AyeYoYoYO wrote:This next calendar year, we will likely see flat panels operating at 120hz refresh rates, operating with LESS INPUT LAG than CRT's.
Content framerate is the ultimate limit here. Yes - we are seeing a lot more gaming at 120Hz framerates (refresh rate is not the preferred term here) which will bring faster gaming with less lag than 60Hz CRTs can support. But at the same time there will still be lots of 60Hz content where flat panels have no latency advantage over CRTs. It is interesting to note that many obsolete CRT monitors were made with support for 120Hz and beyond. Indeed, it's probably hard to find a 90s or newer PC monitor which doesn't support at least 75Hz. Personally, I think that flat panels are more suitable for ultra high framerates and resolutions than CRTs. But if you feed both display types the same image, they will both be using the same raster-scan technology and both will still take 16ms to draw that entire single frame at 60Hz.
You could theoretically burst or chunk an image to transmit it more quickly and decrease lag, or start to draw lower parts of the image sooner. But just getting 4K out of a single flexible cable and economical hardware that doesn't burn the house down has required a lot of technology investment, and that cable is transmitting continuously (and this was true for every previous resolution and framerate adopted, too). [Edit: Wrong info due to QFT & VRR adoption, thanks orange808: We probably will see device manufacturers use additional bandwidth to instead use additional bandwidth to increase resolution, framerate, or color depth. But we likely won't see the adoption of a "less laggy" 60Hz option, in no small part because it would break compatibility with existing 60Hz content (and existing 60Hz devices couldn't make use of it at all).]
Other notes:
I don't like to use "120Hz refresh rates" when talking about input lag, because TV manufacturers like to label their counter-blur technology as 120Hz, 240Hz, or beyond. Applied to 60Hz content, the image will be clearer, but it won't be faster. It's essentially the same situation as classic movie projectors running 24Hz content - but using the shutter mechanism to flash the image two or more times for a 48Hz or 72Hz refresh rate or more.
As far as seeing 1ms differences in the gray-to-gray specifications for a monitor, this effect is more about wide differences in color purity than temporal perception. The brain and eye do some tricky things to adapt to fast moving content, but g2g blur can be spotted by devices too. I think it's probably about right that our brain operates at ~20Hz, but you can notice (well after the fact) if a color region has a fringe on its trailing edge from sloppiness in the gray-to-gray transition.