HDTV tests pit fantasy land specs against real world performance -- guess what happens
By Richard Lawler 
posted May 19th 2010 1:12AM
posted May 19th 2010 1:12AM
Whether you believe the good Dr., a glistening review or Cmdr. Sulu, the factual heat burned hottest during a test of motion blur compared on LCDs, LED LCDs, plasmas and even a pro CRT. While additional motion processing and upgraded internals on newer HDTVs can help in many other ways, viewers couldn't detect any blur caused by a display even on an old 60Hz set, despite newer and faster 120Hz, 240Hz and 600Hz (plasma) sets claiming their technology helped them eliminate it. You'll need a minute to read through for the full details but it's a good, and unfortunately necessary, reminder to keep your eyes on the display and not just the spec sheet (just make sure you're getting a proper look that represents the way you watch TV at home first).
This is why obsessing over contrast ratio and all that other garbage is useless. 99% of the time you and most people won't be able to tell the difference.
@Johnny Rockets I can tell the difference, and enthusiasts run the world.
@Johnny Rockets
Not completely true, I think the best way is to look at them side by side, for best comparison, e.g. at your local Best Buys :)
@Johnny Rockets Agreed. I have decided that when it comes to HD TVs, one must FIRST go see the things in action at Wal Mart/Best Buy or similar (brick and mortars do still serve a purpose!). There is too much marketing garbage on the box and in the specs online.
@Eman
Because comparing a bunch of TV's under bright fluorescent lights all in torch mode is really a good test as to what picture quality will be like when you get it home. /s
@Johnny Rockets I can notice ghosting pretty easily... it also bugs the crap out of me when the camera is panning, and the moon is 50 or 70 pixels from where it should be because the panel hasn't caught up.
Alas, it happens on all LCDs, so i just needa deal with it till we get to OLED (and get the right hardware behind it) so that we have stupid fast response time and amazing contrast on everything. (It's nice not being able to find the edge of the screen in a dark room)
@reallynotnick Exactly, the way the tv's are set up in the stores makes it nearly impossible to compare them and see how they will look in your home. The viewing distance will usually be too close, the store is way too bright, and the tv's are on terrible 'demo' settings.
@Johnny Rockets: Depends on what you're talking about. Of course, numbers can be manipulated by marketing people, but a real, significant difference in contrast ratio can most definitely be discerned, even by "laymen". Stuff like refresh rate is mostly made up just for marketing.
@Eman
Your local Best Buy isn't even sending them an HD signal. In fact, I've never seen a TV properly set up in an electronics store. Your local bar on the other hand...
@glugglug Haha!
Even though I don't believe in all those "technical buzzwords", they still make everything confusing, exactly what these companies are aiming at ....people will just buy the pretty looking expensive one
@lbmeijer
You know us mainstream consumers too well.......who are you
Nothing
"the top-of-the-line Samsung LCD had strobed LED backlighting"
Please don't strobe the backlighting. I thought flickering displays died with CRTs, but I guess not. My CRT has awful flickering at 60Hz, and at 75Hz I can't see it but it still causes eye strain. Only 85Hz doesn't strain my eyes, but then I can't use 1280x1024, and the picture gets a little blurry.
Just because 75Hz flickering bothers me doesn't mean I need a 75Hz refresh rate. If the phosphors were more persistent, 60Hz or lower might be good enough, but then there would be more ghosting. I guess that's a tradeoff CRTs have to make. Since LEDs have essentially no persistence, it's possible that strobing at 120 Hz or more could still cause eye strain. The strobing probably isn't visible, and it might not cause eye strain, but why risk it?
@m854
Strobing is visible by most at 200Hz. Extremely bad idea.
Even tho I can clearly see a difference between 60Hz and 100Hz, most tv specs are just blown up numbers meant to fool the customer into thinking that it's superior to its competitors, just like any other business really. That's why you still need to go down to your local tv shop and actually watch for yourself and compare with your own eyes.
I can see motion blur (ghosting) on my Samsung 32a450 (less than 2 years old).
But I agree the spec inflation is getting ridiculous.
@reallynotnick The recently purchased 40" Samsung blurs yet the 22" Samsung that I bought nearly 4 years ago doesn't do it. It's all BS.
And unfortunately TVs placed in shops are tuned with their contrasts and modes to sell the most expensive ones.
@godknows
And also there is common practice of having two identical bluray players connected to a tv to show how a cheap HDMI lead is worse than an expensive one. However what they do not show is that the settings of the TV are different for each HDMI input. Obviously they would otherwise be proving that the Quality of HDMI makes no difference to the picture quality. The number of people I know of that have been conned into purchasing £50+ HDMI leads is amazing!
@coolblue2000
What is a "Lead"?
I agree with the comments. It gets just blah after a while!
My old LCD TV advertised as having 1000:1 contrast ratio when I got it, and I just recently measured it myself and it came out to around 450:1. If you have a good quality digital camera, do it yourself here:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast_ratio.php
The upshot is that the guy who wrote the source article doesn't really know how to use the word "upshot."
@Locust actually, he used the word correctly. Replace it with "outcome" in his sentence and it still makes sense.
Pioneer Kuro, you will be missed. At least I still have mine!
@plyx
Mine is 2 yrs old, but all the new stuff is still inferior. Long live the King. BTW, have a guess where the pioneer geeks who did the Kuro went? they produced this http://panasonic.com.au/products/details.cfm?objectID=5124 for Panasonic, but it's only in the Commercial range. ie. not in shops. An ISF tech will come to your house to calibrate it too.
