We had the perfect opportunity to dump it into the wastebin of history when TVs switched to HD, but for some damn reason the industry decided to carry it forward.
You would be surprised how many movies on dvd/bluray have junk in the margins. Usually just a line or an overscan of the audio track. But a lot of them have it.
I turn off overscan as those artifacts do not bother me.
Sometimes you can see the closed captions line of the NTSC signal at the top of the frame of the video when watching an old show converted to digital from an NTSC source. It looks like a single line of black and white dashes which dances around quickly every time the onscreen captions would have changed and then sits static until the captions update again.
Provisioning for overscan on 1080i CRTs seems just as valuable as with 480i CRTs.
People want content to the edge of the screen, but not to pay a TV technician to come and calibrate their tube to exacting standards in their home. Content creators need to know that some of their broadcast is invisible to some of their viewers as a result.
Pixel perfect tvs came later, so the transiton to HD wasn't the right time. ATSC3 could have been a reasonable time to change, but then broadcasters couldn't use the same feed for ATSC1 and ATSC3 ... and who knows if ATSC3 will ever win over ATSC1, or if all the OTA TV spectrum will be refarmed to telcos before that happens.
It turns out that "fixing" these things do result in more people picking the TV. Just like an overstated display will typically be preferred in a side-by-side comparison.
Animation is the worst use case for motion interpolation because the frames are individually drawn and timed by the animators to achieve a particular look and feel.
Counterpoint: this YouTube rant by an animation person called Noodle is a pretty good overview of why frame interpolation sucks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KRb_qV9P4g
Basically, low FPS can be a stylistic choice, and making up new frames at playback time often completely butchers some of the nuances present in good animation.
If you are a good director you can make the most of that low budget. Look at the first episodes of Scum's wish (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6197170/) if you want a good example.
Sports are already shot at 60 fps. Same for any live TV events. It makes movies look terrible, like it was shot on video, to me and many others. Soap Opera effect. But for things that were shot live on video, it looks like what it is.
For the high frame rate version of The Hobbit that I saw, in my opinion it looked bad for character shots but cool for overhead action views.
I use it on a game-by-game basis when playing my Switch, because it's so underpowered. It works surprisingly well when playing Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.
For me it’s the absolute most important setting to enable on any TV. Without it I really notice the tearing / juddering effect that footage <40fps has.
And you know what, you may both be right! Different TV's use different algorithms and tricks so what looks great on one, might look quite bad on another one.
Yeah absolutely true. I’ve seen some Samsung brand TVs do a really bad job of it (also their colours are terribly over saturated by default), where I’ve found the LGs do a good job (at least the c and g series).
It's funny, watching films in 48fps in theatres (specifically the first Hobbit movie that pioneered the concept) to me looks like the actors acted in 2x slow motion and then someone pressed fast forward. Everything looks incredibly unnatural.
Peter Jackson added more motion blur in those because he said that it played better with a focus group. I think sticking to a normal 180-degree shutter angle would not feel so weird.
I had a different experience. At first, I found things unnatural like you did. After a few minutes, I figured out that it was actually the opposite - it had a bit of a theatrical thing going on, i.e. live action vs. recorded and played back.
At that point I figured out that it was just because I've been so used to crappy frame rates that the more natural movements feel out of place.
I wonder what the first pass, with less motion blur, would have felt like. Maybe better, maybe worse. I kind of feel it would make it worse, in the same way that the transitional from analog to high definition digital made it look worse to me since I could notice the transitions between frames. That is, at least at first. I'm used to it now.
I was really looking forward to 48 fps - the juddering in wide panning shots on 24 fps always takes me out of the immersion so I was hoping the cinema world could move forward.
There was just something very wrong with it. It kept feeling like suddenly parts of the movie were sped up and going at 2x speed. To the point where I wonder if the cinematographer was just not experienced with the technology to make it work right (like, maybe there are collaries to the 180 rule that need to be experimented with)
I watched it in 2D, I'm sure for 3D it makes a whole different experience.
Also saw the first film in 2d in the theater at 48fps, also very excited going in, also felt like everything looked sped-up.
What it reminded me of was silent era film that’s been slightly sped up on purpose for comic effect. All the walking looked kinda jerky, like it does when you speed up footage of someone walking, for instance. Or very early manual-timing film that was cranked a bit inconsistently. It was so distracting I could hardly focus in anything else the entire movie. If it’d been a better film, I’d say that gimmick ruined it, but… well.
Yeah, I’d seen higher-frame rate video before, and since (though maybe not again in a movie theater?) but that’s the only time I’ve noticed that particular problem. I spent a little time searching around after I saw it, trying to figure out what happened, but the chatter over 48fps in general drowned out any signal about what might have caused that specific issue (though many others did report experiencing a similar sped-up effect, at the time—never found an explanation, though, aside from just blaming the high frame rate, but I suspect there’s more to it)
I didn't like it either. I think it looks too real and takes you out of the fantasy. Something about the way 24fps looks is different from reality and lets your imagination take you away a bit easier. I can't really explain it.
Like I can watch an animated show, and I have no expectations of it looking real. I can still get lost in the story and enjoy it. I don't need it to look like I'm actually there.
