[jsteel]

I tried some budget TVs recently with my NTSC NES and SNES. These are all ones you can buy on Amazon UK right now:

TCL 43C720K QLED
Everything worked including 5x. The blacks smeared (VA panel). Measured about 20 to 25ms (top/centre) with the Time Sleuth. After a cold TV boot, game mode turns off even though it says it’s on, so get bad lag until you turn game mode off and on again (Google TV bug?).

LG 43UP81006LR
Everything worked including 5x, this was a DLED IPS panel. I could see the LED grid on solid colours during scrolling which ruins an otherwise very promising budget TV. Time Sleuth measured only about 7ms at the top, about 12 centre so good TV for low lag.

Toshiba 43UK3163DB
Only up to 3x worked. Also a DLED IPS but could not see the LED grid this time. Lag was about 16 to 23ms (top/centre) but experienced horrible stutters every few seconds or so with scrolling. I guess it doesn’t like for eg 60.08Hz and is running at 60Hz skipping frames. I would stay clear of this one.

Panasonic JX600BZ
Up to 4x worked, but I had some tearing issue with 4:3. I could resolve this by either going to 14:9 and back again, or 16:9 and back again. 3x seemed consistent and problem-free (as I could avoid needing to set the TV to 4:3). I think this is an ELED and the picture/brightness uniformity was excellent. I think it’s an IPS, at least there was no black smearing. 10 to 18ms (top/centre) of lag which was good. Overall I like this one even though 5x doesn’t work.

[jsteel]

Yes I mentioned I tried another, similar result. I tried a 3rd, same issue, however I have tried a 4th (and old LG) and that gives more believable results, eg 60+ms. So maybe I’m lead to believe I’ve found a bunch of TVs incompatible with the Time Sleuth (an old: Panasonic, Samsung and Sony) but it’s not that it gives no reading, it tells me they are amazing. So my unfortunate conclusion is if I test a TV and it’s really good, either it is, or the Time Sleuth is lying.

Playing on the idea that maybe it’s picking up too much light, I tried lowing my brightness/contrast/backlight right down, which didn’t make any difference, but then added a bit of paper in between the TV and Time Sleuth. This time, I was able to get some more realistic readings from these TVs (which match my CRT comparison readings at about 20ms and 60ms) but only on the centre bars; I could get no reading from top or bottom.

Has no one else found this issue? Or do they just think they have a really good LCD with 5ms or less?

[jsteel]

I stumbled upon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyNpZkbtvjc and the last question by Tofuman seems to be the same experience I’m having. Strange that Bob completely missed his point and didn’t comment on this issue, but at least I’m not alone.

[jsteel]

Thanks for the suggestion but it hasn’t helped. At 90 degrees it reads less than 1 ms. If I hold it away from the TV it stops updating the readings (as expected) so I don’t think there’s something else in the room that it’s picking up. I’ve tried raising and lowering the brightness/contrast but readings remain the same. Might be worth mentioning I get similar results with 480i, a resolution that you would expect to be much worse, but on both TVs I have it tells me it’s between 3ms and 5ms on both, crazy.

To be clear I didn’t buy it from this site, I just thought these forums might be a good place for some advice as I couldn’t get any support from Castlemania Games where I got it from. I also commented on RetroRGB’s Youtube video on this product, and Castlemania Games product review to share my experience and see if I can get some help, and both have deleted (or not approved) my comment, so I’m trying to find a place to discuss this issue uncensored.

[jsteel]

Yes all bars give the exact same reading. I tested a second LCD TV that with the CRT comparison test gives about 4 frames of lag, but the Time Sleuth thinks this one is just 3ms (all bars). So it’s not even consistent telling me which TV is actually better :\

[jsteel]

I got my hands on a Samsung LE32C530F1W(XXU) (another old TV) and with the same consoles listed in my previous post, 2x, 3x and 4x work on all of them without any tweaks, but 5x doesn’t. It’s interesting to see that 3x and 4x are a bit crisper but the jump from 1x to 2x is most dramatic; 6 feet away I probably couldn’t notice the difference between 2x and 4x, but I could 1x to 2x. This TV has about 3 or 4 frames of lag, the sound is tinny and has pretty bad motion blur.

[jsteel]

I have a Panasonic TX-32LMD70A, it’s a pretty old TV but latency is really low (about 1 to 2 frames compared to a CRT; I split a signal to test), has really good blacks and sound quality is rich. I thought I’d share my findings here. I’ve tried the following consoles but haven’t had any success getting anything other than 2x working:

NTSC NES (TWRGB)
PAL N64 (TWRGB)
PAL SNES

Following advice on the pinned “TIPS & TWEAKS” thread, I tried playing with v.active and v.bachpoch but I never get a picture. I read in my manual that HDMI port 1 can accept DVI, so I’ve set the OSSC to DVI but that hasn’t helped. I guess there’s no hope here but 2x (480p) does look pretty decent, I just wondered if I could get it looking even crisper and if getting 720p or 1080p would give even less lag.

[jsteel]

Thanks for your help, I’ll try a 75 ohm resistor on CSYNC and any trouble and I’ll remove it and be happy that it’s OK.

Does Luma need a resistor to ground though on PS2? I cannot find a (Luma-based) pinout for the PS2 but this one suggests the SNES does, but I wonder if that’s just true for SNES, or PS2 also: http://www.jaskagaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/snes-scart-pal.png

Cheers

[jsteel]

I bought a shielded cable from http://retrogamingcables.co.uk and that has resolved the issue.

[jsteel]

I tried a 46″ Sony TV and saw the same issues even with different AV cables and a different 5V 1A power supply. Here’s direct to the TV:

And here’s via the RetroTink:

Again sharpness is set to 0 and I played around with other settings to try and get it looking as good as I could but I couldn’t improve the ringing issue.

[jsteel]

I’m planning on testing a few more LCD TVs with both my NES and FC via the RetroTink, making sure the sharpness is set to 0. I’ll report back with some further pictures if the issue is on all of the displays I try. If you have any other suggestions let me know.

[jsteel]

My region modded PAL SNES has the same issue. I put in a Super Famicom game and set the system to 60hz and the colours are bad. I suspect my PAL Mega Drive with a 50/60hz switch would have the same issue but I only have a scart cable for that so I cannot test it via the retrotink. Not handling PAL 60 is a bit of an oversight I think, or am I in the minority with many PAL 60 systems? 🙂

[jsteel]

I did originally think the SMS was also bad in 50hz as I flicked my switch between the two and saw the same colours but after testing again, no 50hz seems fine; I’m not sure what happened the first time.

[jsteel]

After further testing I’ve updated my original post a little as I noticed the issue affects my PAL N64 too when running in 60hz. Here’s an image of the wrong colours. Again, my TV shows the correct colours when I don’t use the retrotink.

[jsteel]

A composite RCA cable. Yes on input 1 (component) and 2 (s-video) it is black and white. On input 3 (composite) it shows like that. Using the same composite cable to my TV looks fine (first image).

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