Question for HDTV experts.

All else aside, Hz rating only matters for sports and live events.  Higher refresh rate (120/240/480 Hz) makes things look "live", which doesn't really work for movies and some TV shows.  Most sets have a way to disable the increased refresh rate so play around with the menu controls or download the instruction manual before you buy.

^Yes, be wary of the refresh rates issue.  It essentially "guesses" how inbetween frames would look, so - in short - if a film was originally created at the standard 23.976 (somebody correct me on that if I'm incorrect), when shown on a TV player with a refresh rate of 120/240/etc. it will look like it was filmed on video.  Star Wars moves like an episode of a sitcom!

I personally adore this feature when playing old video games that have a tendency to lag, but with movies it tends to be really jarring.  If you're asking us about what kind of TV to get then it would probably bother you; make sure you can get one that turns off that feature, or doesn't have it at all.

When watching DVDs, the extreme left and right edges will be cropped if the display is upscaling strictly in accordance with standards. That's because the first and last 8-9 pixels in each line are part of the nominal analogue blanking and should be assumed to not contain picture information.

If you are seeing the entire image on your computer monitor, the upscaling is being performed incorrectly.

HD content on the other hand does not contain these blanking regions and can be shown at 1:1 pixel mapping.

As a possible temporary fix until you get your new TV here's something that might work. As contradictory as it sounds sometimes the "fill" or "full" options on certain TVs crop a bit from the edges. Not only from the sides but a bit from the top and bottom as well. If your connection is through an HDMI cable this could be the case. If available you can try setting your picture size options to "standard" or whatsoever your TV's other options are. Sometimes that setting will display whatever the original aspect ratio of your chosen media. Only downside is if something is letterbox it'll show as 4:3 with the respective empty space that you have to zoom in anyway. Alternatively if your using a blu-ray player it could just present the letterboxed DVD image stretched out instead of 4:3 ditto for native 4:3 DVD content.

Another thing is that what Bingowings alluded to is entirely correct for some TVs. Sometimes depending on the connection while you get the "same" options for each input it's merely the label that is the same. Meanwhile what you actually have are separate options entirely. Complete with separate zooming capabilities. Though I think it's more a software issue than an internal hardware preference.

...Then again I'm no HDTV expert so whatever....


TL;DR try playing w/your picture size options.

Are you using HDMI?

Ziz said:

All else aside, Hz rating only matters for sports and live events.  Higher refresh rate (120/240/480 Hz) makes things look "live", which doesn't really work for movies and some TV shows.  Most sets have a way to disable the increased refresh rate so play around with the menu controls or download the instruction manual before you buy.

bkev said:

^Yes, be wary of the refresh rates issue.  It essentially "guesses" how inbetween frames would look, so - in short - if a film was originally created at the standard 23.976 (somebody correct me on that if I'm incorrect), when shown on a TV player with a refresh rate of 120/240/etc. it will look like it was filmed on video.  Star Wars moves like an episode of a sitcom!

I personally adore this feature when playing old video games that have a tendency to lag, but with movies it tends to be really jarring.  If you're asking us about what kind of TV to get then it would probably bother you; make sure you can get one that turns off that feature, or doesn't have it at all.

You're both wrong.

You're talking about Creative Frame Interpolation/Creation or "Smooth Motion" or other brandings like that.  CFI is made possible by high refresh rates, but it isn't caused by high refresh rates.

It's probably hard to find a TV today that does less than 120hz, but for movie watching you don't want less than 120hz.  This why: 99% movies are at 24hz (24 FPS) and televisions have historically run at 60hz interlaced, which is comparable to 30hz non interlaced.  Since these frame rates/refresh rates aren't related to each other by This leads to the dreaded 3:2 conversion where every the even frames of your movie are shown 3 times and the odd ones are shown twice.  3x12+2x12=60.  You've been watching 24hz films at 60hz all of your life, so it probably doesn't really bother you... but it's one of the reasons movies look different on your TV than they do in the theatre.

They could make a 24 hz TV, but this would suck for pretty much everything besides 24hz movies.

Enter the 120hz (and 240hz and 480hz etc.) TV.  To start, no media is at 120hz.  But it's the only refresh rate that can properly display 24hz, 30hz, and 60hz material.  For 24hz material, each frame is shown 5 times.  5*24=120.  4*30=120. 2*60=120.  Integer scaling is important because it basically means you don't notice the scaling at all.  The same frame shown 5 times for 1/5 of the original length is equivalent to the same frame being shown once for the original length.

However, there are algorithms that try to interpolate between 2 frames and insert new frames between then instead of showing the same frame multiple times.

For example, a 24hz movie could have 3 frames, we'll call them A, B, and C.

At 24 hz, it would look like this:   A                    B                   C

At 120hz, it would look like this: A A  A  A  A   B B  B  B   B  C C  C  C   C

With CFI turned on, this             : A A1A2A3A4B B1B2B3B4C C1C2C3C4

Notice that only 1/5th of what is being displayed is original content.  As was said, this effect is most bothersome on film derived sources, because losing the 24hz rate makes them cease to look like film.

If you want the benefits of 120hz in 3D, you need a 240hz tv (at least) and due to frame blanking, 480hz is even better.  This is still true with no CFI. 

And, as a total aside, Plasma sets that claim to be 600hz are full of crap.  The screen is divided into 10 sectors that update at the speed of 600 hz, but are only updating 10% of the time.  Each sector updates in serial to the other sectors, so the entire screen is refreshed 60 times a second.  But it's true, each pixel updates at 600hz, when it's updating.

Buy a 120hz or 240hz tv.  Just make sure you can turn CFI on/off and you will have made the best decision.

djchaseb said:

Yes, HDMI, (ps3).  I've played around with all the settings in both my TV, and PS3, as well as my Sony Blu Ray player and I'm still not seeing the "whole picture".  After doing some reading my DLP TV isn't capable of 1:1 pixel mapping that would enable the whole frame to show up.  It's a rear projection and from what I read, they all have overscan issues.  Saving my pennies for a new 1080p TV that has the 1:1 pixel mapping feature.

720p TV's don't usually support 1:1 pixel mapping for 2 reasons:

1. There isn't a ton of content that is 720p.  It's mostly 480 or 1080p.

2. More importantly, there are virtually no 720p TVs in existance.  Almost all of them are 768p TVs, and whatever dearth of content there is for 720p, there is truly almost none that is 768p.

Of course, you can hook up a PC and run at the native resolution of the screen.

Can you tell you PS3 to account for overscan?  If your TV has overscan, sometimes you can set the device (PS3) to shrink the image so you can still see all of it.