DO I GO WITH A 2 MONITOR SET UP OR A 3 MONITOR SETUP?

That depends on a number of things, budget, computer speed, personal taste, etc. If you choose to use a two monitor configuration, you should purchase the playfield and a widescreen monitor to work as your backglass and your score display. Just like with Ultrapin, a 2 monitor setup likely will have the screen rotated sideways with the left of the screen (now the bottom) housing the DMD and the top of the screen being the backglass for the game. Some portion of the screen will go unused, as it is blocked by the wood from the speaker grill.

You do not have to rotate your monitor for a two monitor setup, however. Unrotated you can display the backglass and scores. How this will work with your setup is up to you, but it works well for mini cabinets.

Playfield TV

For most cab builders, the playfield TV is the most important piece of hardware in the system. A pin cab is, after all, fundamentally a video game. The weight of this importance makes it tough to decide on the perfect TV, but it's even more complicated because of the physical constraints of a pin cab, and the special performance demands of video gaming.

I'd love to simplify this by just giving you a list of the top TVs, complete with model numbers and Amazon "buy" links. Unfortunately, I really can't. The problem is that TV product life cycles are so short that my list would be out of date by the time you read this. You can ask on the forums for advice from people who have recently completed their builds, but even their models will be hard to find now, as anyone who's finished a build bought their TV at least four or five months ago. Your best bet if you want some leads on models you can still buy is to look for people on the forums who are actively shopping right now.

Since I can't give you a list of models to choose from, I'll instead try to offer some advice to help you figure out what to buy. This section attempts to answer the questions that new pin cab builders often have when looking for a TV (and maybe answer some questions you didn't know you should ask).

Note that this chapter is about selecting the playfield TV. We'll get into the details of actually installing it later, in Playfield TV Mounting.

Size constraints

Whatever else you look for in a TV, it has to fit your cabinet. Obviously that means it can't be bigger than the available space. Most people want a TV that's as big as possible within that constraint, to minimize any "dead space" not covered by the TV image.

There are two ways to approach this problem of finding the ideal fit:

• Pick a TV that fits your cabinet
• Build a cabinet that fits your TV

Most people go with the first approach, because they've already decided to use the standard dimensions of a real pinball machine. Using standard dimensions is important if you want it to look authentic, since the real machines all come in about the same size and have recognizable proportions. Building to a standard size also lets you use off-the-shelf pinball parts for your cabinet hardware (lockdown bar, side rails, legs, and so on), which is another key part of making it look authentic.

Not everyone feels compelled to use standard dimensions, though. If you're doing your own woodworking, you can tailor the machine's dimensions for a custom fit to any TV of your choosing. This gives you more flexibility in picking out a TV. The tradeoff is that a non-standard size and proportions can harm the illusion that it's a real machine. You'll also need to buy custom parts for some of the cabinet hardware, since off-the-shelf parts are sized to fit the standard cabinet widths and lengths. Custom parts are almost always more expensive than standard parts and can be harder to find.

In either case, whether you're picking a TV to fit your cabinet or sizing your cabinet to fit a TV, the dimensions that matter are the inside width of the cabinet and the exterior height of the TV. You're going to turn the TV sideways to mimic the layout of a pinball playfield, so the height of the TV has to fit across the width of the cabinet.

Note that the width of the TV isn't a constraint in most cases. Normal pinball playfields are considerably more elongated than 16:9 TVs, so any TV that fits into the available cabinet width will easily fit front-to-back, with room to spare.

HOW BIG OF A TV SHOULD I BUY FOR THE PLAYFIELD?

As big as you want! If you are using a prebuilt cabinet you will be limited. If you are making your own, you can make it however big you'd like. 37-42" seems to be pretty close to a real pinball machine size. If you are willing to cut down or completely remove the bezel to the TV, you can use a bigger TV in a smaller cabinet. Just be aware that doing so will probably void any warranties with your TV set.

