120mhz and 240mhz TV sets

[Steve T Power]

Ok, so a friend of mine got a shiny new 120mhz Samsung set for Christmas, and a few of us stopped by his place this past week and he had to show it off. He fired up the Dark Knight blu-ray, and...


I really didn't like it!

The picture was ridiculously sharp, devoid of any kind of grain or film-like qualities, which in and of itself was pretty damn cool, but it was the framerate that really bothered me.

Film running at 30 fps just looks... odd. It was like i was watching home video from on the set or something. It really didn't look like a theatrical film at all. It was like watching one of these Oasis HD tourism videos that are all the rage in Electronics departments. I didn't want to out and out bash the set, but the phrase i used was something like, "Man, this tv is f--- with my reality!"

I had been sizing up new sets for a while, thinking about dumping my 50" rear projection for something in the "latest and greatest" category, but now - i think i'll just hold on to what i have, as i still haven't really seen another set who's picture i enjoy as much (other people regularly complement the set as well - a friend of mine hates coming over to watch movies as he has the exact same model in a smaller size and he can't get it to look quite like mine), and I guess in the end that's what it's all about.

Any of you guys have experience with these newer sets or own one yourself? Did it take much time to adjust? How do you feel about em on the whole? Should we have maybe sampled a more grainy Blu-ray to begin with?

[Future Man]

I think your respose is due to your friend having the anti-judder control (or whatever it's called) dialed too high. I've set mine to a low level or maybe even switched it off, and yes sometimes there is judder but it's not as noticeable as I thought it would be--I only really recall noticing it wile watching a sweeping shot of a picket fence in the Blu-ray of Goldfinger, and another time in a sweeping battle shot in the Blu-ray of Kagemusha.

[Andrew Forbes]

I've seen this a lot in stores ever since Blu started being seriously pushed, and I assumed that the TVs were set up improperly or that it was a very slight, very smooth fast forward setting. It looks horrible.

[HGervais]

The picture was ridiculously sharp, devoid of any kind of grain or film-like qualities, which in and of itself was pretty damn cool, but it was the framerate that really bothered me.

So film grain is a bad thing?

[Steve T Power]

The picture was ridiculously sharp, devoid of any kind of grain or film-like qualities, which in and of itself was pretty damn cool, but it was the framerate that really bothered me.

So film grain is a bad thing?

Hell no. I prefer to have a bit of natural (re: not digitally re-added a-la 300) grain in my images. Did you read the part where i said we should have looked at a more grainy film to begin with?

A razor sharp image is nice sometimes, particularly to sell a shiny new TV, and some films are very well suited to it (Star Trek comes to mind), but when you get into the practice of adding it to digitally shot films, or completely removing it from films where it actually serves to add some texture to the image, i just can't go down that road. I also prefer to see it at manageable levels, which is why i CAN get behind DNR when it's used properly. ie: Not Fox's Patton disc. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly is a prime example of a blu-ray that looks so good it will melt your eye-balls, and is authored correctly, just enough noise reduction so that the grain isn't distracting or overpowering, but a natural enough looking image.

The biggest problem is education: So many people mistake compression artifacts or mosquito noise for film grain, they've become adverse to it. Take Casino Royale, an awesome, awesome blu-ray. In some of the scenes, particularly towards the end of the film when Bond is recuperating following the torture scene, there's grain all over the place. It's natural film grain, brought out by the white of the backgrounds in the hospital room, but a few friends I watched it with went ballistic over it, thinking it was just a crappy disc.

I'd have to check into this jitter control stuff - but i doubt Russ would let me mess with his settings

[the5thghostbuster]

Further proof that 90% of the things I need to know about new TVs and Blu Ray players are things I have no clue about.

[Dimwitted]

Steve: have you checked out the LED ones as well? What did you think?

As we wait the tech keeps moving on. Hopefully the good stuff will get cheaper just as we want to buy.

[Steve T Power]

Steve: have you checked out the LED ones as well? What did you think?

As we wait the tech keeps moving on. Hopefully the good stuff will get cheaper just as we want to buy.

The led sets LOOKED beautiful, but i haven't gotten to see one in an ideal environment (read: outside of a store playing something other than some HD demo program), and the largest screen i've seen was 20-something inches.