
Your New TV Ruins Movies (about LCDs and motion smoothing) - lostbit
http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins-movies.html
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wmf
This is a long-winded version of the old "24 FPS film look" argument, with
extra snobbiness and grumpiness. See extensive previous discussion here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2397246>

I have a Westinghouse "HDTV monitor" with minimal processing (although still
built-in speakers, sigh); I wonder if they still make those.

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macrael
The author's apparent belief that 24fps is the only good way to make movies
might be wrong, but his (central) thesis that interpolating / smoothing 24fps
video up to higher frame rates is spot on. Regardless of the future popular
frame rates, right now the vast majority of film has been shot at 24fps and it
is wrong to change that to something else while watching it. That is not how
the movie was intended to be viewed. The people who made the movie did so with
24fps in mind. When you view it smoothed at 120fps, you are warping it, you
are watching a different movie.

So, I think it is wrong to dismiss this piece, following its advice will
upgrade your movie viewing experience.

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mprovost
Movies also weren't intended to be viewed compressed down to 1% of their
original size in a room with lights and coloured walls. The people that just
want to watch movies at home don't care, and grumpy film snobs will know
better and turn the setting off.

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macrael
To be fair, the screen may have 1% of a theater's surface area, but the angle
of view is more like 30 - 40% of what you get in a cinema.[1]

I agree that going to see a movie in a theater is superior to seeing one at
home but that is no reason to dismiss the OP's very real issues with the
default TV behavior. The whole point of this post is to educate people who
_aren't_ grumpy film snobs on how easy it is to improve the way your TV lets
you watch movies and to point out that the incentives for selling TVs do not
align well with actually watching a movie. Dismissing the author as a "grumpy
film snob" doesn't make sense to me. His arguments seem completely valid.

[1]: assuming 40 foot wide screen sitting 30-40 feet away compared to a 4 foot
wide screen sitting 10 feet away

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mprovost
I was referring to data compression not the size of the screen. A Blu-Ray is
about 1% of the size of an uncompressed HD film. Of course if you're seeing a
digital copy in the cinema it's been compressed down already so a Blu-Ray is
about 13% of that. But a Blu-Ray is a tiny amount of data compared to what you
see on film. So if you're already prepared to live with that, does tweaking a
setting on your TV make that much of a difference to the average consumer? How
much of a difference does it make?

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macrael
I'm not sure how the amount of data is very related to the importance of the
settings on your TV. Now, of course, all these things are sort of ephemeral,
so it is pretty difficult to quantify their effect on the viewing experience,
but the article brought up two different settings on TVs that have bad
defaults.

1\. Color. As the images in the article show, changing the color profile makes
a real difference in how you see the movie. Color can set the tone in a movie
very effectively, so when it is wrong by the amount seen above, I think it can
have a tangible effect on how you see the movie. Home video may carry a lot
less information than film, but I've met people who work on color and an
enormous amount of effort goes into making the colors look good on TVs and
computer etc.

2\. Smoothing. It is possible that TV's have gotten better at this, but I have
watched movies with pretty aggressive interpolation on and it is jarring. It
is a common reaction to feel like the movie has been soap opera'd, but more
importantly, panning shots often seem strange because everything moves on
screen a little differently than you expect. At least one other commenter in
this thread says that they have gotten used to the smoothing effect, so it is
possible that over time this will have less of a negative impact than it does
now. But I do believe that the best filmmakers understand their medium well
and that interpolating does more harm than simply losing 99% of the
information to deliver the movie on Blu-Ray.

Anyway, I agree that without changing your defaults you could live a long and
happy life watching movies without missing too much. But, my main take away is
that no one _wants_ the default settings on your TV except the TV companies.
It is trivially easy to make your TV better by changing two settings, and it
is a crying shame that the defaults picked by the manufacturers are bad.