Picking a TV based on cabinet size

If you're basing your design on a pre-determined cabinet size, you need to pick a TV that fits the cabinet.

TV sizes are always stated in terms of the "diagonal" size, which is the distance between diagonal corners on the display area. However, recall that the relevant dimension for fitting to a pin cab is the TV's height. How do you translate between height and diagonal size? You can get a rough approximation using this formula:

D = 2.04 × (W − 1)

W is the inside width of the cabinet in inches (the distance between the inside surfaces of the cabinet side walls), and D is the nominal diagonal size in inches of the biggest TV that will fit. This formula assumes a ½" bezel all around.

But that's only an approximation, because manufacturers always round the diagonal size up, and because the the size of the bezel varies from model to model. So use the formula as a guideline, not as an exact specification. Shop for TVs with a stated diagonal size within an inch (plus or minus) of the size you get out of the formula. Then check each TV's specifications to get its actual height.

When you're looking at the TV specs, the one to pay attention to is usually called "height without stand". Most flat-screen TVs come with a stand that you can choose to attach or not. In our case, we won't need it, since we're going to lay the TV on its back rather than stand it up on a tabletop.

Applying the formula, we get the following results for the standard cab dimensions:

TypeCab inside widthMax. TV size (diagonal)

Standard body

20.5" x 39.8"

Wide body

23.25" x 45.4"

So if you're building a standard body cab, you should be able to fit most 39" TVs, and possibly a 40" TV, if it has a narrow enough bezel. For a widebody, you can fit about a 45" TV.

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO PLACE THE PLAYFIELD MONITOR INTO THE CABINET?

Because of software, it seems the best way is to have the bottom of the monitor on the left if you were looking at the machine.

But this depends on what setup and design you want - spanned tables display the playfield and backbox 90 degrees rotated clockwise, meaning the bottom of your displays should both point to the left when facing the machine front. For HyperPin and VP6/7/8 You want them to be oriented the same as your cabinet. Both Future Pinball and HyperPin and VP can work either way, with software adjustments, or you can add a swivel/pivot control to your backbox displays in some cases.

Probably the reason this question doesn't have a solid 'idiot guide to cabinets' answer is because it comes down to thinking about how the machine will be used, and is determined in the planning stages of your machine.

TV features and performance

So far, we've been focused exclusively on picking the right size of TV. But that's hardly the only criterion. You also want a TV that displays a good image, and one that works well for games, which have somewhat different characteristics from ordinary video sources.

Let's look at some of the specific features to consider, and the performance metrics you should pay attention to.

1080p vs 4K

1080p HD TVs have long been the standard for pin cab playfields, largely because that was the highest resolution we could get in this size range. Over the past couple of years, though, the industry has moved towards the new "Ultra HD" standard, also known as "4K". Prices on the 4K sets are now low enough that 4K is an option for many cab builders.

The difference between 4K and 1080p is pixel resolution. 4K sets have four times the total pixels of 1080p in the same area, allowing for finer image detail.

The higher pixel resolution comes at a cost, though (besides the higher price in dollars). More pixels means more computational work for the PC. The PC has to fill in every pixel on the display on every video frame, so the larger number of pixels means the PC has to do more computation on every frame. If you use a 4K TV, you'll need a more powerful CPU and graphics card to keep up with the higher computational load.

Even great upscaling isn't perfect, and so 1080p on 4k looks a bit less crisp than it does on a genuine 1080p TV.

If I were building a new cab right now, I'd go with 4K, despite the higher TV price and despite the need for an expensive graphics card. Even so, if you're leaning towards 4K, I'd advise asking and/or reading about other people's experience with 4K on the pin cab forums (e.g., on VPForums). In particular, get input as to which current graphics cards have good performance with 4K monitors. Be prepared to spend fairly lavishly on a good graphics card, because the higher resolution of a 4K monitor will be completely wasted if your PC isn't powerful enough to produce smooth animation at the higher resolution.

Finally, on the off chance you come across a 720p set, skip it. 720p used to be common in this size range; it's almost extinct at these sizes now, but you might still see a few on sale. They're cheap, but they're really not suitable for the playfield. 720p simply isn't adequate resolution for the viewing distance of a playfield TV. (The same is not true of the backglass TV. 720p is fine for the backglass.)

LCD, LED, QLED, OLED

There are currently two main display technologies available: LCD and OLED. There's also an older flat-panel technology called plasma that's not currently being manufactured, but you might still see used sets or remainders available. Here's a brief overview of each panel type.

LCD: This is currently the most common display type. An LCD panel uses liquid crystal pixels that can range between (almost) opaque and (almost) transparent. A backlight is placed behind these pixels. When the liquid crystal turns opaque, it looks black (or at least dark gray) because it's blocking the light from the backlight. When it turns transparent, it looks white because it lets (most of) the light from backlight through.

LED: This is really the same thing as an LCD TV, but it uses an LED-based backlight instead of the fluorescent backlights used on older LCD TVs. "LED" is a marketing term that the manufacturers use as an intentional bit of misdirection, because they know that consumers think of LCDs as an older, boring technology. But an LED TV actually is an LCD TV by a different name.

QLED: This is yet another marketing term for an LCD TV. In this case, it's an LCD panel with a special type of LED backlight called a QLED or quantum-dot LED. Quantum sounds even more cutting-edge than LED, doesn't it?

All of these LCD TV types, whether the manufacturers call them LCD, LED, or QLED, are fundamentally the same backlight-and-shutter design. The fundamental weakness shared by all LCD panels is that the shutters can't turn 100% opaque, so they can't display true blacks, just varying shades of dark gray. Some panels are better at this than others, and it's one of the big quality differentiators among LCD models. LCD panels also have inherent limits on viewing angle because of the way light has to be funneled through the shutters. Again, some models are better at this than others.

The backlight type does make some difference. LED backlights generally produce better color fidelity than fluorescent tubes did, and they use less power and run cooler. All of that is great for a pin cab, so if you're considering an LCD TV, I'd definitely give priority to the LED models. But you'll hardly have to even think about that since practically all of the TVs in this size use LED backlights. QLED backlights supposedly have even better color fidelity than regular LEDs, according to the manufacturer's claims, but I haven't seen any independent testing confirming this.

OLED: This is a truly is a different display type, not just a variation on the LCD. An OLED panel is an array of small "organic LED" pixels, each of which can be turned on or off individually. There's no backlight, since the OLED pixels emit their own light directly. ("Organic" doesn't mean that they grow them without antibiotics and pesticides, but rather refers to the chemical components making up the emitter.)

On paper, OLED has big advantages over LCD. Producing light at the pixels rather than blocking light with a shutter allows for true blacks, which makes for higher contrast and better-looking images. Emitting light directly at the display surface (rather than blocking light from a backlight) allows for unlimited viewing angle. However, OLED is still a relatively immature technology, and reviews of current models are mixed. There are several potential drawbacks. The first is brightness: current OLED models are only about half as bright as LED-backlit LCDs. The second is display lag. Console gamers have reported substantial lag in many available OLED sets. A third is "burn in", where pixels get "stuck" if a static picture (like a pinball playfield!) stays on the screen for too long at a time. Early OLED models also had problems with pixel lifetime, which was particularly problematic in that the color components in the pixel can degrade over time at different rates, causing the color balance to change as the panel ages. Newer OLED panels will probably have better longevity and color stability, but I'm not sure the problem has been completely solved yet. In any case, don't dismiss OLED because of these concerns. These are just things you should dig into when you're researching models. These concerns might disappear entirely over the next few model years as the technology matures.

Plasma: There used to be yet another display technology known as plasma. These used gases trapped in tiny glass cells to generate light. As in an OLED, the individual pixels emitted light (rather than blocking light like in an LCD), so plasmas had many of the same virtues as OLEDs. But they were never as popular with consumers as LCDs, and never as cheap to manufacture, so the electronics companies eventually all stopped making them (the last ones were built around 2015). Plasmas generally had excellent picture quality, but they had a couple of drawbacks for virtual pin cab use. For one, they generated a lot of heat; for another, their glass panels were fragile and not meant to support their own weight when laid on their backs, as we need to do in a pin cab. I'd avoid them for pin cabs as a result. But it's really moot now given that you can't buy them anyway.

Recommendations: Most of your options in our size range will be LED-backlit LCD TVs. Fortunately, that also happens to be an excellent choice for our needs. It's a mature technology that the TV manufacturers have gotten very good at building, so many excellent TVs in our size range are available.

I'd also consider OLED if you can find a suitable model. I think OLED will eventually be a superior option, because the light-emitting pixels are inherently superior to the shutter-based LCD design for producing high contrast and for wide viewing angle. However, there aren't many OLED models available yet, so your options will be limited. They're also more expensive, and the technology might not be mature enough yet to be an ideal fit for gaming. Be sure to look carefully at the concerns mentioned above relating to OLED, particularly display lag and image retention. If you find an OLED you like, do some research on the Web to see if any console gamers have experience with it, since console gaming places the same demands on a TV as virtual pinball.

Flat vs. curved screens

It almost goes without saying, but a pinball playfield is best simulated with a flat-screen display.

This is generally an easy requirement to fill with current TVs, since most LCD and OLED models have perfectly flat screens. But some models are now available with a convex curvature across the width of the panel. This is supposed to give you a wrap-around effect like in a large-format movie theater. Some people like the effect, others see it as little more than a sales gimmick. Whatever your feelings about it for a living room TV, though, I'd recommend against it for a virtual pinball playfield TV. A playfield TV is oriented in portrait mode, which defeats the purpose any wrap-around effect. The curvature will only serve to distort the geometry of the image.

Input lag

One of the really important differences between video gaming and regular TV viewing is that gaming is interactive. The animation on the screen responds to actions you take in the game. This exposes an element of TV performance that's not noticeable in normal passive viewing: "input lag". This is the amount of time that passes between the TV receiving the electronic signal for a video frame, and the video frame actually appearing optically on the display panel.

Input lag is important (in a bad way) to video gaming because it creates a time gap between when you press a button and when the resulting action appears on screen. If the time gap is long enough for you to perceive, it makes the gaming action feel leaden and unresponsive. You want the flipper to flip the instant you press the button, not a couple of seconds later after the ball has already rolled off the end!

Don't confuse input lag with "refresh rate", "response time", or "pixel cycle time". The refresh rate refers to how many times per second the TV draws a video frame. The response time or pixel cycle time refers to how quickly a physical pixel can change color. These times are important in their own right, because they affect how smooth motion looks on the display. But they're entirely different things unrelated to input lag.

Where to find input lag numbers

I've never seen a manufacturer list input lag in their spec sheets, so you have to dig a bit to find information on it. Manufacturers do often quote pixel cycle times, response times, and/or refresh times, but remember that input lag isn't in any way related to those.

Your best bet for finding concrete data on input lag is console gaming Web sites, since console gamers use regular TVs like we do. One good site is displaylag.com. They measure input lag with special equipment and post the numbers on their site. They have a large database of current models that they update regularly.

What's an acceptable input lag?

Short answer: 40ms or less.

You don't need a TV with zero input lag, and it's impossible to find such a thing anyway. As long as the actual lag time is below a certain threshold, you won't be able to perceive any lag time at all, so anything below that threshold might as well be zero.

Human time perception varies according to context, but for video gaming, the main thing that matters is action/reaction timing. An action/reaction sequence is something like this: You push a button. A light appears on screen. Did the light appear exactly when you pushed the button, slightly before, or slightly after? When researchers do this experiment, they find that time gaps of up to about 50ms are perceived as exactly simultaneous. In other words, humans can't tell the difference between truly simultaneous and about a 50ms delay. It's not a matter of how smart you are or how closely you're paying attention; it's simply a fact of human nervous system physiology. Our neurons can only move signals so quickly, and as a result our brains perceive events that are very close together in time as though they were perfectly simultaneous.

This doesn't mean a TV with a 50ms input lag time is automatically good enough. You don't perceive the TV's lag time in isolation, but rather in combination with all of the other sources of latency in the overall system: delays from the key encoder device, the USB connection, the Windows video drivers, the pinball software itself. The latency from these other components varies, but in a well-tuned system it might add up to around 10 to 20ms. So that leaves us with 30 to 40ms to work with for the TV.

What causes input lag?

Input lag is caused by the internal digital processing that the TV does to the image before realizing it on the display. Most of this is processing that enhances the picture in some way: resolution up-scaling, frame interpolation, sharpness enhancement, noise reduction, motion smoothing. Modern TVs all do these enhancements digitally, by putting the pixels into a memory buffer inside the TV and running some software algorithms over the pixels. The software processing takes time, just like on a PC, and that processing time is what causes the lag.

Note that input lag has nothing to do with the physical pixels, so you can't guess anything about input lag based on what type of panel technology the TV uses. LCD, LED, OLED, plasma - none of those are inherently faster or slower in terms of input lag. It's purely a function of the digital image processing going on inside the TV.

How can you minimize input lag?

The best way to minimize input lag is to buy a TV with low input lag. You can't generally find this information on manufacturer spec sheets, but you can check gamer Web sites like displaylag.com. As described above, you don't need a TV with zero input lag (such a thing doesn't exist), you just need a TV with input lag low enough to be imperceptible. I'd use a threshold of 30ms to 40ms, and rule out sets with much higher lag times.

Definitely stay away from sets with unusually high lag times. Some TVs currently on the market have lag times above 100ms, which will be maddeningly obvious during game play.

Even if your TV has great lag time numbers on paper, you'll still need to adjust its menu settings to get the best performance out of it. Even the fastest TVs can have bad lag times when all of their picture enhancement modes are enabled, and all of those modes are usually enabled by default when you first take your new TV out of the box. Every TV has its own menu settings that affect lag in different ways, so you might need to do a little Web research or experimentation, but here are a couple of rules of thumb applicable to most TVs:

• Turn on "Game Mode". Most TVs have a few master modes you can select from, with names like Movie, Pro, Vivid. One of these is usually a Game mode. If your set has such a mode, select it. In most cases, the main purpose of this mode is to minimize input lag, so it's the easiest way to go straight to the right settings on most sets.
• Turn off all picture and motion enhancement features: sharpness, noise reduction, high frame rates (120Hz or 240Hz, for example), and especially anything related to motion smoothing. Motion smoothing is the worst offender because it usually involves buffering up several frames for interpolation purposes, which deliberately delays the display by that many frames.

Effect of connector types on lag

In some cases, you might see different lag times with different connector types. Most newer TVs use HDMI connectors exclusively, so you might not have any other options. But if your TV has a mix of connector types (HDMI, DVI-D, DP), and you can't eliminate lag via mode settings, you might try different connector types to see if one type is better than the others.

There's nothing inherently good or bad about any of the connector types that affects input lag, so don't look for a rule like "DVI-D is fastest". Any such claims you see on the Web would only apply to a particular TV model, if they're even true. The only reason connectors would have any effect is that the internal electronics in some TVs have a faster path for some connectors than others.

Are there any LED televisions around that have good quality pictures both sitting directly in front of the set and at an angle?

f you want good quality when viewed at wide angles, an IPS TV will be your best bet - you lose out on a bit of contrast, but the side seats will at least get to enjoy better color saturation.

Are there any TV's that have good motion

LED TVs in general don't look quite as good for motion as plasma sets do. If you want something that looks a bit better, an OLED TV would be the answer.

120hz is another option.

What are some of the aspect ratio options?