This is common in drawn animation, where some elements are effectively 12fps while others are 24fps or 8fps. This can even be occurring simultaneously. (This is known as “on twos” and “on threes” etc.)
I watched it in 3D HFR and it was terrible terrible terrible to me. I felt like I was watching a play. The special effects looked weird/bad, the acting felt worse, the makeup more obvious, everything yuck yuck.
Back in the day, I watched The Hobbit first in 3D 48 fps, and I hated it. Sure, it got less bad throughout the movie, but I just couldn't get used to it at all.
I then rewatched the movie (also in theaters) in 2D 24 fps and it was infinitely better.
I have the same with YouTube videos. I can't stand 60 fps videos (except for gaming content); it causes headaches for me. If it's something I really want to watch, I'll download the 24 fps version and watch it offline (YouTube has it on their servers, but only serves it to certain clients or something).
I know other people who just can't see a difference, or rather, they don't notice it much. I feel like I can spot a 60 fps YouTube video in about 2-3 seconds (usually I pause then to check and reconsider whether I really want to watch it). I also tend to notice 30 fps videos (compared to 24), although they don't really bother me.
Considering that I've always been the only one at movie nights to notice when the TV's frame interpolation setting is on, I guess I'm an outlier.
> If it's something I really want to watch, I'll download the 24 fps version and watch it offline (YouTube has it on their servers, but only serves it to certain clients or something).
This is going to be interpolated from 60 FPS. At least get a 30 FPS version that can just drop frames from 60.
I think people blamed the frame rate, but for me it was the rest of the effects that put me off, faces were too softened, lots of scenes had weird color saturation, as others mentioned there was a lot of motion blur, compared to LOTR the VFX really pulled me out of lots of scenes.
I'm personally fine with 24 and 48 FPS (without interpolation), but what I absolutely can't stand is a variable rate. I saw Avatar 2 in the cinema with this, and it ruined the experience for me. Switching down always felt like the projector is lagging.
I'd never heard of it growing up in the era when that's all there was. I don't know if it's rare, but it's only in the last decade or so I've heard people complaining about it.
We don’t perceive all types of screens in the same way. Film projectors and CRTs display parts of the frame, only part of the time. TFT and IPS screens introduce a lot of inertia and blend the frames. Both of these help the motion illusion. OLED on the other hand has the harshest frame transition - it displays the entire area for the entire time and switches frame content almost immediately.
> it displays the entire area for the entire time and switches frame content almost immediately.
I've heard this called the sample-and-hold effect. It looks a bit like a fast slide show, and really stands out in high-contrast, steady motion scenes.
There is the alternative of Black frame insertion. It loses a lot of brightness, but helps a lot with stuttering at 24 fps.
The problem that causes stuttering is (simplified) that your eye is moving smoothly to follow something on the screen, whilst the image is moving in discrete steps. So when your eyes expect something fixed in side your view, its actually stuttering.
Black frames make use of a natural image retention in the eye. Where you effectively continue to see the last bright thing. Hence what you expect to be stationary in your field of view does remain stationary.
This was actually key to film based projectors working, because they need a period of black to advance to the next frame. Without image retention it would seem to flicker. Though 24 hz is a bit to slow for that, so they actually added a black period (by just blocking the light) in the middle of each frame to even out the effect. They were already doing BFI, not for motion smoothing, but for flicker smoothing. It seems likely this is accidentally why 24hz film doesn't have stuttering whilst 24hz screens do need it.
Personally I care too much about the brightness loss of BFI, but it might be interesting for you.
It solves a problem, yes, but a different problem than what is solved by interpolation.
Black frames resolve ghosting. That's great! I want to see one frame at a time, no more.
Motion interpolation resolves jagged motion. Instead of making my brain do the extra work of filling in gaps of motion, it lets my brain see an image move smoothly through time.
The higher resolution gets, the larger the group of pixels are that need to be moved each frame. This causes two unique and interdependent problems:
1. Low shutter speed creates blurry images, which makes high resolution worthless.
2. Low framerate creates gaps in motion, which makes high detail painful.
The faster the shutter, the more detail is visible. Filmakers are happy to solve this as extremely as they can. New cameras and lenses capture incredibly sharp and bright images with very short frame times.
The more detail in motion, the more confusing gaps between frames become. Filmakers (and the industry in general) refuse to increase framerate, so they give us ever increasing gaps instead.
I've tried filmmaker mode and it is just another kind of bad smart TV setting, making everything way to dark instead of way too bright. Turning of most "features" of these TVs seems to be the only sane solution.
Typically, it means that if you put the TV in a dark room, it is calibrated to the same specifications that the monitors used in post-production used. Therefore, it is what the directors "intended" the video to look like since they were looking at the monitors (in a dark room).
However, if your room has even a little light in it, the settings would make the TV too dark.
It will also disable any effects the TV has that aren't "map video to screen 1:1" such as motion interpolation, upscaling algorithms, etc
I found FILMMAKER MODE (why is it capitalized in settings?) dark and muddy on a Samsung Frame. The "Samsung TV picture settings" section in the linked which.co.uk article [1] seem like decent advice.
It's dark because OLED are not bright at all. Anything brighter than the filmmaker mode is modifying the source image to achieve it, or alternatively driving the pixels in a way that loses color accuracy.
