Guide to Gaming on 4k Sony Android 2015 TV

[xx4L0Mxx]

Here is a rough guide to gaming on 2015 Sony Android 4k TV's.

Before  I personally bought a 4k tv I had a lot of questions about how gaming would perform on a 4K TV, would the PS4 look any better? Would the upscaling be OK? Would everything outputted @1080p look blurred?  Can I output my PC @4k-60HZ RGB 4:4:4?

I will attempt to help answer some of these questions as it took me a long time of research and ultimately testing, with me making some stupid mistakes along the way, so helpfully it may help some of you guys out who are thinking about taking the plunge or already have a 4K TV and want to get the best gaming experience out of it.

I'm no expert but I have been gaming since the dawn of man, so these are my experiences to hopefully help you make an informed decision whether 4k gaimg is right for you or not.

Some things before I start :

1 : I have ZERO Affiliation to Sony or any other company.

2 : I own the 55" 2015 Sony Bravia Android TV KDx558509c, all settings / experiences will be based on this model.

3 : Any Questions then please ask, I may not know the answer, but I'm sure someone from this community will be happy to help.

4 : This guide WILL NOT be geared toward Android gaming, as I personally never play any android games and the mediatek processors inside the TV are not going to be running Real Racing 3 or similar with any aplomb.

4 : All comparisons to 1080p output will be compared to a 2014 model 55LB650V 55" LG smart :

http://www.lg.com/uk/tvs/lg-55LB650V

5 : I realise that UHD and 4k are technically different, but the phrase  "4k" will be used here on out, as it's less to type and I'm lazy.

6 : The input Lag of this TV is about 39 m/s in GAME mode and about 65 m/s with ALL post processing effects like clear motion and HDR enabled. So I would rate it as "Very Good" for a 4k Panel. Some 2015 4k Samsung panels have a lower input lag in "GAME" mode of about 25 m/s, but the input lag dramatically increases up to nearer 100 m/s with any post processing enabled.

So, I suppose the first question is :  Should I buy a 4k TV for gaming?

My first reply would be, that unless you have a very powerful gaming PC, then you are not going to be gaming in raw 4K anyway. Your console will still output 1080p, but it will be upscaled to the 4K panel, not all 4k scalers are made equal unfortunately, but Sony's 4k upscaling algorithm is meant to be one of the best on market at the moment.

The PS4 and Xbox One both natively output at 1080p, with some games actually only being outputted at a resolution of 720p in some cases, but, in the case of the 4K Sony TV, The Playstation 4 and Xbox One generally look great on it regardless of what game you are playing. Picture quality and colour reproduction is excellent upscaled onto the 4k panel and I have been unable to discern ANY bluriness of HUD elements like Health bars, Compass etc.

In general, the Picture quality of the PS4 and Xbox One is generally excellent throughout. It's not native 4K, but on the other hand the upscaling is done well with no noticable bluriness, ghosting or input lag, In fact, I am unable to feel any appreciable input lag during rounds of BF4 or playing FIFA 16 etc.

Playing Assassins Creed Syndicate last night on the PS4 did show some aliasing on the windows of the buildings which was quite noticeable, but the same thing can be seen outputting to a 1080p TV. It's no better, but no worse, so I just thought I would point it out as a comparison point.

Picture quality is subjective, and what I find to be acceptable picture quality settings are probably different from yours, but so far, console gaming has been a joy.

So to quickly sum up my initial question, If you are in the market for a new TV, and you class yourself as a gamer ( and of course if you can afford one ), then console gaming on a decent 4k panel is equally as good and responsive as a 1080p panel ( as long as it's a decent make with lowish input lag ).

If you are a PC gamer and you have the necessary hardware to output and game at 4k, then gaming on a 4k Sony panel is absolutely stunning, no other way I can describe it. More on this topic in next post.

[sparkes81]

OK, so... I finally got it to work at 3840 × 2160 @60hz.

Here's what I had to do to get it going, phew.

Everything I tried, it resulted in a 'no signal' message on screen, so I kind of gave up.

