So I just watched a few movies on Blu Ray, on a 1080p TV that refreshed 
at 120 Hz.

Specifically, "Sleepy Hollow," "Wall-E," and "TCoN: Prince Caspian."

And, my reaction in general was:

YIPPEE!

Seriously, the quality was absolutely astounding!  If I weren't already 
trying to pay down my debt, I would be sorely tempted to go out and get 
a new home theatre today :)

Of course, this brings me to the point of my post... that as nice as the 
added resolution of 1080p is, it didn't do nearly as much for the 
picture as having a 120Hz refresh rate.  The movement is absolutely 
amazing!  I can't wait until video is recorded at this rate natively, 
rather than interpolated by the TV!

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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> So I just watched a few movies on Blu Ray, on a 1080p TV that refreshed at 
> 120 Hz.
>
> Specifically, "Sleepy Hollow," "Wall-E," and "TCoN: Prince Caspian."
>
> And, my reaction in general was:
>
> YIPPEE!

Agreed - I saw a 200 Hz comparison with 50 Hz, the difference was amazing.

> Of course, this brings me to the point of my post... that as nice as the 
> added resolution of 1080p is, it didn't do nearly as much for the picture 
> as having a 120Hz refresh rate.  The movement is absolutely amazing!  I 
> can't wait until video is recorded at this rate natively, rather than 
> interpolated by the TV!

It's all needed because of the way LCD works, it "holds" the pixel colour on 
the screen for the entire length of the frame, rather than the CRT way of 
just providing a burst.  This means that for moving images, whilst your eye 
is tracking the motion, you see a blur rather than a smooth sharp movement. 
This happens even if the response time is zero, but longer response times 
just make matters worse.

You can either fix this problem by doubling up frame-rate or resolution - 
both work equally well, and just need some algorithm to interpolate between 
frames/pixels.

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"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
 interpolated by the TV!
>
> It's all needed because of the way LCD works, it "holds" the pixel colour on
> the screen for the entire length of the frame, rather than the CRT way of
> just providing a burst.  This means that for moving images, whilst your eye
> is tracking the motion, you see a blur rather than a smooth sharp movement.
> This happens even if the response time is zero, but longer response times
> just make matters worse.

That's really interesting, something I never realized. Thanks for opening my
eyes! I do all my computer work on a CRT monitor; same for watching DVDS and TV
(on a digital-but-CRT television.) It makes me wonder which device--LCD or
CRT--is 'better' for viewing things? A big question and topic, to be sure.
Those of us who have been around 'awhile' are used to the 'look' of a CRT as
being a kind of standard; but more and more video enthusiasts are opting for
LCDs. I guess it will get to a point in the not-too-distant-future where some
younger folks will never have seen a CRT display!

KW

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On 4/22/2009 12:22 PM, Kenneth wrote:
> That's really interesting, something I never realized. Thanks for opening my
> eyes! I do all my computer work on a CRT monitor; same for watching DVDS and TV
> (on a digital-but-CRT television.) It makes me wonder which device--LCD or
> CRT--is 'better' for viewing things? A big question and topic, to be sure.
> Those of us who have been around 'awhile' are used to the 'look' of a CRT as
> being a kind of standard; but more and more video enthusiasts are opting for
> LCDs. I guess it will get to a point in the not-too-distant-future where some
> younger folks will never have seen a CRT display!

LCDs, or OLEDs if you can afford them, are easier on the eyes than CRTs, 
especially in a dark room.

Nothing beats the color of a CRT.  However, the new TVs are getting very 
close.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> Nothing beats the color of a CRT.  However, the new TVs are getting very 
> close.

  Advantages of CRT:

- Cheap (not the least because the technology has existed for over 50 years).
- Excellent contrast and brightness.
- 180-degree viewing angle from all directions.
- Practically no limit in color depth.
- Easy (on hardware) to achieve any resolution and aspect ratio (up to a
  point, of course).

  Disadvantages of CRT:

- Requires bulky and heavy displays due to the nature of the technology.
- Can suffer from several types of distortions (eg. the color channels
  not being perfectly aligned).
- Can suffer from some degree of blurriness.
- Usually poor refresh rates at higher resolutions.
- Energy consumption and heat production.

  Advantages of LCD:

- Very thin and light displays.
- No distortions.
- Sharp image, no blurriness.