If you care about film and getting the closest result to what the actual thing is supposed to look like you're going to need to couple correct settings with a light controlled room for best results. Or don't use OLED, because, it simply can't achieve the brightness of cinema projection, not even close.
Personally I like the results of a 120hz OLED so much better than other options that I strongly favor a light controlled space for movie watching. For lower grade junk it's usually easy enough to swap to another viewing preset that is brighter.
The truth is the filmmakers want their movies to look dark (cinema projectors are kind of limited), to have no colors (use too much color grading) and to move like a slideshow (24fps) :)
Took me a while to find the configuration settings you mentioned. For anyone else, you go to a specific TV model's page, and there is a tab called "Settings."
They're pretty good but when it comes to things like color, that can vary from panel to panel so you might actually end up with something worse. That said, I'd start there and if there's any question about the result you should just buy or rent a calibration tool.
I'm surprised it doesn't mention "sharpness". It's tricky find the zero point: e.g. '0', '50', or '100' depending on whether it means 'add sharpening', 'smooth/sharp', or 'remove smoothing'.
This is a frustration shared with some monitors, too. Either the zero-point should be obvious or there should be a toggle that disables the setting altogether.
I once fixed the remote at a brother-in-law's place. Came back a week later and changed channels using the remote. He shouted "You mean it's been working the whole week and I've been on my knees changing channels?!"
Yeah, that’s often inconvenient. There are test images like http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/sharpness.php one can use for testing this. A USB stick with some test images can be useful.
Motion interpolation is an absolute essential for me. I can’t stand how choppy TVs (even high end models) are without them.
30fps videos look very jarring to me, I almost always notice “tearing” or “shuddering” - even when in a cinema. Enabling motion interpolation / frame rate up scaling usually fixes this for me.
It’s so distracting and at times almost painful for me to watch without it that at times I’ll use a tool (Topaz Video AI) to re-render videos to 50-60FPS.
I can't stand motion interpolation. Turned off on every TV I own. Will literally walk away and do something else if it's on a (non-sports) TV in public. There's something "too smooth" about it that irks me.
It’s interesting to think how different our visual systems must be right? I’m always saying to friends “how can you watch this? It’s so choppy!” And some of them agree and others don’t see it at all.
Biology is weird so I say just give people the options to pick what works for them.
I expect refresh rate is similar, given that... if a substantial portion of your subjective perception is mentally fabricated, then your brain physiology contributes, and that's set during childhood.
For reference, I grew up on NTSC screens (29.97 interlaced frames per second).
> For reference, I grew up on NTSC screens (29.97 interlaced frames per second).
Considering it as 30 interlaced frames per second isn't really accurate. It's 60 fields per second. A lot of content intended for interlaced broadcast is not 30 fps broken into fields, it's 60 distinct half pictures per second.
That link is an article I really, really wish I'd read while learning how to drive, and is something I'll teach my kid before he starts riding a bike with traffic. I hadn't seen it before, so thanks.
That and the Dutch(?) bike-safety trick [0] are minimal effort life hacks I got from HN.
[0] In urban/bike areas, always open a car door with your opposite hand (e.g. driver's side with right hand). It forces you to turn your body, which allows you to look behind you, which lets you notice bikers approaching from behind before you open the door and splat them.
Same here. It feels like it takes everything, from classic B&W to modern SF extravaganzas, and turns them all into somebody's home videos.
At the same time, I'm pretty confident that this is a subjective phenomenon. My parents have it on all their TVs and my mother both prefers it and notices immediately if video isn't 60fps or equivalent, while my father says he doesn't notice the difference.
The problem typically is that motion interpolation isn't consistently smooth. Generally a fixed framerate 30fps will seem smoother than something that goes between 40-60fps. Our brains are sensitive to changes in the pacing.
The motion of an object isn’t the same as the frame rate though. You can have a 60fps scene where an object is moving fast on one side of the screen and slow on the other. It only means that for a given object travelling from A to B - it will have more fine detail in its movement for a given distance.
I tend to avoid it, but don't constantly try out newer devices and their settings. I always remember when I first saw it on a proud friend's new TV about a decade ago. I was deeply disturbed and asked him to turn off the feature.
We were watching an action/fighting movie with swords and other martial arts, and I distinctly saw these graceful arcs of the actors' limbs and weapons turned into polygons. The motion interpolation clearly inferred linear transitions between the different positions captured in the actual frames. Imagine a large swing tracing out an octagonal path with all the physical unreality that would entail.
It seemed like I was the only one in the room who perceived this travesty.
Usually TVs have bad motion interpolation which ruins the concept for many people. I use SmoothVideoProject on my computer which uses your GPU to analyze the motion vectors between frames via deep learning (Nvidia optical flow analysis) so it's much better.
Usually TVs have bad implementations while on the PC, using something like SmoothVideoProject which uses your GPU for motion vector analysis via optical flow makes it much more high quality.
Also, you get used to it after a while. At first I was similarly jarred by the smoothness, as if it were fast forwarded, but after a few hours of getting used to it, when I saw 24 FPS content, it was literally unwatchable as it looked like a slideshow to me.
