Anyone else think 120hz makes film look like video? (1 Viewer)

I finally was able to view some well-calibrated 120hz TVs at Circuit City today. They look beautiful, seeming to totally get rid of judder, which my eyes are really sensitive to, but... I have to say, they make film look like video. Both had feeds in from Blu-Ray players. One was showing "Pirates: Dead Man's Chest" and the other a Blu-Ray sampler with clips from movies. Neither looked like film. My friend agreed that they really looked like video. It was kind of weird. I don't know if I liked it or not.

Is that just what 120hz looks like or what?

hi
The term well calibrated and Circuit City are not congruent.
That being said...
Many 120 Hz displays are not doing 5:5, they are still doing a version of 3:2 but are adding a bunch of extra frames (including black only frames) to lessen the motion blur that is indicative of LCD panels.
regards
Gregg

I had the same reaction. I think it's partly just the nature of LCD screens up close (in addition to the fact that the store probably has the brightness and sharpness settings cranked up to max).

That was another question I had... do any displays do "true" 5:5? HDGuru.com says that none of them do.

I have seen exactly what you are referring to during my recent trips to Circuit City and Fry's Electronics. From a little digging online, I think I know why they look so video-like. As someone already mentioned it isn't a true 5:5 process going on in these sets. Instead they are interpolating frames on the fly and I believe that it is this interpolation process that is resulting in the odd video-like quality of the image. Personally, I think it looks really bad. Make no mistake, the image is crystal clear, but it doesn't look like film at all. I have the Panasonic 32TC-LX700 LCD set and it does 120hz, but it looks nothing like the sets I have been seeing lately. I'm thinking Panasonic used a different type of process to achieve the 120hz refresh rate that does not involve the interpolation of the Samsung or Sony sets that I have seen. I'd be interested to find out if anyone knows.

-Edwin

"Some newer LCD models have high refresh rates (120 Hz) designed to improve motion-handling, but we haven't noticed much improvement on those we've seen."

I simply cannot believe how much misinformation about 120Hz is out there! It's an internal refresh rate, and has absolutely nothing to do with the input. No display today does 5:5 type processing. Plasmas do not need 120 Hz because it's simply a mechanism for LCD to improve their motion lag/blur, which is a problem that plasma does not have to begin with.

I've also seen other professional reviews where they also question its worth in terms of motion artifacts introduced by 120Hz. Sometimes the cure is worse than the problem.

Who said it did? I'm confused by your comment.

Do you know what the source output format was?

There is 24 fps output available from some hi-def DVD players, and some TV's accept that. This can be readily converted to 5-5 pulldown within 120 Hz TV sets.

But "regular" 60 fps 1080p and 30 fps 1080i player output needs 3-2 pulldown sensing (inverse telecine) in the TV to make use of (make a change to) 5-5 pulldown. Otherwise the 3-2 pulldown would become 6-4 pulldown before any frames were then turned black or otherwise treated to reduce motion blur.

Video hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/v120hz.htm

But it isn't. No display does this kind of processing right now. That's the whole point. The 120 Hz refresh rate is an internal refresh rate that is for motion lag improvement/suppression. It is not tied to the input at all. Those displays still expect to receive a 60 Hz input, or in some cases, a 24 Hz input, but the signal processing internally is still 60 Hz. 5:5 type processing for 24 fps in a 120 Hz display might take place in the future, but no display does it now.

When I read about this fact in one of my magazines, I thought what is the point ? Why have the capability of 120 Hz if it is not going to allow for 5:5 pulldown on 24 fps signals or even 4:4 for 30 fps ? I thought 120 Hz was going to be such a wonderful thing because it simplifies processing and because so many displays (the majority) still can not carry out a proper 3:2 pulldown.

I was leaning towards a Sony SXRD for a future display upgrade, but now I think I am going to look at plasmas. I have not verified this, but I suspect the new Sony A3000 running at 120 Hz is also just a refresh rate with no 5:5 capability.

5:5: maybe in the future, but not right now.

Generally, for LCD, turning white to black or vice versa has a shorter response time compared with turning one gray shade to another gray shade. Having 120 time slices per second allows more flexibility in overshooting the light to dark transitions to reduce motion blur and still get back to the proper gray scale.

How or whether the electronics supporting the LCD panel accomplish this for any given make or model, I don't know.

I'd probably want confirmation of that before I'd bet on it.

To the OP, I noticed this exact same phenom today at Best Buy. They had a nice Samsung display setup with a Blu Ray player playing some scenes of Batman Begins. Lots of the interiors shots looked "fake" as in not movie like but sports video like. And I dont mean fake in a bad way, it just didnt look like film. It was super smooth in the way the video looked and "felt" in the way it was displayed in color and sharpness along with being so smooth.

Sorry to bump this old topic but Spiderman 3 was playing at Bestbusy today with this garbage on and it looked like a cross between a porno and an episode of Coronation Street.

Forgive me here, but aren't all these films all shot digitally... which is essentially HD video?

The frame rate on them (movies shot 'digitally') is still the same as film. If I had a TV with this it would be fun to play around with though- it might show what the original videotaped material for Tunnel Vision, The Groove Tube and similar movies might look like. It might also be good for getting rid of that crappy film-look (essentially doing to video what this does to film) used on many concert DVDs.