I am but a humble computer user, a gamer if you will. I have dealt with experts many times. Most are good at what they do. I believe that you are a great writer and technologist though at 16 years you are still a young pup.
In any case, I checked the back of my computer and there is No VGA connector on my video card just a pair of DVI connectors (XFX GTX 275 from NVIDIA). Maybe I bought the wrong card? Going to Newegg I did find a few (not a lot) cards that still offer a VGA connector on the high-end cards.
So the fact is that now a days (that is a funny term eh?) video cards are mostly being offered with DVI and the newer HDMI connectors.
I am using a projector based upon LCD technology. This is digital technology. My video card and computer are also both based on digital technology (we had analog computers in our science lab back in college, but they were eclipsed by the Intel 8088 and Motorola 6800 based digital computers). If I was to get a video card that was equipped with a VGA connector it would have to convert the digital information to Analog, because that is what VGA is. Then the projector would convert it back to digital information for the tiny LCD panels inside the projector. As I recall VGA works quite well with CRT monitors they are analog. The AE4000 PANASONIC projector also has a VGA connector on it. But it also has 3 HDMI connectors on it. I am watching in 1080P. This is pushing the upper limits of what VGA is capable of (1600X1200) though I am sure someone is working on improving on that.
WRT lag, I think at best you can say YMMV. I think it “depends” on what projector and what computer hardware you have as to whether you will see a performance degradation using VGA as compared to DVI/HDMI. If you can bypass all of the internal processing that goes on in a home theatre projector you will get better performance in terms of lag.
What about quality? Many users have reported an improvement after switching to DVI on their LCD panels and arguably some have not. However, and this is a big however (but I still didn’t capitalize it) at what cost in quality and for how much difference. The AE4000 offers options/settings to eliminate much of the extra processing involved in watching home theatre, which would greatly increase lag.
I move my mouse and the pointer moves. I don’t perceive a difference. That is to say I have ‘NO APPRECIABLE LAG WHEN PLAYING GAMES’. This has been the case of others who purchased the AE3000/4000 series of PANASONIC projectors. So my mileage with my setup is what I designed it for. I am pleased since I don’t have a problem with LAG.
Where is the VGA technology going? Can you say 8 track tape or VHS? Maybe, stranger things have happened.
Infidelz
Some clarifications.
The DVI connectors on the back of your video card have pins reserved in them for VGA. That is the DVI spec, BTW. Your video card probably (almost certainly) came with a DVI-to-VGA adapter (and maybe two - XFX isn't stingy when it comes to in-box goodies - you pick up stuff like this with a mere 16 years experience in the industry), and all they do is route the VGA signal pins from the DIV connector to the standard 15-pin VGA arrangement.
So having established that you really do have VGA output, are we done? I'm guessing not. ;-)
LCD projectors use the same digital to analog decoding as in LCD monitors, so of course there are milliseconds lost for each frame when going analog to digital, plus the response time of the display has a lag too (also in milliseconds). Would anyone notice the extra time of the analog to digital conversion during gaming? I'd be shocked. Grab a good LCD monitor with VGA and DVI connectors and play a game twice: once using each input. Is there a difference in speed? Again, I would be shocked if anyone could notice the difference, because I can't, and I just spent a few minutes double checking.
And we aren't talking about picture quality here - DVI should be able to deliver a better quality picture since there's no digital/analog conversion going on. But then again, you're talking about some "speedy" projector mode, which would have to work be reducing image quality in some way. Otherwise, why wouldn't "speedy" be the default mode?
Oh, and the VGA connector has no maximum resolution limit. Max resolution is dictated by the video ram available, the video card circuitry, and of course, what the connected display device can accept. I have a 22" CRT monitor from the good ol' days here that supports 2048x1536, and it only has a VGA connector on it.
Anyway, it sounds like you are fact getting a lag-less setup with a projector without doing anything special. I maintain that for PC gaming, no one really has to do anything special.
-Llama