Decades of TV being filmed on cheap(er) video cameras that had lousy picture quality but captured at 60 fps vs. film that looked beautiful but only captured at 24 fps has taught people that blurry smeary motion is the ideal.
I used to think that but now I’m not so sure. Yeah 24fps is bad for panning and sweeping movements, but….
There is something about 24fps that I believe may have something to do with how the eye or brain works that makes viewing more immersive. Perhaps it’s due to historical cultural reasons, but I’m not sure that totally explains it.
FWIW I play valorant on a 390fps monitor so I am not a “the eye can only see 60fps” truther.
It's blurry and smeary in the movie theater. You just can't capture fast motion at 24 fps. Once you train yourself to look for it you will never be able to stop seeing it.
Very common for video footage lower than 40FPS. It doesn’t matter what the source is (AppleTV, laptop with HDMI, nvidia shield, PS5) - this is very noticeable to a large chunk of the population.
Perhaps you're conflating juddering and tearing? - they are distinct. Judder is what you see with, for example, low-fps panning, but tearing is where one segment of the screen (usually a horizontal strip) is out of sync, still displaying the previous frame, while the rest of the screen has moved on. This is not normal on a correctly configured system.
Same. It's more noticeable on large screens because more is in the peripheral vision. Screens are larger today (and perhaps people are putting bigger TVs into smaller rooms than before) so we see more of the screen in our peripheral vision than before.
Peripheral vision has a lot of rods (instead of cones) which are more sensitive to rapid motion. I can certainly pick up flicker and "perceive the frames" more clearly when looking in my peripheral vision.
Same goes for the old CRT monitors: 60 Hz was an absolute no-no, 85 was tolerable but higher was better.
Edit: CRTs were worse, of course, because they were constantly flashing light-dark, unlike LCDs which simply transition from frame to frame.
A major issue with motion interpolation is that it can’t be perfect, and is often far from it. The implementation on many TVs is jarring, you’ll see super-smooth motion while an object is moving a slow or medium speed, but as soon as the patch of pixels that it’s tracking goes really fast, it assumes the patches are distinct, and the motion will be juddery. Individual objects switching from high-framerate to low in the span of a half-second is quite noticeable to my eyes, but I admit that most people around me don’t seem to care.
Maybe one day the real-time implementation will be good enough, but I find that it’s shockingly bad most of the time.
Is it possible what you’re seeing is ‘judder’[1] or bad 3:2 pulldown? I really don’t think much actual ‘tearing’ [2] makes it to screens in theaters - that would be a big screwup!
For me when motion interpolation is on, I can immediately see that it's interpolated. And then I keep noticing the artifacts where the lines meet and boundaries. It's very distracting. I experimented with this setting while watching Koyaanisqatsi and for me it was better when it was very slight interpolation (at 3 on the scale of 1 to 10).
Check out SmoothVideoProject, it does the interpolation in real-time. I also use Topaz sometimes but it's too slow for most use cases unless you have the time to wait.
Yes, maybe it could be done as a plugin but I generally use it on my computer. They also have an Android app which interpolates video on your phone too, pretty cool.
> Motion interpolation or motion smoothing increases the frames per second from 24fps to 60fps
It's pretty common for TVs to have even higher refresh rates these days - my 4 year old mid-range LG OLED is 120hz, for example. Conveniently, 24 evenly divides 120, so when you turn off the interpolation you get perfectly consistent frame times.
As a more general note, don't be afraid to experiment with the settings. If you're watching low-bitrate netflix streams, some of the artifact-reduction filters can be worthwhile, especially on the lower intensity settings.
For watching bluray remuxes however, "filmmaker mode" or equivalent settings is generally the way to go.
My LG OLED had intermittent contrast issues that persisted after toggling every permutation of picture bell and whistle. After finally stumbling across the correct search term, it turned out the offending feature was hidden in a maintenance menu that requires a button that only exists on service remotes… The same issue was fixed in an update for newer models. Tons of forum posts on the subject resulted in RMAs and refunds. How did we get like this?
I can not believe people still turn on Soap Opera Mode.
If I walk into a bar or restaurant and see a TV with it, it's instantly offensive from 20ft away. It boggles my mind how people really can't see it, or think it looks good.
I'm one of those people who turns on motion smoothing. For some weird reason, it makes older shows like friends or sound of music crystal clear on my LG C2 OLED. I can't explain why.
I find the headline to be seriously clickbaity, as the word "smart" (in the context of TVs) generally refers to a network connection that facilitates streaming, telemetry, ads, etc. but TFA is not discussing that category of features whatsoever. It's discussing features totally unrelated to the growing popularity of disabling "smart TV" features for the sake of privacy and fewer ads.
Unfortunately, I don't know that there's a generic non-jargon word for this collection of settings, but let's not solve for that by overloading the word "smart"!
Not too jargony, but it possibly conflates the regular calibration settings (brightness, contrast, etc.) which are actually worth tweaking because they let you get closer to the original signal. The settings this article discusses generally let you stray farther from the original signal.
Attend a CES and you'll see this use of "smart" is standard in the TV industry. They had net connections before they had special apps and the word "smart" wasn't used back then.
