What is it about HDTV that freaks me out?

[motion]

I've purchased a couple of large, good quality HDTVs lately and really do not enjoy watching movies on them. They look too good, almost like TV shows shot on video. Just seems like the soft film quality is gone. Even with high budget movies, the production looks cheap. Yet, I can watch the same movie on my MacBook Pro 17" screen (much higher quality than a 55" LCD 1080P) and the movies look great. What's this all about?

[rsNINESOOPER]

You know, some of us are just old school and prefer tubes and vinyl over digital 100101101000010110101110101001001's played on digital gear through speakers that are sterile which strips the Soul out of the music. Same goes for photography and I suspect we are reaching that image quality threshold for home screening movies as well.
Funny how in the rest of the world around us outside of the technological consumer items such as soft goods like a pair of jeans for example everyone wants distressed (GENUINE) looking blue jeans. Personally I have no problem wearing my own pants out all by myself which seems to happen at a faster rate with every pair I have to buy because the quality keeps going down.

Who knows? maybe 20 years from now old tube tv's will be all the rage to watch your vintage VCR tapes on to really bring out that vintage experience when screening your favorite movies of the 80's and 90's.

[island911]

its the refresh rate.

old school film is 24 frames /Second whereas your HD is likely 240 fps... and interpolated. (creates the in-between frames on the. fly.)

[MysticLlama]

Yeah, turn off TrueMotion(r) or whatever it is that builds the extra frames. Makes it look like a daytime soap, right?

Are they Samsungs? Those have seemed to me to be the worst. I have a 120hz Mitsubishi Diamond that does the in between frams but it doesn't have that weird look to it at all. It also has a 24fps mode for movies so it looks like proper film.

[dewolf]

LOL....I watched The Expendables on Blue Ray the other night and it's almost like watching a Nat Geo doco.

[Bill Douglas]

I'm the opposite. I absolutely LOVE my Sony HDTV.

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by MysticLlama

Makes it look like a daytime soap, right?

Precisely.

[GH85Carrera]

A lot of it is the dynamic range you are seeing. Just find the contrast control and crank it way up. The shadows will go dark and loose the detail. Much more like an old TV set. You can play with the contrast and brightness and make it look much more like old school TV.

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

A lot of it is the dynamic range you are seeing. Just find the contrast control and crank it way up. The shadows will go dark and loose the detail. Much more like an old TV set. You can play with the contrast and brightness and make it look much more like old school TV.

My old DVD recorder, if you set it to maximum time per DVD, TV shows looked like old films.

[notfarnow]

I know what you mean! We just got new rabbit ears, and now it's like Alex Trebek is right in our friggin livingroom!!

[stealthn]

hahahaha

[Scott Douglas]

Motion
I think I would have felt the same way about my Sony if my wife hadn't had the Geek Squad do their thing to it. I was there when he came to 'dial it in' and give it a tune-up. He explained that most tv's now days are set up at the factory to enhance the colors in an unnatural way. Way too saturated etc, and the flesh tones are not correct. Once he made the adjustments to it, it was a lot more natural looking. I couldn't stand watching it as it came out of the box as the green football fields were just too green and the flesh tones were too 'red'. Now there's no place else I'd rather watch a movie or football on TV. At first I thought it was just a come on from the sales guy, but now I can see it was money well spent.

[motion]

Originally Posted by MysticLlama

Makes it look like a daytime soap, right?

Yeah, that's it. I have an old 1080P Vizio 42" that looks great. I'll look into ways to soften the picture on the new one.

So, I wonder if the 60HZ, 120HZ, 240HZ refresh differences in different models makes a perceived difference in how the image "feels"?

[Rusty Heap]

You just said HDTV, and not if you got a flat screen LED, LCD? and whether it's a 120hz or 240 hz refresh rate.

We've got a 46" LCD 120hz in our kitchen room area and yes it's crisp.......I also have a 6-8 year old LCD rear projection HDTV, the rear projection is in our movie/theater room, and the ever so bit of softness the projection and screen provides does make for more a "cinema" experience over a "soap opera" sterile feel.........most likely you can get a rear projection (or front projection ) big screen for dirt cheap these days.

[motion]

Originally Posted by Rusty Heap

You just said HDTV, and not if you got a flat screen LED, LCD? and whether it's a 120hz or 240 hz refresh rate.

We've got a 46" LCD 120hz in our kitchen room area and yes it's crisp.......I also have a 6-8 year old LCD rear projection HDTV, the rear projection is in our movie/theater room, and the ever so bit of softness the projection and screen provides does make for more a "cinema" experience over a "soap opera" sterile feel.........most likely you can get a rear projection (or front projection ) big screen for dirt cheap these days.

120HZ LCD. Both a 55" and a 46". Was kinda kicking myself for not going LED, but now I'm glad... the LEDs look like they pop much more than LCD.

[jyl]

This is an interesting thread. I never knew there was a 24fps mode in some TVs, and the variety of different ways they achieve, or don't, that mode. Thanks for the education.

[VaSteve]

Why exactly does a daytime soap look that way?

[island911]

yep 24 fps works well on screens with clocks w/ even multiples of 24. (120 or 240-5 cycles per frame or 10 cycles per film frame.) Problems come in (for film) at 60hz. This because, for each film frame the TV displays 2 and a half frame.. so, what does that 1/2 frame display? Does it display the same frame, or the next?

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by island911

yep 24 fps works well on screens with clocks w/ even multiples of 24. (120 or 240-5 cycles per frame or 10 cycles per film frame.) Problems come in (for film) at 60hz. This because, for each film frame the TV displays 2 and a half frame.. so, what does that 1/2 frame display? Does it display the same frame, or the next?

Every 4 frames, they add an extra frame, same as the fourth. That gets you to 30fps. For 60 fps, you then double each frame again.

What I believe the 24fps system will do is remove the extra frames and run it as intended. It will still be 120 Hz or 240 Hz, but you get 5 or 10 frames in a row respectively.

[MysticLlama]

One of the best implementations is Sony's, that's because instead of putting in an interpolated frame (which looks pretty weird when you watch it), they put in a black frame.

Seems like that'd be really wacky, but when you think about it, that's exactly how old TVs and Plasmas work, it draws the screen and then decays away and then draws it again.

On an LCD there is no decay, so on a 60hz screen, if you're sensitive to it (not everyone is), you see a lot of motion blur because you see the image, and it doesn't go away until the next one is shifted to, so your brain doesn't have a chance to do the interpolation.

Typically, on something like a 240hz screen, there will be some options for how it does it. Whether it interpolates several frames in between (bad), or interpolates some and blacks out others (better), or interpolates and black frames, and dims the interpolated frames (rare, but nifty).

Just play with those and it'll get to looking better. The two things they are out of the box is super "smooth" which is ugly, and "torch mode" as far as birghtness and contrast go, those always need to be turned down.

The idea is that the store people won't spend any time on setup, so you want yours to be most noticeable, bright, clear, in the lineup in the store out of the box, which turns out horried for home use.

A perfectly balanced, color matched, 24fps set would never ever get sold in a retail store, it'd look slow and dim comparatively.