pwnpatrol

I own an AOC Envision L32W461 and for a value priced HDTV (I paid $699 CDN in Nov 2006) it has been a great purchase. Aside from the usual not so black black’s found in lower priced HDTV’s this unit works quite well. It wasn’t until I started playing time sensitive rhythm games like Rockband and Guitar Hero that I realised there was a problem. The latency on this TV is quite high and without proper tweaking it can make playing certain types of games impossible.

When I first brought home Rockband a few months ago we were all pretty excited to play it. After plugging everything in and selecting the LCD option under the calibration menu it was pretty clear something was wrong. The drums were impossible to play and guitar was tough as well. We were able to sort of wing it but it really wasn’t much fun. It was obvious that the default LCD setting was not compatible with my TV.

During the week I spent some time trying to figure it out and ended up moving the latency all the way up to 100 ms. I am still not 100% sure if this is right but everyone seems ok with it set to this number. I feel like it could be slightly tweaked either down to 95 ms or up to 105 ms but it works as it is. I hear no complaints from the people who play this game at my place so I have left it the way it is.

One thing to take note of, the 100 ms setting works using an HDMI connection from the PS3 to the TV and standard AV cables from the TV to my old Sony receiver. Extra latency could easily (and probably is) be picked up as a result.

I will note that prior to owning my Playstation 3 I had a PS2 hooked up to this TV. I had Guitar Hero 2 which was playable but never as good as when played on my 13in CRT. The calibration settings in that game never seemed to produce great results. I will also note that the original Guitar Hero was impossible to play on that TV as it did not have any calibration settings as it predated the wide release of HDTV’s.

With the AOC Envision L32W461 set to 100 ms latency on Rockband for the PS3 I am able to do quite well in hard mode (and sometimes even expert) and I hear no complaints from any of my friends who have played at this setting.