So if I asked enough industry people at CES what makes a smart TV smart, ultimately I would more often hear about things like motion interpolation than things like network connectivity?
Frame interpolation is so incredibly awful looking in my opinion. Especially when it comes to animation. I can not comprehend all of the people on Youtube that take a beautiful drawn animation that is intentionally 24 frames per second and increase it to 60 thus ruining the hand crafted perfection of the drawn key frames.
I think the phrase they use is "drawing on 2s" for every second frame (12 fps) being drawn and "drawing on 3s" and so on depending on how many native frames there are between drawn ones. Usually, different things onscreen will be animated differently for effect/budget.
Question: Does this mean that animators draw every 2nd or 3rd frame and then some technology interpolates the missing frames? It sounds to me like that is not fundamentally different from interpolating 24 fps to 60 fps.
I suppose there are two differences:
1. The artist retains control of the interpolation between drawn frames.
2. The computational resources available to the artist far exceed those available in the TV.
Apologies if this is an uninformed question, I watch animation but don't know how it is produced.
The amount of keyframes in animation is not even close to 24 and everything inbetween are called "tweens" for obvious reasons. From my understanding the tweens are actually drawn as well, but can be delegated to non-lead artists thus don't require as much artistic decision making. You get the key frames and then draw what you believe would be the transition.
I suspect with modern digital animation you could do a lot of the tweening automatically on the computer, but even then you would be carefully selecting them and fine tuning it to match your vision.
Then at the end you would actually have 24 frames per second to turn into your final video. You shouldn't have any frames where something is mid-movement and blurred between the two positions.
A lot of good animators will also vary how many frames they animate per second. Trying to smear all of it into 60fps doesn't improve anything.
A good example is FUNKe[0], He's got a style with very pronounced changes in framerate. One movement will be 3fps and the next 30, never mind that the lipsync tends to be at a high framerate no matter what the rest of the animation is doing. Imagine trying to convert that to 60fps and still have it look good.
Modern smart TVs are so disappointing that I just prefer watching films on my 27" IPS computer monitor - no bloatware and every video just looks right.
Not to mention that after 6 years the TV becomes useless junk killed by bulky modern app updates. I think there is a market for something like "Framework TV".
> Well, an OLED will be pretty much dead after six years anyways.
How much TV are you people watching such that this statement becomes even remotely accurate? My 2017 LG OLED display says it has 6400 power-on hours and it looks as good as new.
enable energy savings and turn off the tv after 2 hours. problem solved!
Most tv's show a popup when they are about to shut off because of power savings, and with a button on the remote you can reset the timer.
This is extremely passive aggressive, tell me you’re single without telling me you’re single. People’s preferences being different than yours is not a technical problem to be worked around.
I had a girlfriend who would flush the toilet before using it. She said "it's cleaner this way". I tried to get her to stop, but it was a futile effort.
That doesn't kill LG OLEDs thought, that results in a nearly black screensaver (just a small slow "firework" effect). Wastes a touch more energy than turning the tv into sleep mode (since nothing actually turns off anymore), but hard to believe that would shorten life much.
Still, the objective tests from RTINGS seem to suggest that it's the LCD sets that look all fucked up after a few years, while almost all the OLED ones look perfect. And they OLED sets aren't showing a downtrend in overall brightness over time.
That actuality sounds pretty standard. That would be from 5pm-10pm. Evening news, game shows, then like two 1 hour long shows and it’s already been five hours.
Yeah, that's a wild claim to me too. My 2018 LG C8 has about 5800 hours on it and it is indistinguishable from new. (Though I've never run it at max brightness because it would be blinding.)
This really isn't an issue these days if you research your screen. Rtings.com has a good series on their website and YouTube testing OLED burn-in, and there are many TVs where this is not an issue. Also check out Wulff Den on youtube and his videos testing the OLED Nintendo Switch. He does get some bad burn in after a year, but that's also because it's on a still image at max brightness and never turns off. I don't mean a year of standard usage. I mean 8,765 hours of it displaying the same image.
This depends a LOT on both how, and how much the display in question is used.
You can make an OLED visibly burn in within a couple months if you max the brightness, cover it in static content and then leave it running constantly.
Or it can last a decade if used lightly, on lower brightness, with good burn-in compensation software, with few to no static images.
I definitely think notably better is fairly subjective here.
I have a 4K OLED from 2018. Since then, I think the only notable improvement in the models from the same manufacturer is maybe enhanced-ARC? That is a neat feature, but not sufficient imo. Maybe a 120Hz refresh rate, but very little content even uses 60, let along 120 - at least in the cinema and TV space.
2004 is the first year I remember watching a HD widescreen TV show (Lost). There were a handful of test clips and the like earlier, but they were a rare thing. E.g.: there's a HD video taken of the aftermath of 9/11 because the operator was just learning to use this (at the time) brand new technology.
That lasted about a decade, and then 4K become a thing around the 2013-2014 timeframe. I got a Sony 4K TV in late 2013 and a Dell 4K monitor in 2014.
However, both of those were standard dynamic range, albeit with a fairly "wide" colour gamut.
I got my first OLED HDR display in 2021, and an OLED HDR TV in 2022.
