Comments on: No harm in Hz?

By: Carlo Magno

Carlo Magno — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:54:24 +0000

“The problem now is the industry seems to have moved beyond trying to educate the consumer to preying on their ignorance.” - This is all but TOO TRUE of a statement, as a 23-year-old up and comer I have witnessed the evolution of TV’s… My father is 66, so he’s seen it all… One of the Scariest trends was the FORCED move from Analog to Digital.. I honestly Hate digital, I mean at least with analog if the signal was weak you would be able to see a scrabbled picture and adjust the antenna to find a good signal, but now with the digital analog converter box if you don’t have that antenna in the exact position, you’re stuck with a screen that says “Weak Signal” or “No Signal”… And don’t even get me started on PIXELATION… I HATE that too… We’re in an economic recession and the last thing we should be conserned about is how refined we can make our TV’s so we can “See the Blades of Grass on the Fields of the Game” or whatever ad slogan the companies are using.

One example is the Super Bowl commercial Visio did, where it blatently told the viewer to look at the Logo on their TV and if it didn’t say “Visio” then they weren’t watching the best picture quality out there… they neglected to give any specifics or examples of why they were the best, just simply “Visio is the best”… I’m paraphrasing with the quotes, but I think you get the idea….

Let’s go back to the good old days with turn nobs and where you actually had to get up to change the channel…. As my father once told me, something he was told by an old news Anchor, the job of a broadcaster is merely to “Fill the blank space between commercials”

By: Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:35:49 +0000

I think using a high refresh rate to eliminate requirements for pull-down are fine, but the issue is the refresh rates aren’t necessarily used in that manner. As noted, some manufacturers are inserting blank frames so the pixels aren’t presented with a GtG situation, but a black (or white) to grey situation.

The issue isn’t the manner in which the manufacturers are trying to address the technical problem but rather presenting the solution as providing additional benefits, such as smoother presentation of fast motion on screen.

By: Ross Jones

Ross Jones — Fri, 15 May 2009 23:51:45 +0000

As Kieran says, one reason for higher refresh rates is to avoid interpolation errors (both 24 and 30fps can be refreshed at 120Hz without 2:3 conversion). I believe the LCD issue is because of response time lag in the panels. Like most things though, the implementation is key. I’ve seen displays with high refresh rates that looked great, and some not-so-great.

By: Kieran Coghlan

Kieran Coghlan — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:25:28 +0000

So, how effective are these novel techniques at bringing LCD picture quality closer to that of a comparable plasma panel?

I must say, I’m a convert to plasma, and a little late to the game. I’m sad to see that just 18 months after buying my first plasma, the technology seems to be on it’s final legs.

As someone here pointed out in a previous blog, the main benefit of high refresh rates used to be to give a mulitple of 24, so that film-based material can be displayed without any 2:3 conversion (and concomitant judder). 3D video at home is another cool application made possible by high refresh rates. Are there others?