Why not use an HDTV for gaming?

A Blu-Ray video looks great on an HDTV, but what  about video games? For first person shooter or other action games, an HDTV can  enhance your gaming experience.

Types of HDTVs
An HDTV’s gaming performance is largely based on the technology used to display the image. The three main types of HDTVs currently available contain plasma, LCD, or LED displays. A plasma screen uses tiny ‘bulbs’ between two pieces of  glass containing gases that emit light when they are ionized by an applied  voltage. Plasma screens are less prone to visible motion blur, the ‘comet’ effect that follows fast-moving object, and are capable of producing high  contrast images with a wide viewing angle. Early plasma screens were  susceptible to burn-in, when a still image that has been displayed on for a  long time gets ‘stuck’ on the screen, and these screens still use more  electricity than their LCD counterparts.

LCD (liquid crystal display) screens use liquid crystals to modulate light from  one or two fluorescent backlighting sources. These screens are light with  little or no visible screen flicker that, theoretically, have no upper sip777 slot limit to  their resolution. Brightness distortion can occur due to uneven backlighting  and dead pixels may occur due to manufacturing defects.

LEDs (light-emitting diodes) are the latest technology in the HDTV scene. These tiny light emitters are used to backlight LCD screens and give a brighter  display with improved contrast while using less power in a thinner panel.  Presently the main drawback to these displays is cost, which has yet to come  down due to economies of scale.

Gaming on HDTVs
One factor not usually considered for HDTV is lag time or how fast the TV image can respond to your commands. While not a major factor when just watching a movie, this can seriously detriment a gamer’s experience. Lag time is usually caused by one of two factors: native resolution mismatches and  image-enhancement processing. Most HDTVs can accept signals from consoles or computers not in their native resolution, but the signal must be scaled to the native resolution of the display. The way in which the pixels are shown,  whether they are interlaced or progressively displayed, may also have to be  converted between the source and the display. In general, progressive scanning  is considered the superior pixel display method. Image-enhancement processing refines the image to be displayed to improve standard definition content. These factors combined can cause latency in response time when gaming, and should be researched carefully when choosing an HDTV.