Hi all,

I just setup my friends brand new HDTV Compatible Phillips 86cm 16:9 TV with SD digital set top box. The picture looks pretty damn good for video but when watching films it made everything look and feel like video.

Last night they showed "Back to the future 2" and "Batman and Robin". It seriously looked like they had done a reshoot on digibeta,I even asked myself is this a strange dream.

I found particulary in Batman all the sets looked fake, and the movement looked interlaced. I am wondering if this has anything to do with my friends 100hrz crt, or is all digital TV on CRT's like this.

Any light on this issue?

Cheers,
Ben

are you watching DVD or signal from SD digital set top box? cause if from set top box you really need HD box to take advantage of HDTV.

NO DVD was fine, the movies wer being broadcast in SD, and they do not look like that on Analog.

why should I buy HD tv or HD -cams. I don't see why this is so hot nowadays. In a couple of more years (5-10) there will undoubtably be more HDV camcorders to choose from (and prices will come down?) IN the meanwhile you can better invest in working technology like xl2, dvx100, pd150, gm3/xm3 from one year from now)

that is my 8 cents!

I guess the tempation is there if youve got a project you really wanna make, you really need to add as much production value as possible. HD is one way to do that becasue even if it looks terrible, you can pitch it as being HD.

Cheers,
Ben

After having another look at my friends TV recently i noticed that if you changed the pciture effect from something like "purescene 1250" to "100hz" it makes film look like film again and fixes the problem. The effect was decidely "to real" looking hence the video comparison.

It is facinating though to change the effect on and off when watching a movie and see what it really looked like on the set, as it were.

I came accross this at www.hdforindies.com


"Recently, looking around in Fry's and on another occasion, at Best Buy, I was shocked to see a Sony LCD showing Pirates of the Caribbean that had somehow changed the image to look like video. On further research, I found out that the 120Hz TV (that does not offer 5:5 for 24p source material) and the set's internal way of processing (probably doubling the 3:2 pulldown sequence to get to 120Hz) creates this lack of motion blur. As far as I know, 120Hz technology is supposed to fix one of the major problems with LCD technology -the motion lag (maybe not the correct term). So I guess it does that and then some. I still had a problem with all of the motion artifacting but this may be due to the source material (who knows what) or their way of splitting up the signal to 50 TVs.

I found that I'm not the only one to notice this problem:

see this review: http://hometheatermag.com/lcds/1207lcd/"


If you read this link it talks about the 'video' look being achieved through motion blur reduction technology.

I was lucky enough to see this same cadence again as i recently visited my friends house after all this time. This time they had a Philips plasma, and to my suprised it had the exact same effect. I could have sat there watching movies all day, just to see what they looked like if they were shot on video.

So... 3 years later but i guess this was what i was talking about!

This came up in the AV science forum too. The 120Hz on my Sony XBR4 can easily be turned on or off depending on the content viewed (turn off for film). You want 120Hz turned on for sports, certain video games, animated/reality tv ect. The sales floor at best buy probably leaves the 120Hz on all the time and shuffles random content throughout the day.

I saw this same phenomenon at Circuit City recently. I thought maybe I was watching the video tap footage or something. . .some kinda DVD extra. Now I know.

On the Sony XBR4/XBR5 LCD sets the 120 MHz refresh cannot be disabled. I understand this is not the case with the Samsung sets which feature 120 MHz refresh rates. However, on the Sony XBR sets the interpolation which can create new frames (aka "Motionflow") can be disabled. XBR4/XBR5 sets can also accept a 24 Hz signal, which, combined with the 120 MHz panel refresh rate enables the Sony sets to display a true 24 fps image without the 2:3 cadence created by the telecine process. Of course, this requires a 24 Hz capable source, like a Blu-Ray Disc player.

