So here’s the deal. HDTV gaming will always be laggy. you can thank the frackers that bought LCD TVs instead of rear projection CRTs, thus driving our only hope for good gaming out the window. The reason for this is that TVs are made to look pretty, not perform well, so while a manufacturer might spend $500 on a sexy bezel, they always choose the $100 video scaler, and that’s what causes bad lag. All digital TVs need to have their signal scaled up to their native resolution, while analog TVs are more flexible (when you were playing Rock Band at my house, that was with the latency set to 0!) To see how bad it is, check out this article IGN did in 2006 where they split an xbox signal between a DLP TV and a CRT monitor. Sadly, we haven’t come that far since then.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/720/720303p1.html

If your TV has a game mode, use it, but check the manual to make sure it’s a low-latency mode and not just a color-fracker-upper (For whatever reason, TV manufacturers think that gamers want their contrast set to over 9000). A low-latency game-mode will usually tell the TV’s scaler to just do a basic line-doubling instead of full blown image filtering, which requires several frames for the scalar to average out. It’ll then blow up this line doubled image as fast as it can to your 1080p. A strong emphasis on the “as fast as it can” part.

The solution is to bypass the internal scalar and output a signal at your display’s native resolution. Your 360/PS3 already do this, so your lag should not be THAT noticeable when playing on these consoles. The only source of lag you should be getting if your tv allows the internal scalar to be defeated is pixel response times, as well as some processing lag added by your receiver.

Your Wii/older consoles are pretty boned though unless you get an external scalar. When I set up my AMV stuff at cons, or just JAM some Rock Band on the projector, I pass the video through an Extron DVS 304 which scales pretty fast. I think it lagged 20-26 ms, which is about a field and a half. Way better than I’ll get from anything else. The DVS 304 is a video-only device. There are A/V switchers that will upscale as well, but those usually have just as poor circuitry as TVs do. The only company I trust to scale well is Anthem, but anything they make will set you back a few paychecks.

Old school TV is definitely the way to go though. Those games were meant to be played on a blurry tv and the designers made their sprites knowing that. Plus, a 240p title doesn’t look right without scanlines, which for some reason none of the virtual consoles decided to emulate. It’s as if Nintendo didn’t know their own games.