The
wraps are off and we've had a chance to get eyes on with Sony's new Bravia Z4500 1080p LCD. While Japan unveiled the world's first
MotionFlow 240Hz set, this is similar, just 40 frames per second slower. That didn't stop Sony from making the claim that the Z4500, "provides the smoothest and crispest motion reproduction to be achieved by an LCD TV." Of course, both are multiples of the industry standard 50/60Hz. Sony's being coy with the measurements and the price of this set, but with the show model listed as KDL-52Z4500, we're guessing 52, kid-captivating inches of silky smooth video that looks so good, you may never have to parent again. "Look into the spiral Jimmy, good critter."
We've got a comparison video after the break: 200Hz Motionflow on the left, your father's 50Hz on the right. We could definitely see the difference in the uh, highly controlled demo. Question is: can you when this thing shows up at the local big box before Xmas.
posted August 28th 2008 8:20AM
Whoa! Stop the presses:
Little kids are stupid?
No kidding.
Pray tell what is that Camcorder recording at? Because I really can't see a difference...
definitely a 50Hz or less camcorder
its just like the thing with those 1000000:1 Contrast tvs last year, definately works but only truely viewable person
Well, apparently the little girl was clever enough to take out a really important looking component.
Am I the only one who hates this technology? I dont want all my movies looking like the 5 o'clock news. Film blur is part of the feel of a film. Boo to this! Im sure you can turn it off but all the stores have their Blu-Rays playing with the 120hz stuff and it looks like hell to me. Fast refresh for computer input - YES Fast refresh interpolation for 24fps films - NO!
@BluesK1d:
Umm... that's all in your head there, kid. Since the movie was *shot* at 24fps and telecined at 24 or 30fps, screening it at 120hz, 200hz or 50,000hz is not going to increase the frame rate, only the refresh rate. You do realize that when you go to the movies, the shutter on the projector is at 72hz, right? If anything, increasing the refresh rate on the screen will get you *closer* to the original "film blur" you love, not further from it.
If you're still experiencing difficulty enjoying fast refresh rates, please visit an optometrist. (Or maybe a psychiatrist? I dunno...)
@dreamscape86
Thank you but I am quite familiar with refresh vs frame rate. I am not talking about simply repeating frames to increase the refresh rate. I am talking about the video processing these TVs do to interpolate and remove blur by creating 120 individual frames where there were none in the source. The TV itself is increasing the frame rate to match the refresh. Please stop by your nearest Best Buy to witness what it looks like. They always have some blu-ray movie being processed in this way. It resembles high speed shutter video footage (think sporting event) and looks terrible.
Eyes can see tops about 80 frames per second (by corner of an eye).
Though as with sound, only by going at least twice above human limit all the disturbing little glitched introduced by electronic image/sound reproduction are not detected by perception.
It would be interesting whether I would be able to the difference.
I was able to the difference.
Is this dangerous?
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm
Isn't this video totaly useles as my computer screen doesn't have motionflow I can not see the effect :o Nice specs though :P
Well, it's also useless because the cam Thomas is filming with only records with 24/25/30 pictures/s. Nevertheless, you can see a quite remarkable difference .
The difference really shows on the highly compressed 15 Hz video clip you provided...
wait, where was the comparision? anyway, I hope sony flys with this product, cause they are failing with everything else
how does this work with 24hz (23.997, w/e) content? Wouldn't doing pulldown tricks still result in judder, even on a 200hz set?
No actually these sets arent just doubling/repeating certain frames to arrive at the correct refresh rate. It actually is using motion compensation to analyze and de-blur the footage by inventing its own frames based on what it gathered from the source, regardless of its native refresh.
I have that same ikea tv stand...hoorah.
Any word on the thickness of this unit? How about the contrast ratio?
Well...ummm maybe I could notice a difference if the person holding the camera had one with image stabilization!
Wow, too many LCD post today here on Engadget!
I'm hoping we see just as many plasma posts today!
Am i the only one who got really dizzy.
No, I did too. But 120Hz does that to me too.
Might help if the camcorder were recording at 200fps. Recording at 60fps the image is going to be all jerky. Nice try guys.
maybe the kid is ver yreligious.. cause to me that pic looks like the Vatican
You're right, that is the vatican. I took nearly the exact same picture about 2 years ago when I was there. It was one of my favorite pictures from my trip... but shockingly I'm not the only one who thought it would make a nice desktop background.
Hmm so normal human vision can only see at about 30 or so fps so how does this help? I know the corners of your eyes see at like 80 but then who watches tv out of the corner of their eyes? My guess: geeks will swear they can see the difference and a trial similar to the monster cable vs. clothes hanger one will show that there isn't a perceptible difference.
You would think so... But i remember from back in the CRT-days, my eyes would get tired much faster on a 50hz screen than a 120hz screen, so there might be something to it, but i have no idea of why. There has to be some screenwiz in here to help out......
CRTs dim to black after being refreshed (actually, after the dot has moved past, that area instantly starts to dim). The phosphor usually used in monitors (medium persistence) will leave you with lovely seizure inducing flicker at lower rates. Now, compare that to the sorts of phosphors used in some old dumb terminals / MDA displays, and you don't have a flicker problem, since they used long persistence almost-radar-like phosphor that doesn't stop glowing between refreshes at 50/60 Hz (or even 25/30 Hz). Of course, then you have problems with motion which would easily cause a terminal made with those phosphors to end up a big screen of green mush just from scrolling text. Yay...
Gotta be some irony that the demo pic on the screen is from a collection of stills. I have the same image on my hard drive. ooh - look how smooth.