I've also noticed that these sets, with an HD signal, are "too sharp". Somehow sharper than it could possibly have looked during the theatrical release. You can just see every little detail in everything, if DOF isn't blurring it.

why should I buy HD tv or HD -cams. I don't see why this is so hot nowadays. In a couple of more years (5-10) there will undoubtably be more HDV camcorders to choose from (and prices will come down?) IN the meanwhile you can better invest in working technology like xl2, dvx100, pd150, gm3/xm3 from one year from now)

that is my 8 cents!

Yours is a common reaction from those who live in Europe where vertical picture resolution is higher under the existing standard. So no, you won't see as much difference as those of us in the NTSC areas do. In the US, the difference between SD and HD is quite a lot.

-gb-

I've also noticed that these sets, with an HD signal, are "too sharp". Somehow sharper than it could possibly have looked during the theatrical release. You can just see every little detail in everything, if DOF isn't blurring it.
That's probably partly a visual characteristic of HD fixed pixel displays, as opposed to HD CRTs. However, a set's adjustments can make a huge difference as well. A set rarely comes from the factory with the optimal settings. Plus, everyone has different tastes. Turning down the sharpness and any edge enhancement could alleviate the effect you describe.

You don't agree?

They have some of these sets at Blockbuster (yes I still go the store), and they were playing the Fifth Element last time I was in, and it looked like something shot on the XL2.

I too noticed this effect at a local Best Buy. The player was a Samsung unit and so was the set. The demo was from Pirates 3. I noticed immediately that the image looked more like video than film. It looked as if it was shot 60i. The motion and sharpness looked like HD video instead of film. I then noticed that the set was a 120hz unit. This must be what is causing this effect.

You can just see every little detail in everything
HD brings out the fine details, and it also shows the flaws in makeup, fake sets, and all the other things that go into the illusion of creating a film's fictitious world.

Move makers are accustomed to having the final output blurred by standard TV sets. Even theaters are blurry compared to an HDTV.

HDTV is upping the ante for realism. When you can see fine details, it's easier to see that the fictitious worlds of films really are fictitious. It can break the illusion. You always have the option to turn down the sharpness on your HDTV so you don't notice the makeup on the actors, and the fakeness of the sets, and the pasting of the cgi.

Fine details are great for footage of real things, like sports, documentaries, or anything real. But movies are fictitious, and everything and everybody is "made up" quite literally. Therefore, for the best viewing experience, it's best not too see fine details when viewing movies: it breaks the illusion. And movies are an illusion. Illusion is the way they tell their story.

thank God for filters and post processing =P (see Stardust)

Problem is, in HD, you can actually SEE the star dust. . .it's all over the floors fo of the set, on the actors' clothes. . .just looks messy.

I'm not completely schooled on DVD specs, but I do know that DVD is a natively progressive format, and that most hollywood DVD releases are released in 24P with a pull-down in place to get 60i. That's how I understood it at least. So either your DVD player, broadcast box, or TV has to convert these progressive images to interlaced, scaled from 480 lines of verticle resolution to 1080 lines. It seems to me that HDTV isn't the problem here, it's bad scaling and bad pull down implementation.

Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but for "film" looking like "video," that would seem to be the issue. I find this ironic, because I have seen lots of video that looked very much like film.

As for bad displays, I've seen them everywhere. I wouldn't expect blockbuster to have a great video display set-up. If you want to complain that your $700 HDTV isn't the most fantastic picture you have ever seen, well, thats what you should expect. Also, hollywood doesn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie to have things look "cheap." It's going to look like a $300,000,000 illusion on a good HDTV, trust me.

Thing is, it looked video-ish on whatever $2-5K displays they had at Circuit City, last time I was there.

Yeah, it's probably their feed more than anything. Don't forget the lighting inside these stores is less than ideal for viewing monitors.

I have a blu-ray player and HD1080 TV with a Sony receiver sending HDMI video and un-compressed audio.
I have had this for 12 months now, and I am just getting used to the picture and no longer notice.

It also depends on the director - movies by Ridley Scott, even Bladerunner from 1982 look incredible. His movies look good on HDTV because he knows his craft visually. HD will certainly show up the sloppiness of many directors.