The 720P/60 3D mode is part of the required spec for HDMI 1.4 3D so I am almost certain Mitsubishi would have to support it if they wanted their converter to be complaint. The converter would then need to upscale the image to 1080P before doing the checkerboarding, but that should be simple enough.

So what's the point of a 1080p 120Hz display if it cannot accept 1080p @ 120Hz input? I mean seriously. I've been skeptical of the 120Hz (and now 240Hz) displays being more marketing than technology. This only bolsters that belief. I mean, for 15+ years, "digital displays" (i.e. computer monitors/CRTs) that supported 120Hz refresh could actually handle a signal that refreshed 120 times per second!!! No gimmicks, no BS. I'm sick of this age of "marketecture" where all info is simply to sell product and nothing to do with true performance.

</rant>

Sorry for dumping on you guys. I just get fed up with this crap sometimes.

GC

Not at higher-end resolutions like 1600x1200 or 1920x1080.

My point was, when you bought a monitor, it's specs would tell you EXACTLY what resolution/refresh rates were supported. The fact that people are out there in stores selling displays labeled "1080p 120Hz" clearly implies 120 distinct frames of 1920x1080 video. If the display cannot accept a signal that is 1920x1080@120Hz, then the manufacturer's labeling of the product is misleading at best. As I said in my previous post, what's the point of 120Hz if you can only accept a 60Hz signal? To display each frame twice? What's the point of that? (now in the case of stereo, if the display has the "smarts" to take a 60Hz "checkerboard" signal and split it into 120Hz L/R frames, then there's SOME validity to the 120Hz labeling). However, since 99.9999% of people are NOT doing 3D on their 120/240Hz sets, it's a complete waste..... i.e. more marketing to get people who buy sets based on specs more than image quality.....

(for what it's worth, I *do* understand the value of taking a 24fps source video and playing at 120fps so that there's no need for 3:2 pulldown, but unless the display itself is doing the 24->120fps conversion, you'd still need the 3:2 pulldown, as the display itself isn't capable of accepting 120Hz input (i.e. if the player were doing the conversion from 24->120fps))

GC

The point is, the DLP displays actually support 120 Hz, though they only accept a half-resolution signal transmitted over 1080p60, meaning you can use your 10-year old computer and a DVI-HDMI cable to actually see stereo 3D.

If they went on and implement full 120 Hz input at 1080p, then far less people would able to use the feature, since new it would require a HDMI 1.3 transmission which is not compatible with DVI anymore.

FYI, even the latest 3DTVs do not allow 120 Hz input in 1080p mode.

I don't think anyone labels DLP 3DTVs as "120 Hz", they label them "3D ready".

No, it implies some stupid and unnatural "motion interpolation" processing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Motio ... xample.jpg
(slow motion)

my nec 21" CRT, which cost $1400 back then, advertised 120Hz, but it only did that at 640x480. Not to mention the fact that it could only diaplay a 19" image. Marketing crap has always been the same. The more bogus of the new stuff is that some of the sets advertised at 240Hz are really only 120Hz, but they flash the back light at 120Hz so they call that 240Hz.
Refreshing at 120Hz even without the input is still good at smooting the image. Some of these sets do frame interpolation to guess at an image between the two frames. If they do it right some people like it.

You're correct that there's always been a marketing spin on products. Fair enough. To my point earlier, though, CRTs never just stated a refresh rate without coupling that with a resolution. By the specs on a monitor you, as an informed consumer, knew exactly what a display was capable of. Now with 1080p 120Hz, it's a mixed bag as the 120Hz frame-interpolation is a bunch of crap, some TVs saying 120Hz only accept 60Hz input, etc. Without MOUNDS of research, it's hard to know exactly what you're buying (as opposed to simply looking at a single page spec sheet for a CRT monitor). For something like scrolling text, I can see how an interpolation might work well, but anything organic (like the horse galloping as shown in that example link in a previous post), it's udder nonsense to think that any chip would have the intelligence to really "know" what position a horses leg, leaves on a tree swaying in the wind, or a moving hockey stick, etc would be in the "in-between" frames.

