120hz TV pointless for consoles?

[Sonikku]

I was looking at tv's the other day and the rep asked me what I would use it for. I said gaming and he said I should definitely look at 120hz models for the smoother look of fast paced games. I figured at least part of this was salesmanship, but I'm curious. Do gaming consoles like 360 and PS3 even HAVE the capability to output in 120hz? Or are tv's like that only an asset for PC Gamers outputting to said tv's?

 

[BrightCandle]

Almost all console games for the current generation target 30 fps. A few fast paced games target 60 fps, but never higher than that. 120Hz is mostly for 3D glasses, but honestly the performance on current generation consoles isn't that great with 3D mode. Further to that future consoles are also targeting 30 fps for the most part.
The other consideration is the resolution. Most current gen console games do not render even at 720p resolution, let alone 1080p. In many ways you are actually better off having a lower resolution screen so that the game has to do less work. Its part of the reason I never moved up from my 1366x768 screen, in hindsight its turned out to be much closer in resolution to what the xbox/ps3 actually render at that most of the more modern HD screens.

So no I wouldn't say you would want 120Hz for gaming, with this generation or the next. In practice there isn't a game released for the console that can use it. They barely bother to use 60hz.

 

[Sonikku]

So FPS = HZ?

Where does response rate come in? Most tv's I see don't even list it

 

[smackababy]

My TV that I use for gaming is 120hz, but I don't use the motion crap option. Whatever it is called, I don't even remember.

 

[Aikouka]

120Hz won't mean much, because the console will simply duplicate frames. Also, aren't some 120Hz TVs actually just 60Hz TVs that are "faked"? I think the 240Hz TVs are actually 120Hz that are faked to be 240Hz, but I'm not 100% certain about that! I don't study TVs too much.

So FPS = HZ?

Where does response rate come in? Most tv's I see don't even list it

Hz is just the abbreviation for hertz, which just means "cycles per second." This represents the number of times per second a TV will update its display.

FPS is not Hz. FPS represents the rate at which the source can generate frames to display. It works out well if you can generate enough frames for the amount of times your display wants to refresh. Keep in mind that it's normally the job of the source to propagate frames properly to meet the established refresh rate.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Most 120Hz TVs aren't true 120Hz, they take 24/30/60fps content and duplicate frames or interpolate for the extra smoothness.

For gaming yeah 120Hz TV is a waste as it adds extra processing lag. It might look a bit smoother but its not really generating the frames and the extra lag might be an issue.

But yeah 120Hz monitors would be worthless since the consoles won't generate enough frames for it to matter.

 

[Pottuvoi]

But yeah 120Hz monitors would be worthless since the consoles won't generate enough frames for it to matter.

Biggest reason to go for a 120hz monitor is the ability to show the new vsynced framerates. (40, 24, ~17, ~13.. etc.)
Also framerate drops and tearing is less visible.

It would be great if console would detect a 120hz input capable TV/monitor and send proper 120hz signal to it.

 

[Pia]

Super Stardust HD pushes out 120 frames per second in 3D mode. So PS3 hardware can output 120Hz, it's just that it doesn't make sense for 99.9% of the games at that low level of performance available on a console.

Some high end TVs are actually 120Hz, but ironically many of them will be advertised as "240Hz" or some other number while the TVs advertised as "120Hz" are 60Hz + some crappy filtering which you should turn off. With the exception of SSHD, console games run at 60Hz at best, and the TVs don't accept inputs above 60Hz anyway so there's no direct benefit from the TV being higher specced. Buying one of the TVs that is actually 120Hz might still pay off indirectly because their quality is better in other regards.

Some rare TVs can accept 120Hz input, like the cheap Seiki 4K which is apparently capable of showing 1080p@120 from a PC.

 

[ViRGE]

Super Stardust HD pushes out 120 frames per second in 3D mode. So PS3 hardware can output 120Hz, it's just that it doesn't make sense for 99.9% of the games at that low level of performance available on a console.

One minor correction to that. HDMI doesn't actually do 120Hz. For the 3D modes they send out a "frame packed" image, which is composed of two frames in one refresh interval. Think of it as a jumbo frame containing both the left and right images at once.

In theory you could mess with this to emulate 120Hz operation, but in practice no one does this. You'd just be adding latency since your first frame has to wait for the second.

Now SSHD is definitely rendering at 120fps (60Hz for each eye), so that's not wrong. It's just a matter of how that's being delivered, and why you can't have true 120Hz 2D as a result.

 

[Midwayman]

Wouldn't a 120hz set generally have a better pixel response time? You'd think that would be worthwhile on its own for less blur. I know on the new PC 3d monitors you can do backlight strobing to cut down blur with the 120hz monitors.

 

[BrightCandle]

120Hz monitors typically do have less motion blur and often less input latency. While both of these things are important you can also get those same things from a 60hz monitor as well. Choosing on the basis of those parameters is a good idea generally for gamers for obvious reasons, as is usually a good idea to choose based on colour fidelity and a range of other trade offs.

But specifically 120hz as a feature has no use to a console now or in the known future.

 

[Aikouka]

Super Stardust HD pushes out 120 frames per second in 3D mode. So PS3 hardware can output 120Hz, it's just that it doesn't make sense for 99.9% of the games at that low level of performance available on a console.

No, the PS3 is actually setting its output stream to 720p60 for 3D content as the most common 3D modes via HDMI 1.4a are 720p50, 720p60 and 1080p24. Why do you think NVIDIA and AMD don't push HDMI as their transfer medium? The prior uses Dual-DVI and the latter uses DisplayPort. To be fair, both do have HDMI support.

Now SSHD is definitely rendering at 120fps (60Hz for each eye), so that's not wrong. It's just a matter of how that's being delivered, and why you can't have true 120Hz 2D as a result.

Eh, I think I'd like to replace that with "definitely trying to render." Just set off a nuke in the later worlds while playing in 3D, and you'll see what I mean.

 

[Pia]

Sorry guys, I got a case of the stupids on SSHD. I'm not very familiar with 3D signal setups, but should have guessed the signal going to the TV wasn't 120Hz.

HDMI 1.4b apparently supports 1080p@120 already so we could start seeing more devices able to accept and display 120Hz.