In other words, every "generation" of television technologies has lasted about a decade before being superseded by something significantly newer and better.
Display technology still has some ways to go. No current consumer panel reproduces 100% of the Rec.2020 colour gamut. Similarly, there are no consumer panels that can reproduce the full HDR10 or Dolby Vision brightness range of up to 10,000 nits. There are 8K displays that are close to that target spec, but they're either one-off experimental models or more expensive than a luxury car.
A decade from now, around 2033 mark, I full expect something like VR technology to have replaced TVs for many people. Apple's new headset (available next year!) will set a new quality bar that no traditional TV can ever hope to match, such as an extremely wide field of view, stereo, and very bright HDR in combination. Sure, they're expensive now, but after a decade of further development? They'll be amazing and cheap.
In your future, do households with more than one person exist? Because no matter what the tech is that'll never happen. We have a family, and after dinner if we want to watch a sitcom and laugh, we ... what .... go put on our own individual headsets and lay in bed? What happens on Sunday and it's icy outside, and we want to put a james bond movie on with the booming sound, have a glass of wine while the kids make hot chocolate, how do we do that? If I'm a single dude with disposable income I can see the vr headset with insane quality being pretty awesome, but for ANY kind of household with a family or roommates, I just can't fathom that kind of dystopian nightmare.
The comment you replied to wisely stated 'for many people', and not 'for all people'.
You are likely right about your specific use cases. Though you might also want to see how early on some people predicted that TV would never take off, because families just didn't have the time for it.
We don't have a TV at home, and we would just do different activities in the situations you described. (But, yes, those activities in these situations would likely not include hanging out with headsets on.)
Teenage kids will likely want to play video games or watch their own thing.
Many young people live by themselves and can't afford a "huge" TV. Meanwhile VR will give them a virtual TV as big as they like.
Another potential future technology that might obsolete the current 55-85 inch typical TV sizes is "OLED wallpaper", or something similar that would allow wall-sized televisions.
Even before the 2030s I expect something like quantum nanorods to replace OLED panels, potentially allowing up to 10,000 nits in an affordable panel that doesn't suffer from burn-in.
On another front, I've noticed a lot more people watching something like TikTok, YouTube, or Netflix on their hand-held devices instead of traditional TV. I can picture a future super-thin, super-light Apple iPad with an OLED HDR display becoming very popular, especially for people on a budget that can't afford a huge TV.
We're outlier in the TV market. 95% of buyer don't care Rec.2020 and continue using TV until it broken (maybe 80%?). OLED isn't for who use it for a decade.
Anecdotally, My cheap old TCL dumb LED tv light burned out after about six years which is about average from what I’m seeing online but maybe I can fix it. But I did use it as suggested with a mi box.
Convert the Smart to DumbTV by offloading all apps to your favorite streaming device (for example, Apple TV or Nvidia Shield). If it helps, don't ever enable internet connectivity to the Smart TV.
I have no idea, except that it blocks video output, and comes up with a prompt to log in to whatever service via the TV. I can cast just fine from e.g. a webpage or a podcast app. But Netflix or Max or Prime? Forget it.
I also use an AppleTV with my Samsung TV. I did give the tv WiFi credentials so that sometimes if needed it can reach the internet (eg firwmare download), but I set up firewall rules to block all traffic for the tv in steady state.
Trust me, you don't want your TV to download firmware. My Sony TV started freezing every so often after downloading some random update. Since then, it's gone off wifi and only the Chromecast is allowed to connect.
What about saying in big bold letters 'requires constant electricity to function'?
That would be a ridiculous requirement, because people expect that TVs need electricity. But the producer can argue that people these days also expect TVs to need the internet, can't they?
They might refuse to accept your return, and you might have to enlist the help of the legal system, if you want to force them to accept it. Of course, details depend on your jurisdiction and on the retailer / manufacturer and what warranties they give you (or are forced to give you), etc.
Some Webos LG TVs, like mine, can be rooted. I can now do wonderful things like install an ad-blocking version of youtube(still works in spite of recent changes). And SSH into my tv and mess around with the Linux system if I want to.
I recently acquired a very old Sony TV it reminded me how lag-free TV interfaces are supposed to work. But nooooo LG is like "we're going to make great TVs but the UI is a poorly written web page running on a 386, enjoy!"
LG webOS in my opinion is the least bad out of all the smart TV operating systems, and so far (we have a few of these at home & at work) I don't really feel the need to root them as they are ad-free and working fine even after several years of auto updates. This lack of enshittification has urged me lately to buy and prefer LG products over Samsung et al.
I agree, I'd rather use something else, even if only for philosophical reasons, but I couldn't find anything that didn't sacrifice something - or at least that could promise it didn't.
No separate box seems to do all of 4K, Atmos, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HLG without some weird restriction like 'except the Netflix app'. Even worse if you wanted DV IQ I assume, but I think my TV doesn't support it anyway.
And honestly I think I prefer WebOS to Fire sticks' UI for example. Stock Android TV isn't great either. If I was into playing Xbox/PS games I imagine that would make a better 'hub', since it's presumably (I have no idea) more organised around your own content/games at least rather than random adverts and features you don't want. Also probably more money being spent on designing it.
if you have an LG tv, HDR10+ is not needed as the dynamic handling of HDR10 on the tv makes the HDR10 layer look as good as HDR10+.