  Disadvantages of LCD (most of which are getting better as the technology
advances):

- Expensive (being relatively new technology).
- Relatively poor contrast (but it's fastly getting there).
- Often suffers from narrow viewing angles, especially vertically.
- Often has limited color depth, requiring software dithering, which
  reduces image quality.
- Dead pixels, which may be more annoying than the CRT distortions.
- Fixed resolution. Any alternative resolution has to be simulated by
  scaling pixels, which may produce ugly results for resolutions and
  aspect ratios which are not exact multiples of the resolution of the
  display.
- Can suffer from ghosting (especially older LCDs).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>   Disadvantages of LCD (most of which are getting better as the technology
> advances):

> - Fixed resolution. Any alternative resolution has to be simulated by
>   scaling pixels, which may produce ugly results for resolutions and
>   aspect ratios which are not exact multiples of the resolution of the
>   display.

Yeah, that's a real bugger. One other nice thing about CRT monitors is that you
can 'squash and stretch' the screen display, to exactly (more or less) fill the
screen from corner to corner. (As opposed to CRT televisions, which--even with
the newer digital models, I think--still have that annoying 'overscan'
behavior, where we don't see ALL of the transmitted image. Mine does.) Of
course, LCD monitors and TVS don't even need squashing and stretching, since
(AFAIK) the input image is exactly mapped to all the screen pixels. Given their
fixed resolutions, of course.

Several years ago, my CRT computer monitor bit the dust, and I actually went
looking for an LCD replacement. Bought a Samsung model, brought it home, hooked
it up, ran a POV-Ray test scene--and I was shocked at how 'different' it looked.
I can't say better or worse, just different--not what I was used to. I *think*
it had to do with the 'system gamma' of the monitor, but not sure about that.
And even with adjustments, I still couldn't get it to look right. (Perhaps that
'older' LCD model lacked more modern adjustability, I don't know.)  In the end,
I took the thing back and got another CRT monitor. Have been happy ever since!

Oh, and it seems that 99.999% of the rabble don't even take the time to adjust
their new whiz-bang LCD/plasma/OLED widescreen displays, and happily watch
'fat' people on TV all day long, without a clue. Yes, technology can be
dangerous in the wrong hands! ;-)

KW

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Kenneth <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> Oh, and it seems that 99.999% of the rabble don't even take the time to adjust
> their new whiz-bang LCD/plasma/OLED widescreen displays, and happily watch
> 'fat' people on TV all day long, without a clue. Yes, technology can be
> dangerous in the wrong hands! ;-)

  Oh, don't get me started on that.

  For some reason 99.999% of people have a pathological obsession that
the image MUST fill the entire screen, no matter what. At least horizontally.
I have yet to meet the person who doesn't complain loudly if the TV image
does not fill the widescreen display horizontally.

  With some people this obsession goes to baffling levels. For instance,
they just *can't see* that the image is stretched. Even if you point it
out, they just deny seeing any stretching or anything wrong, no matter
how obvious it is.

  A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

> 
>   A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
> the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
> I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.
> 

The distortion annoys me, too. The main reason to have the screen filled 
instead of "pillar boxed" is if you have a CRT screen like mine it will 
cause burn-in, but now that most of what I watch is HD and fills the 
screen anyway, I don't care too much, and have set my TV to display 4:3 
stuff at 4:3 now. At least Sony's stretch didn't distort too horribly. 
It did a mild stretch and pushed the top and bottom of the image into 
overscan.

But it's completely unnecessary for LCD...

-- 
~Mike

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>>   A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
>> the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
>> I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.
>>
> 
> The distortion annoys me, too.

And me.

But my question would have to be... what the hell is so great about 
"widescreen" anyway?? Why is it that today everything must be 
widescreen? (Except for 99% of all the video you might want to watch...) 
Even my friggin' *laptop* is widescreen. WTF?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:54:04 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   With some people this obsession goes to baffling levels. For instance,
> they just *can't see* that the image is stretched. Even if you point it
> out, they just deny seeing any stretching or anything wrong, no matter
> how obvious it is.

I run into this now that we've moved to a home theatre projector and a 
16:9 screen.  I find I'm always fiddling to reset the setting my stepson 
has left.

Though in fairness, I tend for the two anamorphic settings because they 
generally work well, but I have run into a few DVDs where that didn't 
work.

Jim

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