response time of 6.5ms. I think that something like 100Hz and 20ms of response time would be perfect for console gaming but I'm not sure.

Improve this question
11
  • 3
    Check if either TV has a Game Mode and turn it on (otherwise disable all post-processing effects) - its possible the TV is doing various 'enhancements' to the image before presenting it (which introduces a delay). Great for movies, bad for gaming!
    – Kai
    Oct 20, 2014 at 13:06
  • My tv has Game Mode and images show up slower than my friend's tv xD
    – Leon
    Oct 20, 2014 at 13:13
  • 1
    The HZ are not that important, but the response time is. HZ just tells you, how often the image buildup happens per second, besides, almost every TV has 100hz. Response time is the important thing - the lower, the better.
    – 5pike
    Oct 20, 2014 at 13:18
  • 1
    Leon: Hi, welcome to Arqade. The answer to the question you actually asked ("what is the best number of Hz") is "It doesn't matter much". I've suggested an edit that changes the question to what I think you actually want to know - please have a look and approve it if so. If I have changed the intent, then I apologise.
    – Flyto
    Oct 20, 2014 at 14:27
  • 1
    If you push a button on your controller and see an immediate response on your TV, then your TV has nothing to do with your problem. Even with everything the same except your last router, you might have latency problems on your connection. Especially if his system is always getting updates before yours you might have a bad router, other people on your network, a bad ethernet cable (are you both using ethernet or is one on wifi?). If your TV was causing more than 1/10th of a second of delay your controls would feel completely disconnected from your character...
    – Eben
    Oct 21, 2014 at 21:26

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
9

OK, I'm going to set the record straight here since I know quite a bit about this topic. ;)

Modern advertising has confused the masses in regards to Hz.. so here it goes.

All consumer grade HDTVs (that I have seen so far) do not accept greater than a 60HZ input - meaning - that 60fps is the highest framerate you can achieve on a modern HDTV with vSync enabled.

Now that we have that straight.....

Where things get tricky/confusing is when manufacturers advertise 120HZ, 240HZ, 480HZ, etc.

The input signal is still 60HZ. (blu ray movies technically run at 24hz, but we're not talking about that) Notice that each of those defined HZ above are multiples of 60HZ.

What's really happening is this: HDTV manufacturers have engineered software that interpolates motion. Motion interpolation software takes information from frame A, and frame B, and averages the brightness and color coordinates in each frame to create a third frame between the two. enter image description here

Middle frames are new. They were never recorded as part of the original content.

This makes the picture look very smooth, but is BAD for gaming as it's causes input lag and response lag.

So to answer your question, 60HZ is best for gaming.

What's more important for gaming is your pixel response time, which you can check for several TVs here: http://www.displaylag.com/display-database/

Also, you might try connecting to the HDMI (DVI) port on your TV. enter image description here

Head over to http://www.displaylag.com/display-database/ and set your filters to the following:

enter image description here

Set the size to the screen size you'd like to have and start checking prices. (it will link directly to Amazon) You want to pick a TV that has a Great or Excellent rating.

If the prices are still above $950 then drop down to the next smallest screen size and check prices again.

Keep repeating this process until you find a TV with a Great or Excellent rating that is $950 or under.

Good luck!

Improve this answer
3
  • So basically you can't have a TV that's good for both gaming and movies, sports etc...
    – Leon
    Oct 22, 2014 at 13:41
  • 2
    Actually, you can - but it will cost you. You can run with all the fancy features on while watching movies or TV because you're not controlling the action on screen so there is no sense of delay or lag. When you're gaming, however, you want all those extra features turned off as they increase the latency from the time you input an action to the time it is displayed on screen. Game Mode is supposed to eliminate the lag but varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. Pixel response time will also directly affect your perception of lag.
    – k1DBLITZ
    Oct 23, 2014 at 14:39
  • 1
    I'm pretty sure HDTV's that can run at high refresh rates can also potentially take inputs at higher than 60 Hz and display them. Many of them will do interpolation when they receive a 60 Hz signal (video game consoles, cable boxes, movies, etc); but they are capable of pushing out their full refresh rate when they get a signal with that refresh rate. Plugging a PC in for example should allow you to make use of the high refresh rate (assuming you're using a cable that supports it). The refresh rate isn't limited by the TV; but by the frames per second that the media it's playing has.
    – JMac
    Jun 26, 2019 at 17:41
5

You are right that the difference is probably in the TVs, but you are looking at the wrong figures.

The refresh rate (measured in Hertz (Hz)) is the number of times per second that the image on the screen can change. It's debatable whether this may have any influence on the apparent smoothness of the gameplay, but it certainly won't account for a difference in time to screen in the order of a second.

The response time (measured in milliseconds (ms)) is the time that it takes the actual LCD panel in the TV to change colour, after being commanded to do so. A slow response time will lead to "ghosting" on the screen, where fast-moving objects leave a trail. A millisecond is a thousandth of a second, so this cannot account for a difference of a second.

Modern televisions do a lot of image processing - partly to decode the incoming signal and convert it into the form that they need, partly to scale it to the right resolution, and partly to "improve" colour saturation, contrast, etc.. This processing takes some time, and can often add delay in the order of seconds. There are two things that you can do to reduce this:

  1. Many TVs have a setting which removes a lot of this processing and thus reduces the delay from input to screen. Look for a "Game" setting, or possibly a "PC" setting, or if nothing appropriate is available, try turning off as many processing options as possible. Be warned that doing this (and leaving it this way) will probably make your picture look worse for TV shows and films.
  2. Are you and your friend using the same method of connecting your consoles to your TVs? I'm not familiar with what ports an XBox One has, but if (for example) there are both HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, it's possible that one introduces more delay than the other.
  3. If you are planning to replace your TV, then when looking at reviews look for mention of the delay from input to screen. Typically reviews that are concentrating on TV or film playback won't mention this, because for TV or film it doesn't matter if you see everything a second later; but reviewers focussing on performance for gaming will surely make some comment.
Improve this answer
2
  • Just to answer following your order: 1) my tv already has a Game Mode on. 2) we're using hdmi port but I don't know if my TV's port input a higher latency than his TV's one. 3) I'm already doing some searches but every reccomended TV is basically out of the market or something like that :S
    – Leon
    Oct 20, 2014 at 14:32
  • 2
    Most console games will run no faster than 60 frames per second, so anything above 60 Hz is golden.
    – badp
    Oct 20, 2014 at 15:01

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .