HDMI length = more delay or no?

[MrAlfredBuddyGuy]

I've been interested in playing pc games through my tv so I can relax a bit more. But the lag between button press to when it renders on the tv is really bad.
About half a second delay, which is not enjoyable for pretty much any game.

 

Is this an HDMI cable length issue or just a TV not great for gaming issue?  I feel like when I connect my old wii through hdmi it plays just fine so that's why I was thinkin maybe cable length issue.

Using an amazon basic 9.8 foot cable.

 

Thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

The amount of time it takes to go down a long HDMI cable is extremely low. I doubt length is the issue here. Cable length add extremely little latency compared to other parts of the system typically as its going at nearly the speed of light.

 

I'd guess your issue is the TV. Many TVs have a pretty high latency by default. What TV is it? Try turning on game mode if you haven't already. 

[RONOTHAN##]

Electricity travels at near the speed of light. The delay caused by the cable will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.00000001s, effectively nothing. The issue is somewhere else, likely the TV doing post processing. 

[Godlygamer23]

On top of what's mentioned above about the speed at which the information travels through the cable, if the cable is within the spec of the standard, it should work just fine. I don't know what the length limit is specifically(would have to look up the spec), but as long as it's within that, should work fine, assuming the cable is functional per the version that's being used.

[Eigenvektor]

1 hour ago, MrAlfredBuddyGuy said:

HDMI length = more delay or no?

Technically, yes. But signals in a cable travel somewhere between 60-80% of the speed of light. Assuming worst case (60%), you'd need a cable that is almost 180 km (111 miles) long before the delay added by the cable even reaches 1 ms.

[MrAlfredBuddyGuy]

I already suspected as much about the cable length, but figured I'd ask. It's an LG from 2019 or so. I did notice "instant game response" in additional settings but it was already enabled that didn't help. Apparently there was a special picture mode called gaming and it does feel better.

Thanks!

[thrasher_565]

ive had my tv turn off and back on when i used a 25 foot cable. but 10 feet should be with in the limit thow. i no display port is more picky about length. if your trying to do like 4k60+ then there might be something with that but i dont no.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

On 4/6/2024 at 5:49 AM, MrAlfredBuddyGuy said:

I've been interested in playing pc games through my tv so I can relax a bit more. But the lag between button press to when it renders on the tv is really bad.

Can you give us ab it more information about what is all in the chain between "button pressed" and "image on screen"?

 

Many things can impact latency here, from how the peripherals are connected (wired or bluetooth? 2.4GHz dongle?), what TV you are using (exact model) and whether it supports game modes etc. Many TVs have quite a lot of image processing done, like interpolation etc. meaning between input and showing on screen can be quite a bit of delay.

[weeblord]

3kliksphillip did a video on this for CS2 and found that his TV's latency was much worse than his monitor's, so I guess it's just how TVs are produced versus monitors that makes them unsuitable for most PC gaming. It's just not really meant for that purpose.

The whole video is a pretty good watch if you want to know what exactly creates input latency in general but 17:11 is where he talks about the TV.