This is a big question and I am still looking into it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)

HOW FAR AWAY FROM THE GLASS SHOULD THE MONITOR BE?

People have expressed that having the monitor too close to the glass will create a lot of heat. It seems that you should have at least enough to create a ventilation flow between the glass and the front of the monitor.

Destruk writes, "This truly depends on your display you are using. Mine generates heat, sure, when touched, but with 2 inches of clearance from the display to the playfield glass it's really not a problem with adequate ventilation. The sloped playfield glass helps so the heat will rise to the back of the cab."

WHAT ANGLE SHOULD MY MONITOR/TV BE SET AT IN THE CABINET?

Most people have the table slope at 6 degrees, and the display is between 0 degrees (flat), and 2 degrees to mimic a real machine, where the cabinet sides are higher at the back.

POV ADJUSTEMENT

• Adjust inclination to about 7 ish. Varies from table to table. EMS and earlier SS should probably stay at 0.
• Adjust FOV to about 20. Again, varies. Adjust layback to about 60. This is just a generalization.
• Each table is unique and might require different settings.
• Set Z Scale to 1 if it's not already. Should be. Never change it away from 1.
• Set X Scale to 1.
• Move the Z-offset until the desired position is attained relative to the top and bottom. Move the
• X-offset to fine tune what you just did. Toggle back and forth between X and Z offset to put it where you want it to be on that axis.
• Move the Y-scale to fit the way you want it. Y-offset also if necessary.
• After having done this, go back and make small adjustments to the inclination, fov, layback and anyting else to suit. And then go back and forth between those and offset adjustment. Toggle adjusting until happy.

NOTE: THE ORDER OF ADJUSTMENTS IS NOT AS IMPORTANT AS IS MOVING THROUGH ALL THE ADJUSTMENTS AND THEN ADJUST THE OTHER ADJUSTMENTS AND GO BACK AND FINE TUNE AND WASH AND REPEAT AS NECESSARY UNTIL POV NIRVANA IS ACHIEVED. IT'S SUBJECTIVE...

BACKGLASS

HOW BIG OF A MONITOR SHOULD I BUY FOR THE BACKGLASS?

To truly mimic a real pinball game you should probably measure an actual real world backglass or translite and use that for your backbox display size. Whatever other people have used for theirs, or if Ultrapin used 19" or 32" or 16" or whatever, really doesn't make a difference in your design for your pinball machine. You can either go for realistic, or you can go for cheap - it's yours and should be unique. Again, if you can't decide a simple choice as what brand or model or size or color you want your components to be...

For a three monitor setup, you need to fit the monitor into your cabinet. 28" or 30" seems to be a good size, with at least a 17" monitor for the third screen DMD. Ultrapin from Global VR uses a 19" widescreen monitor for their backglass and DMD.

Ultra DMD

What is DMD

Ultra DMD doesn ́t work

After you installed with the all in one VP installer, UltraDMD should work. If not, go to:

https://ultradmd.wordpress.com/download/... and download it and install it again.

UltraDmd DMD is not compatible with vpinmame DMD or freezys.dll. Do not right click on the

DMD and check hidedmd. Only drag and drop the DMD image into position on your DMD screen.

Then right click on it and there you see a bunch of resolution settings you can take.

If you have problem to launch Ultra DMD games from Pimball X, use this fix:

Open Table in VPX and find this in the table script and set it to False :

'wait for the animation to end

While UltraDMD.IsRendering = False.

Now you can use this table with pbx launcher.

If you have Problems that Ultra DMD Animation is not stopping when going back to Pinballx try this:

add this line to end of table script.

Sub Table1_Exit():Controller.Stop:End Sub

This stops the controller on table exit.

HOW DO I GET THREE MONITORS TO WORK?

You will need at least two graphics cards. One graphics card will likely have two outputs, so you will need a second card for the third monitor. If your PC has a video card built in, you might be able to use it for the third monitor. My test configuration does have one built in (a Gateway PC) and using both a PCI Express graphics card and the built in video card does not work. But it might be worth a test for you before you shell out extra bucks on a card.