That's been one of my biggest pet peeves with the whole 120/240Hz sets is the notion that they can take 24/30fps content and magically make it into 120Hz. I love the commercials where they're like "With 120Hz displays, it makes fast motion sports crisper without the blur." Nonsense! The source is still 30fps! And the "interpolation" they might need to employ to generate the "in-between" frames would only serve to muddle/blur the motion as it interpolates! Talk about total "marketecture".

This is all good discussion. I appreciate all of the comments, and I sincerely hope that folks don't take my posts as being completely negative or argumentative. It's actually nice to discuss and go back and forth with people who have more knowledge and understanding about this stuff.

GC

Actually 24fps content is where 120Hz display is really desired, since it can show every frame 5 times, where with a 60Hz display it shows one frame 2 times, and the next frame 3 times, the next 2.. etc, thus giving motion judder (or whatever the term is) on panning scenes. When they started making 120Hz display's there was no bluray player that could output 120Hz so it probably didn't make any sense to accept a non standard input.

The fact of the matter is that there is nothing to be confused about. Its all bogus. There are no HDTVs that I know of that accept higher than 60Hz. And even if there was there is no content outside a PC that will support those frame rates. Broadcast is 60hz max, BluRay is 24hz, etc. The only place where 120Hz actually plays a factor is the Nvidia 3D Vision ready LCDs which actually do refresh at 120Hz. But as far as I know, that is it. So we are talking about a half dozen displays at most. I hate marketing BS. Over in the Nvidia forums I swear every day there is at least one person with a "120/240Hz" HDTV wondering if 3D Vision will work. So much confusion for nothing. And I've seen this "motion interpolation" first hand and its garbage. Probably about as good as the 3D conversion on the new Samsung sets.

I assumed the new samsung 3D tv's had 120Hz input. That will suck if they don't work with nVidia 3D vision. I can't find anything on searches.

Thanks Cybereality! You've verified my frustration! =)

Seriously tho..... When I look at HDTV standards we have (max):

1080i@30fps (60 *fields* per second)
720P@60fps (straight up 60fps)
480i/p (who cares at this point)

The point being, according to standards there was 1080i@60 which = 1080p@30fps.... right? So broadcast-wise, there was no content over 30fps, so that was my point earlier about these 120/240Hz sets......... they're just displaying the same frame multiple times.... so who cares?

And that motion interpolation crap is just that, crap!

GC =)

Actually, most TV sets have a list of accepted VESA, CEA and HDMI 3D modes in the manual.

Exactly. I'm pretty sure these "240 Hz" models do not really refresh the picture at this rate. These numbers only relate to the series of interpolation steps.

In fact, there could be some technical trick such as non-linear adressing scheme, where the pixels in the panel are not really updated line-by-line, but rather in a checkerboard pattern, like they do it in 3D DLPs. In this case, a specially prepared image can actually give a sense of smoother motion. However, the full 1080p picture still refreshes at 60 Hz.


In theory, they should work with the 3D Vision driver using generic checkerboard mode, if Nvidia doesn't block this scenario, but you will need to use Samsung glasses. They should work with iZ3D drivers in checkerboard or line-interleaved mode.

How showing the same picture for 5 consecutive frames @120 Hz is different from say 3 frames @72 Hz or 2 frames @48 Hz in regard to motion judder?


Technically, the mandatory HDMI 3D stereo modes include frame packing at 720p60 per eye, and this is practically equivalent to 720p120. However, no 3D TVs currently accept frame packing at 1080p60 per eye.

Frame creation methods vary but some people really like certain implementations of it. At least on the Panasonic projectors some people run it all the time, and some run it just for sports. You can't really say it is crap if some people love it. Maybe whatever tv you saw had a bad implementation.

I can say it's crap and I'd couple that by saying that the people that love it have no idea what "quality" is...... (or don't care if they're being sold a bill of goods)

Seriously..... there is NO mathematical formula or magic chip that can accurately guess what image would exist (or set of images) between 2 "real" frames of video. No way! So to pretend that any method that claims to do this can do this with any accuracy is lunacy.

GC

hdmi is the culprit.

back in the day the only limits were between the ramdacs and the displays abilty to resolve the image. nowadays the ramdacs on even integrated graphics could do 1080p @ 120hz easily over vga.

hdmi has over twice as much bandwidth as the older versions so 120hz should be np right?

anyway on topic, i ended up getting the wd-65c10, ill be sure to post a review when i get it set up. i also got some dlp link glasses at ultimate3dheaven.com they were 60 a pair, which was cheaper than all the other ones i saw.

