Donkey Konga, PAL Wii, LCD TV

[Brad]

Hi all,
Back when I used a 32" CRT, Gamecube and a stereo amplifier, Donkey Konga was a family favourite. My current setup is:

Wii with component cables going into Yamaha AV amp then back out to TV
32" Philips HDTV
Yamaha AV amp

Now however, whenever I try to play it I'm rubbish at it. I'm guessing there's some kind of timing issue. Any idea if I can get this working again? What's likely to be the main problem?

Many thanks.

[charlesr]

The Philips video processing is delaying the video signal. You'll need to learn to listen to the beat rather than relying on what's on the screen.

However, if you are using a sound delay on the amp to match the sound to the screen, you'll have to learn to pre-empt the beats completely

Some screens are a lot worse at this than others. Mine is almost 100ms, one of the downsides of the rather excellent scaler.

[charlesr]

Things like guitar hero 360 know about this stuff I believe, so allow you to alter the audio at source.

[Brad]

Arse. I suspected it was the TV but was hoping it wasn't.
Thanks for the info mate. Are Philips TVs a particular problem or is it LCDs in general?

Would thins kind of thing break other games like Street Fighter, VF etc?

[MattyD]

Thanks for the info mate. Are Philips TVs a particular problem or is it LCDs in general?

Would thins kind of thing break other games like Street Fighter, VF etc?

It's LCDs in general I'm afraid. My set's response time is 6-8 ms, that's six to eight thousandths of a second, and even that was enough to cock up my active reloads on Gears of War

You can mitigate the problem significantly by turning off any and all processing and effects - stuff with names like 'dynamic contrast', 'active filter', 'noise reduction' etc etc. If your set has a dedicated game mode that's definitely worth using as it turns off all the internal gubbins that might add lag to the picture. Lyris's quickstart calibration guide (stickied on the AV Setup subforum) is a good place to start. It's always going to be a problem with older rhythm games unfortunately.

[[nothing]]

And since you have a Philips, turn off the Pixel Plus processing (if your model has it). Which I personally can't stand anyway.

[Brad]

I've got everything turned off I think but I'll check anyway. Cheers chaps.

[Mayhem]

Yeah, in general if the game relies on timing then I'm playing it on the normal CRT still (Guitar Hero for example). Now what percentage does running the game in prog scan mode (as opposed to interlaced) chop off the lag time in general?

[Lyris]

It's LCDs in general I'm afraid. My set's response time is 6-8 ms, that's six to eight thousandths of a second, and even that was enough to cock up my active reloads on Gears of War

Actually the response time of the panel (the one you see rated in MS) and the time it takes the video processor to feed frames to the panel for display are two different things. If the response time of the panel isn't good, you'll see more motion blur, but different parts of the frame blur (ie the frames display instantly but different parts of them will react to changes slower than others). If the response time of the video processor isn't good (which manufacturers never seem to talk about), then entire frames won't be fed to the panel fast enough. If that makes sense.

FWIW I tried the Guitar Hero 3 calibration tool on my own HDTV (KDL-40W2000) and got 0ms each time, but that was at 1080p so the TV had to do less work.

FullSpecWarrior - just to make sure, have you connected the Wii via Component and set the video output mode to 480p? Interlaced modes will add to the lag because the video processor in the TVs tend to look at before and after frames before they make decisions on how to draw the pixels.

[Synthesthesia]

It's LCDs in general I'm afraid. My set's response time is 6-8 ms, that's six to eight thousandths of a second, and even that was enough to cock up my active reloads on Gears of War

You can mitigate the problem significantly by turning off any and all processing and effects - stuff with names like 'dynamic contrast', 'active filter', 'noise reduction' etc etc. If your set has a dedicated game mode that's definitely worth using as it turns off all the internal gubbins that might add lag to the picture. Lyris's quickstart calibration guide (stickied on the AV Setup subforum) is a good place to start. It's always going to be a problem with older rhythm games unfortunately.

I don't know about the technical side of it- but it doesn't affect me whatsoever.

My TV's response time is 8ms i think, everytime i try the GH3 calibration it sets it to 0ms- ie no lag.

Maybe it's something to do with your tv sets?

Edit:

Snap Lyris!

[smouty]

As mentioned the timing issue has nothing to do with response time. This is the duration the screen takes to go from black to white and back to black.
I know timing is important but 8ms is so far outside of human perception to be insignificant.
The video processing is however sometimes 1/2 a second or more which obviously is seriously impactive.
Some of the Samsung sets have a gaming mode which bypasses all processing to alleviate this.
On some TVs certain inputs are more prone than others. My Toshiba has no processing on the VGA for example.

[Skull Commander]

Don't know if this will help in the slightest, but we have a samsung plasma, and sometimes the sound goes out of sync with the picture (games and sky). We also have a samsung dvd/sound system and that has an option to change the sound so it syncs up with the pic