120hz TVs

[KEEZY]

I came across one of these the other day, and again yesterday (I think the one yesterday was the LG Scarlet, unless Samsung has a red-tinted set). They are crazy! The movement caught my eye right away. I can't even really describe it. Each frame looked like a completely focused high megapixel image. There was no blurring at all. They were showing scenes from XMen and Narnia, and it was simply amazing.

Has anyone done any research or heard anything about these? I'd love to know how they are.

[Jon Liu]

From initial viewing, they are nice, but in a lot of real world applications, they are not as nice as you would think. First off, a simple misconception is that 120Hz is what you are seeing, that's not really true; what you are seeing is the "Motion Enhancer" or whatever the respective companies want to call it, which is essentially frame interpolation. The TV does a pretty good job at guessing what goes inbetween the missing frames to make up for the jerkiness.

There are a couple problems with this. First, the TV doesn't always do a good job. When it doesn't do a good job you start seeing artifacts in the motion, stuff that definitely shouldn't be there. It'll look like pieces of the previous frame were left behind because it didn't guess right. Second, for movies, the "smooth" look makes it look unnatural. What I mean by this is, films were shot at 24 frames per second, so some camera jutter in panning is inherent, so when you take away that stutter, it starts to look like home video instead of a film. Obviously, some people may prefer that, but when it comes down to it, initially it will "Wow" people, but after the initial impression, people start to see it's not as great as they think it would be.

Now, 120Hz is just the refresh rate they chose to evenly get multiples of both 60fps and 24fps. So it is slightly faster than normal, so it still will make a slight improvement in motion resolve. I say slight because one you turn off the "Motion Enhancers" the motion starts to look a lot closer to your typical 60Hz TV's. The only difference is now with 24fps content (theatrical movies) looking as it should without having to do any 3:2 frame pulldown. The 3:2 pulldown judder is we've had ever since DVD's hit the market so many people will even think going from the 3:2 judder to a 24fps judder looks weird, even though 24fps judder is how it is supposed to be.

[KEEZY]

Thanks man. It really did look like a home movie... I think that's what I was trying to say. I thought of a documentary on PBS or something like that. The lack of judder is the big difference that caught my eye.

[Woundup]

Originally Posted by Jon Liu

From initial viewing, they are nice, but in a lot of real world applications, they are not as nice as you would think. First off, a simple misconception is that 120Hz is what you are seeing, that's not really true; what you are seeing is the "Motion Enhancer" or whatever the respective companies want to call it, which is essentially frame interpolation. The TV does a pretty good job at guessing what goes inbetween the missing frames to make up for the jerkiness.

There are a couple problems with this. First, the TV doesn't always do a good job. When it doesn't do a good job you start seeing artifacts in the motion, stuff that definitely shouldn't be there. It'll look like pieces of the previous frame were left behind because it didn't guess right. Second, for movies, the "smooth" look makes it look unnatural. What I mean by this is, films were shot at 24 frames per second, so some camera jutter in panning is inherent, so when you take away that stutter, it starts to look like home video instead of a film. Obviously, some people may prefer that, but when it comes down to it, initially it will "Wow" people, but after the initial impression, people start to see it's not as great as they think it would be.

Now, 120Hz is just the refresh rate they chose to evenly get multiples of both 60fps and 24fps. So it is slightly faster than normal, so it still will make a slight improvement in motion resolve. I say slight because one you turn off the "Motion Enhancers" the motion starts to look a lot closer to your typical 60Hz TV's. The only difference is now with 24fps content (theatrical movies) looking as it should without having to do any 3:2 frame pulldown. The 3:2 pulldown judder is we've had ever since DVD's hit the market so many people will even think going from the 3:2 judder to a 24fps judder looks weird, even though 24fps judder is how it is supposed to be.

Super Nerd!

[Jon Liu]

And tell me again what your occupation is, Woundup??????

[GoatMother]

Yeah, I tend to use the Motion Enchancer for some stuff but definitely not everything. Something like the Planet Earth footage it can look great 90% of the time, at the cost of having some odd artifacts once in a while as well. Sometimes it makes video gaming a little smoother as well but also can have artifacts. One effect on some video games is it gives characters a predator like Halo around them.

[The Milk Man 09]

Originally Posted by Jon Liu

And tell me again what your occupation is, Woundup??????

I think he walks around in thongs and batman suits kinda Tron guy style.

[Woundup]

It's ok Jon, I still love you.

[KEEZY]

I would rather not see that guy's man-toe at 120 frames per second.

[GoatMother]

Originally Posted by KEEZY

I would rather not see that guy's man-toe at 120 frames per second.

Thank you for stating what we were all (ok, almost all) thinking

[The Milk Man 09]

Its called a Moose Knuckle Geese get it right..

[KEEZY]

So Goat, you have the MotionEnhancer? Is it on a 120hz TV? It's good to know that it screws with video games, as I was curious as to how games and other generated content would look, compared to the live action/CGI mix I saw in the store.

[Woundup]

Originally Posted by The Milk Man 09

Its called a Moose Knuckle Geese get it right..

I actually prefer calling it a ninja boot