It's more or less doable, but still not in real time for now. There's a lot active research in this field (novel views synthesis), which is a small part of the more general image based rendering techniques.

But you're right that TVs can't implement these types of algorithm, they only interpolate 2D views and it's generally quite a bad approximation.

Thats what you would think, but somehow Samsung has made it work. I saw the Samsung UN55C8000 at the store the other day and it looked breathtaking. Its one of those "fake" 240Hz displays, but you could have fooled me. They were showing a 2D Blu-Ray (I think Happy Feet) and it looked incredible. Literally, the motion was smoother than real life. No joke. Unbelievable. I have seen other TVs with really bad interpolation before, but this one actually worked. Really, go to your local Best Buy (or whatever they have in your parts) and find this TV. Seeing is believing.

Here's the other thing with this concept too...... you know how the marketing always shows someone playing soccer or something and they're blurry, then all sharp for the 120/240Hz picture..... If a camera is recording at (say) 60fps, then you're getting an exposure of 1/60th of a sec on the video.... (not saying they couldn't jack up the shutter speed to 1/120 or 1/250th but that KILLS your light, and most sporting events, even with all of the lights, are by no means lit well enough to jack up the shutter speed to that type of speed (unless it's a day game )) there is going to be "naturally" (which isn't a bad thing) some degree of motion blur. That's video for ya. If anything, 3D rendered movies/productions became better over time because the finally built into the renderers features like Depth of Field (i.e not everything in frame is perfectly in focus) and motion blurring. They had to build it into the rendered so that the 3D rendered features looked *more* realistic. So I'm trying to understand where this notion came from that somehow A) these devices can display/render video frames somehow sharper (i.e. without motion blur) than they were recorded or that B) this is a "good" thing(!) to try to do anyway. Seriously, although 24 and even 30fps can appear choppy to some folks (like me), once you're up to 60fps, going up to 120fps isn't going to trick the brain into thinking the motion is smoother.... if anything I think there's enough understanding of how our brain interprets things as motion to indicate that past a given point (I'm suggesting 60fps is representative of that upper limit) anything faster than that is just lost anyway...... I think to a large degree that's proven with the fact a DLP chip can draw two halves of a 1920x1080 picture each 120th/sec apart and our brain not detect that they're separately being drawn......

I still call shenanigans on this whole idea.....

GC

Please go test the TV I mentioned and come back and let me know what you think.

I'll try to find a store which has this as a demo model, I'm doubtful but still open to a mind change.

Same here. I'll try to seek it out and see what it looks like.

GC

I don't have a horse in this race. but I will say there are a lot of beautiful 3D hdtv's on the market. A lot of these have a show room floor setting that distorts the color and brightness reproduction. Some of the newer models have massive image processing that yield superb picture quality with smoothness. But have just enough input lag from this processing to be a problem in twitch shooter games. Also, remember its real easy to set these sets up so that a particular model looks better than the rest through content and setttings. DLP, LCD, LED, PDP, each has there strenghts and weeknesses but honestly a 2010-11 3D HDTV from Samsung, Sony, Panasonic are kick @ss. The Vizio, LG, Sanyo offerings I have not seen much. I did see the LG 3D HDTV's. Something did not look right with the imaging with that unit. I would like to try one for a couple of weeks to see if something is wrong with there base 3D tech. Honestly, It could be a great 3D set though.

And debating the image quality of a TV in a forum. Sheesh

cheers everyone

As an owner of one of the plasmas that you refer to that have the 'judder canceller', I gotta both agree and disagree.

I agree that it affects the 'quality' of what you're watching, depending on the source.
When I first got the tv, I tried the different levels of judder cancellation on a few different blu-rays all excited about what tricks my new bit of kit could do.
When you turn this feature on while watching a typical movie shot on film, it immediately causes the movie to look like it wasn't shot on film. It makes it look like your typical daytime soap opera. Which is also the reason the term 'soap effect' has become common lingo when reffering to it in reviews and forums all over the place.

