120 HZ HD TVs

[Thomas Mathai]

Has anyone noticed the new 120Hz HD TVs yet?

I saw a few last week showing Pirates 2 on Blu Ray. It looked like I was watching was watching video, hyperrealistic sense to it.

There was some high edge sharpening going on too.

I saw some more of them today, this time a Sony one showing Fifth Element. The grain looked very distracting.

The price ranges were from $2000/40" to $3500/52"

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

I'd rather have a 1080p Pioneer Kuro

 

[Rob Lohman]

I'll take a 1080p projector please. It sounds like the TV's were just setup wrong or were doing way too much sharpening, ugh. Shouldn't really be the 120 Hz...

 

[Stacey Spears]

The video look is caused by motion compensated frame rate conversion. Philips has offered it in different displays over the years. InterVideo includes the Philips TriMedia (marketing name for mo-comp frame rate conversion) with WinDVD. With some of the 120 Hz displays you can choose motion compensated or frame repeat.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Funny... My 120hz desktop CRTs have never made 24p footage look videoish...

 

[JoshBertrand]

I just got a new Sony Bravia that is 120Hz and I had to turn that mode off immediately. I've never seen film look so un-filmic.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

120hz modes make some sense on CRTs where some people can't get by with CRT flicker. However, for normal interlaced programming, they have a hard time because of the 50hz or 60hz motion across the fields, and they have to do some clever motion interpolation to make that work. I'm sure it works right in the lab from uncompressed source material, but heavy MPEG2 seems to fight with it.

For progressive sources, I've seen such TVs do the motion adaptive interpolation making 25p look like 50p (to an extent) which as pointed out above destroys the artistic intent of the source material. Such TVs should have detection for 24p / 25p to adapt their mode of working accordingly. It sounds like either that mode is off or doesn't work correctly.

Graeme

 

[Thomas Mathai]

I was at Fry's when I first saw them, and they were definitely shown that way on purpose, because some of the customer reactions were amazement, since they never really seen that hyper real look on an HD set before.

Fifth Element with that look reminded me of Dr Who. I was definitely noticing how the grain and dirt sizzled with the over sharpening.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

No dissing Dr. Who - it's sacred, well, the old ones are anyway.....

Strangely enough, similar technology is applied to old black and white Dr. Who telerecordings (because that will do an early interlaced to progressive conversion) to restore their original interlaced video look! The results are superb and really do help them look like they were originally shot.

Graeme

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The local BestBuy / Magnolia has some 120Hz units set up. They do have a funny look to them and I'm thinking it has to do with over-sharpening and processing the image. I wanted to play with the new Samsung 72" set some more in respect to the 3D kit, but the sales drone played stupid on that one (even through it says what's included on the box) and he wouldn't try to help me out. He also wouldn't let me access any of the set-up functions or attempt to access the service mode. Something about they're not allowed to change settings and it's their corporate installers that come by and configure everything. Although he agreed that most of their sets were poorly calibrated and looked like ass.

Anyway, I'm eagerly awaiting the 120Hz stuff to catch on... Should make out great for us NTSC land people... No pull-up/down frame rate conversions anymore. 24fps Blu-Ray and HD-DVD shouldn't have any judder if they're properly encoded and played back from a good 24fps output player.

 

[Stacey Spears]

I see it two ways. The motion is indeed smoother and 24p judder is gone. But, it no longer looks like film. It turns Stark Trek into Days of Our Lives.

A popular clip to show the difference is the opening of Star Trek Insurrection. It is a long pass across a village.

24fps Blu-Ray and HD-DVD shouldn't have any judder if they're properly encoded and played back from a good 24fps output player.

They will still have the natural judder from 24p. What they won't have is the additional telecine (2-3) induced judder. Consumer DLPs frame double to 48 Hz. I suspect LCDs and LCOS run at 72 or 120 Hz.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Well, all progressive TVs should remove pulldown and just repeat frames to match the native frame rate. I don't see how 120hz is going to make that look any better on a LCD or Plasma?

3:2 pulldown judder is annoying, but on a modern progressive display, it should be detected and removed. But I vote to move the entire world over to 25/50/100 anyway

Graeme

 

[Bruce Allen]

Well, all progressive TVs should remove pulldown and just repeat frames to match the native frame rate. I don't see how 120hz is going to make that look any better on a LCD or Plasma?

Because 120 is an exact multiple of 24 (repeat 5 times per second), while 60 is not (repeat 2.5 times per second)?

3:2 pulldown judder is annoying, but on a modern progressive display, it should be detected and removed.

It can't be removed evenly if the display is running at 60 because 24 doesn't fit in?

But I vote to move the entire world over to 25/50/100 anyway

Hear hear! And get rid of drop-frame issues too, hooray!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Graeme Nattress]

I thought LCD's rand at 72hz though? I didn't think flat panels were stuck at a fixed 60hz?

And yes, integer frame rates for all!

Graeme

 

[Bruce Allen]

I thought LCD's rand at 72hz though? I didn't think flat panels were stuck at a fixed 60hz?

Hmm, maybe true? Then 120hz would make 60i video look better then because 60 would fit better into 120 than 72?

Ah well, it's out of my budget anyway - and if I had the cash, the money would be going towards a Red or some filming project

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

When I spoke of judder above, it was in reference to telecine judder. The motion inherent to 24fps will not be effected.

I thought LCD's rand at 72hz though? I didn't think flat panels were stuck at a fixed 60hz?

There are only a few odd-ball LCDs or flat panel displays on the market that actually accept and display 72Hz. Pretty much everything out there in NTSC land is 60Hz. Plasma displays are a different animal... Many of them cycle at 100 to 300 times per second to maintain the charge on the plasma cells. But the actual image processing, and display refresh is still locked at 60Hz. 120Hz for a plasma should be a no-brainer and I'm surprised that they weren't 120Hz right from the start, or at least as soon as the possibility of 24p from DVD and newer formats became desirable...

And yes, integer frame rates for all!

yes, please!

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Things to consider when judging picture quality in the stores:

-from all picture modes chances are that you'll be seeing the wrong one
-tendency to over-sharpen the picture & raise the contrast
-noise filters turned to max for no apparent reason + additional Mpeg noise filters (poor quality noise filters have a tendency to screw up the image in various ways)
-"contrast enhancer" features
-cheap port multipliers

At this point if you want to have an LCD TV and reduce ghosting you'll have to pay the price of fiddling with various motion estimation/compensation processing, which some companies do much better then the others.


Speaking of new TV's...I"d watch Vegas in ten days...

I vote to move the entire world over to 25/50/100 anyway

Graeme

heh heh...no problem with that

 

[Rob Lohman]

Variable refresh rates?