Ugh. I actually went to a big box store to watch a 120Hz TV in action, it just made me motion sick. Oddly enough, I don't get motion sick from anything else. I think I'll avoid this whole 'MotionFlow' crap.
Guys, this video is the cheapo version of Motionflow.
Have to see it in person because my craptop doesn't allow me to discern for myself with its now long outdated obsolete low Hz rate
I thought 120Hz was a marketing ploy until I compared with 60Hz side-by-side. It shouldn't make a difference given the limitations of human vision but it was a huge difference for me. I would then assume that 200 or 240Hz would be that much better, maybe.
I really want to buy a 52 inch but each time I'm ready to buy, word of something else comes out. LED, higher refresh, better contrast, thinner. . . I was ready to buy the Samsung 71 but the 650 came out. Now the 850 is out and Sony comes up with this. I feel sorry for people who don't follow tech and just wander into the store asking for sales help.
Don't feel sorry for those people. They will buy the tv that the salesperson says is the best is they will go home thinking they have the best tv. On the other hand there are people like you, (and me) who will constantly be second guessing our purchases because we buy into this latest and greatest crap. We are the ones people should feel sorry for.
FAIL...
Samsung HDTV's FTW....
TV stand, the rug and couch to the right are from IKEA.
Sure, high-end electronics and low-end furniture. Their priorities seem right to me.
Can't tell the difference at all.
How's this compare to Plasma? Is Plasma still better in terms of showing motion? I'm STILL a little insecure about making a switch to LCD. I love my Plasma....
Thanks,
Scott
http://www.topclassactions.com
Bad for gaming because it adds lag. Instead of displaying a new video frame from your game console, the television stores it in memory, and interpolates a frame part-way between it and the previous frame. A video frame is not displayed until the NEXT video frame is received from the game console. It looks like this:
- Receive & Store frame t=2.0, Display frame t=1.0
- Interpolate and Display frame t=1.3333
- Interpolate and Display frame t=1.6666
- Receive & Store frame t=3.0, Display frame t=2.0
- Interpolate and Display frame t=2.3333
- Interpolate and Display frame t=2.6666
- Receive & Store frame t=4.0, Display frame t=3.0
and so on. See how the frame that is displayed lags behind the frame sent by the game console!
Yeah of course. People will fall for stupid marketing all the time.
This is hilarious that someone would try to capture this on video! To see a real difference you'd have to capture it at a significantly higher frame rate than 50 Hz (which is what was used to record this), upload it at said rate, and everyone viewing it would have to have monitors capable of high refresh rates, and their video cards set to do so. The difference is probably huge in real life, but on video, not so much.
But the thing about these artificial high rate refresh modes is they all have to muck up the picture some to produce the in between frames. Some techniques may be "better" than others, but they all suffer from one significant problem, and that is whenever there is a cut or other large change in the video signal, there isn't enough information for at least a few frames of video to produce the in-between frames, so what you get is stutter stutter stutter, smooth motion for a few seconds, scene change, stutter stutter stutter, smooth motion. There's only 50 or 60 frames of video per second; so-called "intelligent" algorithms have to be used to create the in-between stuff, and those algorithms really aren't very good. I personally find it VERY distracting and it gives me a headache.
The best use for the high frame rate panels is their ability to produce 24p video without judder, so watching films on Blu-ray/HD-DVD/a properly equipped DVD player look much more film-like, especially whenever a camera moves in some way... a pan, tilt, dolly, truck, etc. Unfortunately not all of them do that. It would be great if manufacturers started advertising 24p capability instead of this high frame rate nonsense, because the 24p is actually useful, the artificial motion is not.
Seriously.
Or you could do a side by side with one that doesn't have it. Then no matter what you filmed with, the degradation would be equal, and the difference would be clear.
This isn't just true for these interpolated motion modes, but for flat panel TVs in general. LCDs and Plasmas have a 1/30 second delay built into them just because they have to receive a full frame of video from the game console / DVD player / satellite receiver, etc. before they can display anything in order to remove the interlace from the signal. The only TVs that display video "in real time" are CRTs. They delay with these modes is just double what you would normally get with a 50/60Hz panel.
this motionflow stuff isnt really good for anything other than sports right... all the stuff ive seen at the stores playing in 120 look really really crappy.. like a soap opera...also most video/games doesnt support that many frames does it?
Try cranking you computer's refresh rate to the max. You will get a head ache.
This is just more marketing CRAP to make you think you are spending $3000 on a BETTER tv than what you had 3-5 years ago. There is NO company making LCD tvs that are better than my Sony xs955 30 HDTV CRT. PERIOD!!!!!!!!!
What a HUGE waste of money on this crappy tech!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LCD sucks! Why do people spend money on it????????
SAVE your money! Don't feed the corporate CRAPholes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Guys I'm pretty sure the reason why this makes a difference, and why it CAN show up when recorded on camera and played back on your shitty PC screen..... is that your eyes, or your camera, could hit the screen right in the middle of one of its refreshes... if the framerate is lower 50/60Hz, the chances of this happening could be fairly high... sure, once your eyeshave stuck on the screen for a few microseconds the picture is smooth... however this isn't so with a camera recording device, which is doing digital frames per second... it could be synced in such a way that the camera is recording a frame, every time, at the same time as the 50Hz TV is in the middle of a refresh.... and this is often the case..
So... bump it up to 200Hz, and you're far far far less likely to ever hit the TV in a refresh state, either with eyes or a camera.
Scottie