Whether it's better or worse is subjective. I think it ruins a movie. But I don't know if that's only because my brain has been trained since my first ever movie, that a movie shot on film and running at X frames a second should look like Y.

It's probably more that it's simply different to what I'm used to, and therefore doesn't feel right. When I see Pacino, or De niro doin their best.. I don't want it too look like they're doin it on Bold & Beautiful. It even affects how you perceive their acting. I mean... it looks like cheaper shows, and therefore you almost think the acting aint as good. Very strange.

However... put on a doco (like Baraka for example, or any IMAX movie) and turn it on, and it can actually be amazing. Whether they're shot on film doesn't matter as much for some reason. Because of the content I guess.
Anyway... in Baraka for example... early on where there's a sweeping shot of some volcanic mountains, without it on, you get what you get whenever the camera moves too quickly in a film. A choppy image.

Turn it on... and it's quite startling how that choppy image is now completely smooth.

Look... I don't know the algorithm used. I wouldn't have a clue as to how they do it. But I know they can, and do. They figured out the world wasn't flat, invented the wheel, flight, put man on the moon... and we got electricity, and computers and 3dtvs and all kinds of out there stuff. And I don't know how they do any of that either. So I'm sure some cats in lab coats who are way smarter than me can figure out how to make pictures on those same screens smoother.

They'll undoubtedly do it better and better as the tech improves in these displays, as they always do.

But right now, the tech is there to do it.... to your liking or disliking. And the proof is because you can go turn it on most recent tvs right now. And it works.

Actually, the concept doesn't seem that crazy to me. If I handed you one of those old school page-flipping cartoons. And left a couple of pages blank between a few cartoons. And asked you to draw the missing in between cartoons (and you were a half decent cartoonist!) you could probably figure it out. I imagine a computer or chip or algorithm designed to do that particular task could do it infintely better.

I'm completely simplifying what we're talking about here, i know.
But why is it so foreign a concept that these tvs are able to 'fill in the blanks' to some degree? It might not be what's actually in between the frames, as there technically isn't anything in between the frames.

But from where I'm sitting, it's a hell of an impressive guess.

i just got the wd65c10, i was playing some l4d its pretty much perfect.

only issues so far is that the resolution is actually 1776x1000 not 1920x1080 so you have to set custom resolutions in some games.

anyway no ghosting, colors look great, and the picture is pretty huge. i had some reservations about the dlp link glasses but it works great. i got them from ultimate3dheaven they were cheap and work fine.

so no complaints at all i highly recommend it.

I wonder why it's saying it's 1776x1000? It's the same DMD chip that's in the 73C10 (which I have) and I was just running 1920x1080 resolution via DVI/HDMI.... it looked great. I was even able to pull up some of the 1080p 3D (side by side mode) clips on YouTube and it worked wonderfully.

GC

wierd maybe its my graphics settings then. i went to the ati ccc thing and messed with the overscan settings but the best solution for me was to just set it to 1776 res and play like that. maybe if i used the service menu i could get rid of the overscan but i dont want to mess it up.

Some of these checkerboard DLP sets have been known to only work at odd custom resolutions. I don't know why that is, but many people have had that problem.

Well 1776x1000 is 92.5% of 1080p, is that resolution working because you have a over scan of about 7.5%? I know on my TV when I run at 1080P I probably lose about 5 to 7% of the image on all sides when I have 0% over scan set in CCC. The second I touch the over scan settings to get back the lost pixels on the sides it breaks 3D, which makes sense as the checkerboard format breaks once it goes through any type of scaling. Could 1776x1000 be the correct resolution to run in with the needed over scan to get back the lost edges of the image? I need to toy around with this when I get home. Is 1776x1000 also your desktop resolution?

well its close eventually i figured out how to set up a custom resolution, its actually around 1840x1036. its kinda tricky with ati drivers, you have to go to desktops and displays in the drop down menu and click a tiny triangle on the displays icon. then go to the hdtv support tab and select 1080p 60hz and click add. then you have the option to customize it, shrink the sides and top till it fits perfectly, then itll make a custom resolution. so far it works in all the games i tested it in w/o any problems.

Thanks snarfbot, this really helped out a lot. The magic resolution for my TV ended up being 1841x1036. Also the text is more readable too.