There have been tests by individuals here where they have gotten three monitors to work. 53kemper most notably has used a 19" as a separate monitor, just in front of his 28" backglass monitor and drops the bottom down into the cabinet. At the time this was written his design was such that he could not drop the backbox down (at least without taking out the 3rd monitor).

Others have discussed using small TV monitors such as the ones you would find to watch a DVD in your car (and using a TV out on their graphics card) to display the DMD. These seem to be too small for a "real" DMD, which is 13" wide. A 17" 4:3 monitor should work nicely as a 3rd monitor DMD.

When going for a three monitor setup, you should also consider the motherboard you are going to purchase. It would be wise for you to pick up a board that has two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots. Otherwise you might be very limited in your options for a third monitor card.

If you can't check your candidate models in person, you can at least check user reviews for any red flags about viewing angle. Viewing angles are generally excellent in newer 1080p and 4K LCD panels, and people have come to expect this, so other buyers will probably have noticed if a model has any problems with this.

Note that viewing angle is almost never an issue with OLED or plasma displays. These technologies have their light emitters located directly at the surface of the display, which makes them viewable from any angle.

Motion artifacts

Some TVs are better than others at displaying moving objects realistically. Pinball simulation obviously involves a bunch of rapidly moving objects, so motion rendering is an important element of the overall picture quality in a pin cab TV.

When a TV doesn't handle motion well, you'll perceive effects known as motion artifacts:

• Blur (a moving object looks fuzzy)
• Ghosting (a moving object looks washed out or partially transparent)
• Jitter or judder (objects jerk or vibrate rather than moving smoothly)

It's commonly understood that the "pixel refresh time", also known as "response time", tells you how well a TV renders motion. Yes and no; the refresh rate is important, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Don't get too attached to the idea that you can just look for a TV with the fastest pixel update speed and call it a day. One problem is that there's no standard way to measure these values, so manufacturers can pick whatever measurement is the most favorable; this makes it fairly meaningless to compare the numbers for different models. The other issue is that the apparent smoothness of motion depends on other factors besides the pixel response time. It's more complex than that because motion perception happens in the human visual system, not in the TV. Motion artifacts like those listed above are caused by the interactions between your visual system and the display technology. Faster refresh rates generally reduce these artifacts, but other factors contribute to the artifacts as well, so refresh rate isn't a perfect proxy for motion rendering quality.

The best way to determine a TV's motion handling is (as always) to view it in person with suitable content. If possible, watch the TV in action playing a pinball video game, or some other video game with small moving objects against a fixed background. If that's not possible, try ESPN - sports tend to have a lot of motion of the right sort.

If you can't check the TV in person and you can't find another pin cab builder using the same TV, try user reviews on Web stores. Motion rendering is important to regular TV viewers, especially sports fans, so you should at least be able to check for complaints about particular motion artifacts or problems.

Image retention

Some TVs suffer from a problem known as image retention, or "pixel burn-in", where pixels get "stuck" if you leave a static image on the screen for too long. This leaves a sort of ghost image stuck on the screen. This was a major problem in the ancient days of CRTs. This is, in fact, why they invented "screen saver" programs. The job of the screen saver is to keep varying the image displayed so that no one pixel will ever be held on at the same color for long periods.

Image retention has always been a concern for gamers because many video games have portions of the image that are fairly static for long periods. For example, console games often have score displays and on-screen controls that are always in the same place. Pinball is even worse in that most of the playfield just sits there motionless most of the time.

Fortunately, image retention is practically non-existent for LCD panels. If you're considering an LCD TV (whatever the backlight type - LED, QLED, fluorescent), you'll probably be immune from any concerns about pixel burn-in.

OLED sets are a different matter. Some OLED TVs are reportedly affected by image retention. If you're looking at an OLED model, look for reviews from console gamers to see if anyone has had problems with image retention on that model.