Of course not. Even the best lcd monitors are at 2ms lag. However, 'Game Mode' does provide a much better experience that even the most hardcore console gamer won't notice. A PC gamer might notice when approaching SC/SC2 APM. I think the takeaway should be that a TV with game mode will be great for console games and PC gamers should steer clear of TVs as monitors.

That's not the same lag. I'm not talking about the time it takes for the TV to completely change pixels -- that lag happens after the TV has decided to put the image on screen, and is largely not a big deal -- as long as the image has started changing, the player can understand the new scene.

I'm talking about the time it takes for the TV to tell the pixels to change.

Right. Just the fact that it's digital means that it has to buffer at least a frame before it can be displayed.

I don't think a monitor needs to buffer the full image before you display it just because it's analog data. It really just depends on how the internal bandwidth is setup on the tv vs how the data is sent to it. (AKA if each pixel is updated in order or if each line of TV is updated in parallel etc.) Worst case you might update the immage left to right but receive the signal top to bottom.