Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post

Hack&Lube · 01-13-2010, 11:07 AM

People have to stop equating refresh rate with speed.

The hertz rating is refresh rate. It is how many times a second the picture is redrawn regardless if the pixels are changing or not. It can be a still picture and the entire image will still be redrawn 60 or 120 times a second. 60Hz is plenty fast although 120Hz will sometimes provide a more subjective smoothness and ease eyestrain or nausea. It will also make the TV more compatible with future 3D technologies. For an LCD, the Hz rating is not very important.

The speed of an LCD is denoted by response time. That's the rating that is in milliseconds (ie: 5ms, 2ms, etc.) While that's not a very good measure of what's actually happening (even that varies with LCD technology), that is what you should be looking for for speed and smoothness of frames and action. Response time is how fast an LCD pixel can go from active to inactive. Your refresh rate can be crazy but if your LCD pixels (imagine they are a bunch of millions of little lights that make up your picture) have a slow response time, it will be like a lightbulb that fades and lags slowly from color to color instead of quickly changing from color to color leaving after images or ghosting. This is what governs the speed and smoothness of your picture.

Plasmas have better response times than LCD. If I had the option, I would not purchase an LCD personally.

Auto Motion Plus is sort of a fake frame technology. It increases the frame rate to 120 frames per second (this is frame rate, not refresh rate!). Normal Bluray is only 24 frames per second. But it's not just simple frame-rate conversion, which usually involves simply repeating the same frame over again 5 times. Auto Motion Plus interpolates new frames in between existing frames. Basically for every frame of video you get, it stretches it out into 5 frames and does a blending (imagine the Michael Jackson morphing effect from the Black or White music video) and makes up fake frames to stick in between to give you a feeling of smooth motion or motion blur.

Some people like it, some people don't. The feeling of accelerated fps makes some people think it looks like old early 20th century silent films or old home videos.

01-13-2010, 11:07 AM	#7
Hack&Lube Atomic Nerd Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Calgary Exp:	People have to stop equating refresh rate with speed. The hertz rating is refresh rate. It is how many times a second the picture is redrawn regardless if the pixels are changing or not. It can be a still picture and the entire image will still be redrawn 60 or 120 times a second. 60Hz is plenty fast although 120Hz will sometimes provide a more subjective smoothness and ease eyestrain or nausea. It will also make the TV more compatible with future 3D technologies. For an LCD, the Hz rating is not very important. The speed of an LCD is denoted by response time. That's the rating that is in milliseconds (ie: 5ms, 2ms, etc.) While that's not a very good measure of what's actually happening (even that varies with LCD technology), that is what you should be looking for for speed and smoothness of frames and action. Response time is how fast an LCD pixel can go from active to inactive. Your refresh rate can be crazy but if your LCD pixels (imagine they are a bunch of millions of little lights that make up your picture) have a slow response time, it will be like a lightbulb that fades and lags slowly from color to color instead of quickly changing from color to color leaving after images or ghosting. This is what governs the speed and smoothness of your picture. Plasmas have better response times than LCD. If I had the option, I would not purchase an LCD personally. Auto Motion Plus is sort of a fake frame technology. It increases the frame rate to 120 frames per second (this is frame rate, not refresh rate!). Normal Bluray is only 24 frames per second. But it's not just simple frame-rate conversion, which usually involves simply repeating the same frame over again 5 times. Auto Motion Plus interpolates new frames in between existing frames. Basically for every frame of video you get, it stretches it out into 5 frames and does a blending (imagine the Michael Jackson morphing effect from the Black or White music video) and makes up fake frames to stick in between to give you a feeling of smooth motion or motion blur. Some people like it, some people don't. The feeling of accelerated fps makes some people think it looks like old early 20th century silent films or old home videos. Last edited by Hack&Lube; 01-13-2010 at 04:14 PM.