Motion blur on LCD tv's

[beanzontoast]

Can anyone tell me whether motion blur on a 50Hz lcd tv is really going to be an issue?

Our old tv has gone pop and having looked at what's around, there seems to be a marked price hike between 50Hz and 100Hz models.

Surely if 50Hz was so bad, no one would want them - but there seem to be plenty about?

 

[marinyork]

It is a problem and the reason why people aren't moaning non-stop is that it is less noticeable to many people on the smaller screens.

 

[Mr Pig]

A lot of people just don't seem to care. I know people who's TV's blur badly but they're totally unphased.

 

[Shaun]

I understand it's particularly noticible with sports and action movies, and the bigger the screen, the more noticeable it is (a videophile may be able to expand on / contradict that ).

I paid the extra for the 100Hz feature on my Sony Bravia (Motionflow they call it) mainly for action movies (not a big sports fan). Of course, you tend to get a host of other features too at that price premium, so they may also be coming into play to improve the picture quality, but when I turn the Motionflow on/off there is a noticeable difference. It's slight, but it's there.

Mine's only 32 inches though, so it may be a bigger/better improvement on larger screens.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[beanzontoast]

Thanks all. Main reason for me asking is that Mrs B is into watching tennis, and that's a pretty fast moving ball, obviously.

Think I'll have to go and stand in an electrical shop where they have both types showing the same channel when the sport's on one weekend and see what the difference looks like.

I suppose distance from the screen affects things too? (Maybe I should take a tape measure!)

 

[alecstilleyedye]

no such problems on my 60hz crt sony…

 

[domtyler]

no such problems on my 60hz crt sony…

Except when you forget to wind it up.

 

[twowheelsgood]

Motion blur was primarily due to 2 reasons firstly slow TFT response times and secondly poor processing of the signal (deinterlacing and resampling to native resolution).

Really, these are not a problem with current generation sets and I actually find the interpolated frames of some 100Hz sets actually worse to watch but that does put me in a minority - it seems to blur out some of the already compromised detail. News, documentary etc. that I watch doesn't contain much movement anyway.

Many of the picture issues are actually due to extremely low-bandwidth digital transmission and not the inherent technology of the TV. Another is that some set-up boxes, especially those with analogue out are utter crap. I have cable TV with the standard box which goes through SCART (they don't offer an alternative and tie the signal to the box). The difference between that and a hacked dreambox decoder was night and day.

 

[swee'pea99]

Get what the professionals get. One of these.

 

[ianrauk]

LOL, that is the exact tv that the Mum in law has

[quote name='swee'pea99']Get what the professionals get. One of these. [/QUOTE]

 

[marinyork]

Just to confuse matters of course, there are pretty bad 100MHz TVs and pretty good 50MHz screens as well. But the better ones all have the higher rate.

Yes. Even watching on high bandwidth channels such as Sky Sports 1 HD some channels have problems with motion on. Watching football became a quantum mechanical sport and cricket it particularly disliked. I think Tennis was all right for some odd reason. Fortunately he doesn't watch any sport. The processing is generally better than that now.

 

[ColinJ]

Just to confuse matters of course, there are pretty bad 100MHz TVs and pretty good 50MHz screens as well. But the better ones all have the higher rate.

Not quite as high as 100 MHz though! (That's a million times too high)

 

[marinyork]

It's interesting once you've got your tv set up properly to see the difference in quality between some cable channels.

Sat feeds (except itv and BBC HD which is a bit odd). Apparently now they are going against that rule and moving back to the way things used to be.

One has to remember that the channels are from below and around 2Mbs on MPEG-2 to 4.5Mbs. A lot of the bitrates are just far too low for some of the material.

 

[Fab Foodie]

I'm still at a loss to understand why people are buying TV's that are worst than my first generation Nicam Stereo 25" Trinitron... especially those who still put them in the corner of the room. It's like another example of technology providing the means to go backwards more quickly. If this TV ever goes terminal I may give up TV for ever. Most people I know with modern flat screen TV's wax lyrical over a crap picture... that's progress I guess...

 

[ColinJ]

Sat feeds (except itv and BBC HD which is a bit odd). Apparently now they are going against that rule and moving back to the way things used to be.

One has to remember that the channels are from below and around 2Mbs on MPEG-2 to 4.5Mbs. A lot of the bitrates are just far too low for some of the material.

My sister and brother-in-law bought an HD-ready LCD TV from Aldi a couple of years back and I thought its picture quality was awful until they got HDTV on Freesat, then I realised that it was the old Freeview box/broadcast quality that was bad. BBC HD now looks stunning as do Blu-ray DVDs, so the TV was obviously always capable, it was the quality of the source material that was poor.