With this is mind, an Nvidia shield pro is pretty much what you are looking for.
I understand where you are coming from, but I personally think that it's reasonable for a TV to show me sponsored content that is TV shows. I don't see this any different to how Netflix or Spotify show sponsored TV shows or music.
But my friend has a Samsung TV and it shows him ads for things he can buy from eBay, ads for games etc. in a similar area .. and yeah that's nonsense, that would really get on my nerves.
the webOS on my LG is so out of date that modern apps won't install. so instead, i don't use the webOS, and treat it as a dumb TV with an HDMI input by using an external device for the smart things. there is nothing wrong with the picture that any of the updates would be required. so, just don't connect the smart tv to the rest of the world, and say thanks to all of the others that do to subsidize the price of your TV
An external Chromecast stick also works fairly well (assuming you pay for YouTube premium and Netflix etc to avoid ads, but at least not much in the way of bloatware).
You shouldn't have to, but the fact that you can is part of the hacker ethos. We've already gotten past the most fundamental part of hacking, can it be done. The next is can it play Doom. The third is announce it. Then, we just have to get past the boring people asking "why"
I don't want to spend all my waking hours hacking all things in my life. That's not what "hacker ethos" means. Especially not when the "hack" is working around stupid wankery, which, to me, is completely boring and uninteresting and doesn't "build" anything.
I just want to watch a film.
I don't want to hack my forks either. Or my microwave. I just want to heat stuff and then shovel it in the appropriate foodhole so I can get on with things.
It doesn’t become useless junk. You can still use it as a display without any of the smart features. Connect to a Roku or Apple TV (which also automatically turn on when the TV turns on) for smart features.
I've honestly never used the smart features of my TV. It's an old 4K LG (Netcast era), so it's been in service for 6+ years. The "smart" stuff always sucked: riddled with privacy policies, generally quite slow, and could honestly be replicated way better with a media stick / NUC.
A NUC is generally the way to go for smart TV functionality in general, IMO: you get way longer support, and it's much easier to diagnose problems as compared to some locked-down, proprietary, do-it-ourselves OS.
There are some business/enterprise displays offer a "framework" approach by using a RPI CM4 to control everything. Unfortunately, that is out of reach for most consumers lacking a corporate sales account.
That also makes me wonder how much TVs are being subsidized with ads and sponsored content. Those businesses displays cost significantly more than a regular consumer TV.
This gets most of the way there, with buying a monitor instead of a TV. You just need to take the next step and get a pg42uq. OLED, super accurate color, great response time, and unfortunately the answer to the question what would modern TVs cost without the app/telemetry subsidies.
Funny, I use an LG OLED 48" TV as my monitor. It's really the cheapest option for a 4k 120hz OLED, although I'd prefer 240hz as GPUs are getting more powerful.
I have done this on family and friends' TVs a number of times already. Most of these settings are crapy and very visibly making picture worse instead of better. Worse offender in my opinion is the noise reduction or sharpness. Noise reduction is incidentally also the one which makes Smart phone or other cheap camera outputs worse.
> Noise reduction is incidentally also the one which makes Smart phone or other cheap camera outputs worse.
This is all subjective of course, but I think you'll find that in cheap cameras, overdone noise reduction is the culprit, rather than noise reduction itself. If you're able to look at the raw sensor data, I think you'll find something even worse still. Small sensors are inherently very noisy, in typical lighting conditions.
So yes, the images look worse than optimal, but not worse than if there was no filtering at all.
I recently went down the rabbit hole to find a dumb TV. It was surprisingly difficult. I ended up with a Sceptre 65 inch TV, to which I’ve plugged in a rooted, jailbroken Chromecast.
It’s been awesome. The TV is fast to boot up, responsive, doesn’t spy on me, and doesn’t need useless software updates.
What's the benefit of rooting and jailbreaking a Chromecast? You can already cast anything you want to them, so I'm assuming there must be added functionality.
The smartest thing you can do with a “smart tv” is to keep it unconnected from your WiFi and instead plug a Raspberry Pi into one of the HDMI ports and use that for your YouTube etc needs.
No but my point is that if you keep your “smart TV” offline you don’t need to worry about any of the settings on it. And that’s just aside from all of the problematic things of allowing it to connect.
But their point is that your comment doesn't have anything to do with what the article is talking about. TVs having picture settings have nothing to do with connecting it to the network.
I mean sure, but then my TV wouldn’t have VRR that was enabled with a software update. Plus a lot of TVs will just connect to an open WiFi network anyways.
Or don't buy products that are subsidized by recording and selling your data! Not to mention these half-baked "features" produce thousands of hours of headaches, tech support calls, and general unhappiness. $tvManufacturer could care less because red line go up.
Build quality and software invasiveness are both going to keep trending in the wrong directions until people stop buying smart TVs. And it's not like you need to break the bank or order commercial displays - $150 on Amazon for a dumb 43" 1080p, $260 for a 55" 4K.
I don't necessarily disagree, but this article doesn't talk about any of that. It's talk about picture setting, like motion smoothing, dynamic range, local dimming, etc.
