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it's not always possible to run an HDMI cable directly from your source device

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to your tv sometimes it might have to pass through a sound bar or an av

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receiver or even a capture device if you're into game streaming now some of

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those devices are advertised as having zero latency meaning that in theory your

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gaming experience will be exactly as responsive as if you were connected to

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your tv directly but others like this av receiver make no

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mention of latency whatsoever so are

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devices like this or this or this

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silently damaging your gaming experience in this video sponsored by vizio we'll

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be finding out once and for all

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latency or input lag is the amount of time it takes between when we physically

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click a button or move the mouse to seeing the action on the screen and when

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this latency is really high it can significantly delay your reaction to

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let's say an enemy or a sharp turn in the road and as we found in our

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investigation in 2019 even if you can't

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feel the delay your brain can and modern technology hasn't yet reached the point

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where it's fast enough that it doesn't make any difference bottom line then we

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want our latency to be as low as possible for the best gaming experience

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so here's our test setup vizio who sponsored this video provided

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their 65-inch m7 series quantum 2020 tv

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and we're going to be testing it at 4k 60hz with game mode enabled and auto low

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latency disabled since not all of our devices support it now our tings great

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site check them out found that this was the lowest input lag configuration on

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this tv at less than 10 milliseconds now

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let's meet some of the other items in our chain for capture cards we've got a

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couple different ones from elgato including this hd60s plus that they

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claim that if you pass through this with your signal so that you can actually

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capture it for your game stream or whatever else there is no difference

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between being plugged in here and being plugged in here very interesting and

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we've got this receiver if you're not familiar a receiver like this is great

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for having many devices plugged into a single tv or you can actually have

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multiple zones on some of the high-end ones and it has an amplifier built into

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it if you have like a dedicated passive speaker set up for surround sound

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but what's interesting about it is that the manufacturer in this case and

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actually most of them doesn't mention latency

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at all the final piece of the chain is the m

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series 5.1 sound bar from vizio and vizio's main highlights for this are its

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low profile charcoal black design full support for dolby atmos and dtsx and its

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nine high performance speakers with a six-inch wireless subwoofer for an

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outstanding surround sound experience of course if we're going to be adding these

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devices sometimes more than one of them to our HDMI chain we can't rely on our

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tings data we need to capture our own and that is where

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this guy comes in we explored NVIDIA's latency display analysis tool or ldat in

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this video here but to save you some time what it does is it actually

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intercepts the signal from a mouse click then it measures the delay between this

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device here receiving that signal and measuring a brightness change on the

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monitor that gives us the latency of the entire

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gaming chain any bets by the way uh which common household items are gonna

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add the most lag the avr receiver the uh

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analog telephone the LTT CPU pillow

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lttstore.com before we can know that we need to

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establish a baseline so in the interest of reducing bottlenecks we're using a

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high performance gaming system with a 3900xt processor and 2080 super graphics

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card and while i'll be trying to feel

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the difference using an actual game in this case cs go

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all of the data that we present to you was captured using NVIDIA's ldap desktop

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application to eliminate any variability due to game engine leg is that bot's

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name loser wait was that one's name oh lester

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well yep that feels like some pretty low

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input leg good job physio i guess

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hey oh nice he's dead look at that okay

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feels pretty good and good news the data backs it up we found that the most

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consistent method to measure it was to click manually in the ldap window rather

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than using the automatic clicking function and we measured just shy of 40

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milliseconds of total click to light photon delay that

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sounds like a lot compared to arting's number but it's actually right in line

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with what we've measured on high performance desktop gaming monitors

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Windows graphics card drivers etc just

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add a lot more delay than a signal generator so obviously then our first

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step was to add vizio's own sound bar to the chain with a baseline delay of just

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under 38 milliseconds the sound bar added 19 milliseconds of delay which is

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about one frame at 60 hertz when casually gaming to most people this

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wouldn't be noticeable but if you're really competitive what we learned is

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you better use the e-arc feature of your new tv and sound bar and plug your

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console directly into the tv and have that audio pass through to your soundbar

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okay then vizio didn't claim that there was zero

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latency in their soundbar though what about something that does the elgato

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4k60 pro and hd60s plus are both capture

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cards that claim super low latency and from our results this definitely holds

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true for them with this setup the hd60s plus only added three to four

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milliseconds of delay on average and the 4k60 pro added 19 milliseconds which is

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one frame and comparable to the sound bar so again it's acceptable for gaming

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but um it isn't

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zero latency either what about the receiver well it's

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comparable to the hd60s plus with only an additional three milliseconds of

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delay which that's quite impressive when the product page doesn't claim any kind

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of gaming or latency optimization as a selling point at all now it's time for

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the big test if we start chaining these devices together does the total delay

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become the sum of the individual delays

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or will they multiply will they work at all well it does work

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sometimes introducing extra links between the tv

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and the input device can have mixed results not just with latency but

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actually with signal reliability just getting all four of our test devices

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between the tv and our pc to handshake with each other was a challenge with

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some configurations defaulting to unusual resolutions some of them

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flickering and some of them not working at all in the right order though we were

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able to get things up and running without any issues with just two capture

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cards in a row we don't actually see much difference from just the 4k60 pro

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on its own and when everything is changed together we see latency that is

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very similar again to just the 4k60 pro

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or the soundbar on its own which kind of raises questions like

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what is going on here what it seems like is there's something of a limit to how

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much additional delay can be added by devices that are changed together as for

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why that would be honestly it's a little above my pay

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grade but if i were to make a guess i would say that it's probably something

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to do with digital oh

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i put dhcp in the script instead of hdcp

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so it like it tripped me up yeah yeah it was not a networking video okay but if i

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were to guess i'd say it's probably something to do with hdcp or copy

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protection we weren't able to prove this in any way but we also have another

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theory that it could actually vary depending on some aspect of the

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handshaking process that takes place when you connect the bottom line though

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is that nothing was actually

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zero latency with the closest device our avr receiver being almost zero latency

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the good news though is that pretty much every combo was low enough that most

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people wouldn't notice the difference and if you're the kind of person who's

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sensitive to it well there's no reason that you have to hook your current game

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console up to your vizio m7 series quantum 2020 tv through any other device

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it's got two HDMI 2.1 inputs four total

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more accurate color out of the box thanks to support for dolby vision HDR

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gaming and their new on-board processor it boasts extremely low latency in game

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mode as we've seen as long as you're hooked up to it directly and it's got

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support for auto low latency mode and there's even more improvements to the

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gaming experience coming through firmware updates so guys you can check

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this puppy out along with the soundbar at the link below and they've got a

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bunch of deals going on down there as well so don't wait

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thanks again to vizio for sponsoring this video it's something that we've actually really wanted to explore for a

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long time and i thought the results were fascinating even if they raise more

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questions than they deliver answers and thanks to you guys for watching if

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you're looking for another video to dive into i'd recommend our deeper

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investigation into the ldap device which talks about how we can use it to

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evaluate which displays are the absolute best for gaming