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demallien
I can't speak for anyone else, but my experience with the motion smooth was
that at first it was distracting, because it created that 'home video' feel.
But you know what? I've had that television for nearly a year now, and I have
got used to professionally shot film looking like that. The result is that I
have lost the association with home video in my mind. Watching films without
this feature now just makes me feel as though I'm watching a low quality
product.

~~~
Shorel
You're not alone. We are a minority though.

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sil3ntmac
Gah, motion smoothing. More than once, I've been asked by friends why their
brand new huge LCD TV "makes movies look like they're filmed with a handicam."
Always the same answer: turn off motion smoothing. It's a silly feature to
ship with enabled by default.

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fleitz
Does the OP really think directors intend to shoot at 24fps because of the
artistic beauty of 100 year old technology, or because thats how it will be
played and they do the best the can with it? It's clear from the IMAX, etc
versions of movies like Avatar and James Cameron pushing for 48fps that this
is a severe restriction on what a film maker can do.

I think most film makers would love to be able to control all the things a
modern HDTV can do to an image.

I think this article is the equivalent of saying that we shouldn't have
rounded corners on websites because designers have to work with IE in mind.
OMG look how badly Chrome is screwing up those beautiful square corners.

~~~
chopsueyar
Was double 24fps needed for the left and right view of the 3d version?

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pstack
Your new TV only ruins them if it's running with the 120hz or 240hz smoothing
interpolation turned on. Chances are, you turned that off as soon as you set
your television up, just like I did.

There's no question that 24fps film looks awful using these gimmicks. The real
question is will film running at a higher rate (like 48fps) will also look
bad? I know that the show The Event seems to be filmed at a higher frame rate
(it looks like it was filmed in Video rather than Film) and it is
disconcerting to watch. It actually makes the acting look bad, which I don't
think it would otherwise seem.

However, like 3D, it's now a gimmick that it is included on so many sets that
you almost have to go out of your way to _avoid_ buying one that has them.

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malkia
We got our LED Samsung last year, and one of the firs things my wife (and I've
noticed, but tried to get it) was the 240Hz smooth thingie. She hated it, she
said all movies look like a game, theater, etc...

Okay, it's cool technology to speed up the frame rate (and some video games
would be using such in the near future, some are to some extent)... But not
for movies.

While games would always have difficulties reproducing true motion blur
(because you won't know where you are going), movies captured that very well -
do a still shot, and you would see the motion captured....

<http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/graphics/x_motion.htm>

Anyway thanks for the great page!

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bshep
I always though there was something strange about how movies on the newer
120Hz LCDs looked to me and this article explains why. Interesting read.

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Shorel
This is a really pretentious article. Everything described there as a huge
problem is just a setting away.

Want to improve your movies?

Invest in a TV with a huge gamut, so dark areas or areas with a color gradient
will not show bands or borders where the color changes and also have those
huge compression artifacts.

However, the same Plasma TVs recommended in the article have better color
gamut than LCDs.

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mahrain
My Philips 9404H has a "movie mode" which tones down the colors (contrast),
switches to 24p where available and turns off all smoothing. It's set to be
activated automatically on my Xtreamer and Blu-Ray, and the local-dimming
LED's provide deeper blacks.

I don't need a plasma for that.

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bricestacey
I actually just got the Panasonic TC-P42GT25 mentioned in this article for
$700 this weekend and while I was there to pick it up they sold their last in
stock, the floor model. If you want one, call your local retailers cuz they're
quickly becoming sold out.

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thomasswift
Is there a good example showing how motion smoothing works/looks?

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zcid
If you have a TV near by that has the feature, watch a movie and toggle the
motion smoothing every few minutes. It's pretty obvious.

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chopsueyar
Get a projector. Much easier to move when you move.

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state_machine
Another offender is Netflix on the PS3: The PS3 has a 24p mode (for Blueray
playback) but the Netflix app appears run at 60Hz.

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yason
I'm so glad I haven't owned a television for over a fifteen years. Setting up
and using one wasn't exactly straight-forward even back then and the situation
apparently is only none the better but actually worse. I get shivers from
looking at the preferences settings of VLC already: I wouldn't want that in a
television as well if I had one.

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pitdesi
It's a shame that LCD's won out in the market... Totally agree that Plasmas
are far superior.

A few issues with plasmas caused them to fail though 1) Early models had
"burn-in" issues where an image would stay on the screen too long

2) You can't make them lighter or as thin as LCD's, they require glass panels

3) They require more energy (although the gap has narrowed significantly)

You can barely find a plasma in Best Buy these days.

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kin
how do video games play on the newer model plasmas?