@plyx Amen! I think Panny's another generation away from using the Kuro tech they got last year. In the meantime, I'll still enjoy by 500M
that's why the 3 or 4yrs pioneer kuro and pioneer elite still the king of hd tvs
It's Captain Sulu!
In other, old news: Plasma > LCD for TV pleasure
@Bahumbug I acknowledge no Star Trek other than Wrath of Khan.
Am I the only one seeing the comment-changes? The click-to-see-replies?
And agree with Bahumbug: Plasma is definetly > LCD for TV pleasure.
Did any of you read the entire article covering the "myths"? I found it to be a great article full of useful information. However, as some have pointed out, I do believe there are still points of contention. The fact is, going to a store provides the best experience you'll get prior to purchase. If you aren't certain under their current conditions how a set will perform, ask them to dim the lights in a certain area. While this may not work at the big "W", I haven't had a salesperson refuse to do it for longer than a reasonable amount of time. I've noticed in a growing number of Best Buy(s), HH Gregg(s), and Fry's that "lower" lighting is used more often than not. Wal-Mart and Target are the only stores that I've really noticed that don't discriminate, and I speculate that security could be a factor for them.
User reviews and tech sites provide useful information as well, but seem to have varying standards (or as this article may have suggested, lack of industry standard). You can find any answer you are looking for on the internet so beware. I purchased a 52" Sharp panel in Feb. of last year that CNet suggested against. It blew everything out of the water at every store I went to for two months before I bought it and continues to melt my face to this day.
As for "blur" ..."jitter"...."jutter"..."judder"....whatever it is that you call it when we see some bit of p.q. loss in high action scenes: It's there. I promise. Some are more sensitive to it than others but it does exist. So again, this was a pretty thorough article with a lot of points to take into consideration. But let "your" eyes be the judge.
Don't be afraid to make your point clear: "I'm about to drop $400-2k at your store. Convince me that here is where I should buy what."
@jmcburna I forgot to mention that you must bring your thinking cap when you go shopping. Looking at a wall of displays and picking out the best or better looking displays isn't the only science involved here. Set a budget for yourself, don't get too flexible w/ it, and if you see something "more in your price range" but not as good as the +x$$, start tweaking the settings and see if some of the options can radically change (as some often do) the quality of your first impression. Stores have been known to "give you a tan" with some higher priced displays (in every size) so the others look terribad and you'll spend a little "more than your budget."
My DELL 2408WFP was advertised for having 1000:1 (native) contrast ratio. I read a review where they measured it at closer to 1200:1!
Read this story last night and thought it was phenomenal - we need more of this type of in-depth reporting instead of simply regurgitating manufacturer's claims. Seems that almost no one is willing to call out a company's hype for fear of losing ad revenue.
While I love technology and all, it's the marketing BS that companies use that kills my enthusiasm for gadgets just a little bit.
In my experience, the only negative visual effect that is easily detectable on any "good" (or better) HDTV since 2008 is the freakin' soap opera effect, which, I might add, didn't exist until these faster sets came around trying to up the Hz ante to eliminate "motion blur." Whatever "motion blur" may be, I'd gladly suffer through it in exchange for not wanting to throw up every time I watched television. Soap opera effect is the single worst thing to happen to television since the 4:3 format.
I have a high-speced TV, the Samsung UNB8500, which has 7,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio.
I'm not sure if my set is one of the sets targeted in the "spec inflation" accusation, but I know CNET called it the best LCD they tested, and I know that it looks far and away better than my old Sharp Aquos, which had a 10,000:1 contrast ratio!
I'm sure that there is some silliness with the marketing (240 Hz sets, for example), but I do think picture quality has advanced in the past few years and that the highly-speced TV's are noticeably better than lower-speced models.
While they didn't specifically comment on whether their 120HZ sets had "tru-motion" or similar frame interpolating technologies turned on, but I can clearly see the difference between a 120HZ tru-motion and regular 60HZ panel. It doesn't improved "blur" per se, but it does improve the viewing experience, especially for sports. It's like a moving photo as opposed to a film.
With that enhancement turned off, I'm inclined to believe it makes no difference in blur between 120HZ and 60HZ.
I'm pretty sure this article is 90% rehashed from a 2008 article.
I never saw a trace of motion blur over several hours of looking at a 60hz Sony LCD screen. But I did start seeing it after about 20 hours of viewing. Just as I didn't initially see the rainbow effect on DLP televisions, but I see it quite often now. The big problem is that I keep my TVs far longer than just a few hours.
Spec sheets aren't the be-all and end-all of existence, but they can be very helpful in narrowing the field to the models that are most likely to satisfy you.
All the "dynamic ratio" bullshit is nothing more than bullshit. The refresh rate however, isn't. Go to a best buy (not wal mart, I don't know if they keep their tv sets on all night but I recently saw both a top of the line Vizio and Sony and they looked like a 10 year old tv) and look at a 60HZ set vs a 240HZ set and tell me there isn't a significant difference...
I can't stand the 120hz+ modes on LCDs, they make every film look like they've been shot on a consumer camcorder. It also completely removes any motion blur added in post, and makes cg look rubbish. As someone who creates content for tv, the picture they show isn't what the creators are intending.
Nothing I've seen so far even comes close to the Kuro's, I think they'll be the benchmark for a good couple of years until OLED starts appearing in decent sizes.