The trouble I was having was: everytime I changed a resolution setting in Nvidia control panel on my laptop,

I was doing so while displaying it on my 4K Sony TV. This meant that everytime I changed a setting I had to wait

to see if it was successful on the tv screen, and if it wasn't I had to wait 20 seconds for the setting to time out and revert back to the previous resolution. (you can press enter to select 'no' to the 'do you want to keep this resolution' pop up, but I prefered to wait for it to time out, just in case because its a nightmare to revert if you select to keep a resolution beyond the tv's capabilities) Everytime this returned a 'no signal' response on the TV.

This is where I had to be careful, because if I set the control panel to a resolution that the TV returns as a

'no signal' I had a real issue changing the res back, because I couldn't see the screen to select a lower resolution.

What I did was to 'extend' my display so that the output was on both my laptop screen and my tv screen.

I did this using my 'function' key and F8. (not sure what the shortcut is for a desktop pc) I had to use the 'extend'

option as the 'duplicate' option didn't allow me to change the TV resolutions while displaying to both screens.

While using the 'extend' option I was easily able to test resolutions and hz values for the TV screen using the control panel on my laptop screen. If I set a value too high for the TV screen I could reasily revert back to a usable one.

This is where I discovered the 'output colour format'. Normally the options are RGB, YCbCr422 and YCbCr444.

All of which returned a 'no signal' response from the TV.

So here is the thing, (its a bit of a catch 22) When I used a 1m cable high speed 2.0 cable to select 3840 × 2160 @60hz a further 'output colour format' option of YCbCr420 appeared. After selecting this I was then able to get a glorious 4K @60hz picture

So after that it was just a matter of selecting 'second screen only' from the 'function +F8' shortcut

then opening Nvidia control panel on my TV screen. Changing the resolution to 3840 × 2160 @60hz

then changing the 'output colour format' option to YCbCr420, then changing back to my 5 meter cable.

I suspect that it ultimaltely comes down to HDMI cable quality and length, its a bit hit and miss.

I really want to display 3840 × 2160 @60hz using YCbCr444 but that (i'm guessing) takes a HDMI cable capable

of handling 18Gbps. I've scoured amazon and all the sellers on there claim that their cables can do so but if you

read the negative reviews you'll see that people have bought the cables only to find that they are not actually

suitable for a 3840 × 2160 @60hz using YCbCr444.

Another thing too is cable length, there are various opinions on this but ive read that anything above 5

meters could give you problems.

Ive sent an email to Sony to see if they can sell me a capable HDMI cable. So lets see where this leads.

(no pun intended, ha)

The excellent thing about this though is that I am now able to play GTA5 on my TV with all the settings

on 'very high' in 4K with a stable 60fps (I have switched off FXAA, MSAA and Anti-aliasing. These AA

settings are not needed while displaying in 4K because the definition is so good to begin with)

Still want to have 3840 × 2160 @60hz using YCbCr444 though... Grrr more fiddling and research to

be done.

This forum was interesting:

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/168-hdmi-q-one-connector-world/2016401-hdmi-cables-support-4k-60hz-4-4...

[sparkes81]

*Update*

Had an email back from Sony and they gave me two websites from which to buy HDMI cables from.

Heres the email:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mr. Sparkes,

Thank you for contacting Sony support.

The cable that you need is the HDMI 2.0 cable.

If you want to buy it you can try at the closest authorized Sony repair center and check with them if they have it:

http://services.sony.co.uk/support/en/repair/asc

Or if you want to buy it online you can use this link:

http://uk.eetgroup.com/search?query=HDMI+2.0

Best regards,
Razvan

SONY SUPPORT TEAM
http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en


Sony United Kingdom and Ireland, a division of Sony Europe Limited
A company registered in England and Wales.
Registered Office: The Heights, Brooklands, Weybridge, Surrey, KT13 0XW
Registered company number: 2422874

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ive now ordered this cable:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06X6JKVKC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It is up to the current specs of HDMI V2.0 and was cheaper than the others listed on http://uk.eetgroup.com

I'll keep you posted...

[Patrickhawk2000]

I have the same tv and in point six you talk about input delay and I have been trying sort this out for a wile now and I couldn't figure out how to solve the input delay can you help me with this