Input Lag
The Radiance Mini 3D features a Game Mode, which naturally prioritises speed over quality. The biggest difference is in deinterlacing: in the Game Mode, motion-adaptive deinterlacing is bypassed in favour of simply repeating every line twice (aka “bob deinterlacing”), which converts fields to frames simply by repeating every second line, causing jaggedness and vertical twitter – but most importantly of all for gaming, faster response. Fortunately, the current generation of games consoles all output progressive video signals, meaning that this won’t be necessary.
We didn’t test the Mini-3D with interlaced input, and given that the device only features HDMI inputs – no Component or RGB SCART connectivity is given on this slimmed-down unit – you’ll only be able to use the current generation of games consoles (Nintendo Wii excluded) on it, anyway, so there’s no reason to send it interlaced video in the first place. With the Game Mode enabled, we measured our system as featuring 60ms of input lag relative to a lag-free CRT. The Panasonic ST50 we were using for this review has around 16ms of lag of its own, meaning that the Mini3D can be calculated as adding around 44ms of lag in its Game Mode.
While we loved the picture quality improvements made to our TV thanks to the Mini-3D, for gaming, we preferred to connect the source directly to the display, since we feel that responsiveness is the most important factor here, with picture quality coming in second. That opinion is solidified given that most TVs these days feature Game Modes of their own which don’t abstract the image too blatantly (the Panasonic features an out-of-spec colour gamut in its “Game” mode, but for faster games, we’d take that over any increase in input lag, even a small one).