Just get a modern Sony TV and be done with it. They perfected Motionflow to the point where you no longer think about framerate (choppiness nor soap opera). It's clearly a priority, probably because they are the only manufacturer with their own studios (Columbia/Sony pictures). There is a reason people pay the $800+ Sony tax over any TV that has the same panel.
I have an A80J and it’s possibly the best panel I’ve owned/seen in any house that didn’t have something similar. My dad who is a big movie buff with an Atmos HiFi actually got one like a month later after being a big LG fan.
It's easy, but expensive. ;) Search for Digital Trends on youtube, they have a lot of videos about this. Their current "budget" pick seems to be the Sony Bravia X90L.
That doesn't make sense. Are you saying these TV's still butcher the original artistic intent of the creators for the sake of arbitrary petty consumer desires to have their expensive TV purchase be justified?
But they just do it better than the other manufacturers do?
C'mon, that's a reddit-level wilful misinterpretation of what he actually said. I mean, look:
Are you saying the original artistic intent of the creators to insert unskippable ads at the beginning of the disc is more important than the consumer's right to control the playback of the content they bought? Plus I heard it might kill babies.
Are they changing their interpolation settings based on source material? Some TVs will disable motion interpolation when they detect 24 frame rate content.
The Sony tax is because ads on Sony TVs can all be turned off. Plenty of TVs have their price subsidized by ads, where as when going through initial setup, I've had Sony TVs with ads disabled by default and questions asking if you want to turn them on.
Sadly disabling "recommended content" on the Google TV launcher also disabled voice search from the remote, but I am pretty sure that is a Google problem and not something Sony chose.
(Also my Sony TV cannot stay connected to my WiFi network for more than half an hour before I have to toggle WiFi on and off again...)
Fire Stick and Roku are worse for ads than what Sony ships.
To clarify, my TV shows a list of apps, and that is it, aside from a single "suggested channel" at top I cannot get rid of.
No content previews, no "watch now!" no special promos, just a list of apps.
To explain a bit more what I said up above, Sony TVs cost more than other TVs with identical specs, ~$200-$300 USD more, but compared to a mid-range LG or Samsung, Sony opts you out of advertising by default (the initial setup is hilarious, for the most part you'd have to manually select a bunch of checkboxes to opt into tracking!).
This is all good to know because I am in the market for a new TV. I am not a fan of anything LG has ever made. I always jokingly repeat the joke that LG stands for "Low Grade." I have had good success with LG monitors, but laptops, phones, and other electronics in the past were nightmares.
So, my choices are really between Sony and Samsung, and I think I might just bite the bullet on the Sony and pay the extra amount.
To get the list of just apps UI you need to enable an option in settings that will disable all content recommendations, if you want to go that far. It also turns off all the "continue watching" UI elements. I forget what the setting is called, but I do remember it is setting for the Google TV launcher.
It took me several tries to find it but the Projectivy launcher ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.pro... ) is a great replacement for the Android/Google TV launcher like it used to be, with no "suggestions" -- just your content.
But definitely use the "override current launcher" setting. The description implies this is a "only if you're having problems" option, but I find it makes a variety of subtle things work the way they should.
I own one, and can say that Motionflow produces uneven results. In certain scenes it kicks in, while completely ignoring others. Still has a way to go.
Bit the don’t tax almost three years ago on an A80J. Honestly the best panel I’ve had. Probably going to buy another Sony panel to replace a circa 2012 4K Samsung.
The thing I hate about "advice" like this is that it assumes that everyone likes the same things and feels the same way, and it comes across as an attempt to shame anyone otherwise.
I like motion interpolation. I always have it turned on, and I chose my TV based on the quality of its motion interpolation.
Screens are so big these days, that if you're watching a 24fps movie, any panning movement becomes a horrible juddering shaking movement. Judder judder judder... ugh. I can't stand it.
With motion interpolation turned on, everything is silky smooth, and I can actually see what's on the screen, even when the picture is moving.
So no, I won't be turning it off, and I suggest that the next time you watch a shakey-cam action movie, you try turning it on too!
This is absolutely the case with all of the nieces/nephews that I know. They prefer that they see the majority of, tablets, which 81% of kids have these days [1].
That number is a pretty high--looking at your link, living in a house with a tablet isn't the same as having a tablet. I have tablet from work but my kids don't use it or any other. BTW that's really cool that you could direct the highlighting in the URL like that. If it's not specific to census.gov, what is that called? What level of the stack is interpreting it?
Someone tell the film industry, so that they stop lighting and color-grading the movies and TV shows for ultrabright, turbo-HDR-enabled expensive TVs - almost no one has those, and even those who do mostly watch on their phones. Maybe if the industry gets that memo, we'll once again have films and shows in which one can actually see what's happening.
I’d rather my films be graded for home theater use than phone use. HDR TVs these days are basically all TVs. Why should we all take a step back in quality when the hardware to view it decently is more affordable than it’s ever been? I don’t care how Oppenheimer looks on your phone I know Nolan would care even less.
Because who has home theater? I'd think it was mostly killed by the Internet, streaming, and the overall trend of cable-cutting, ditching TVs, and switching to computer and laptop screens for one's entertainment.
(I guess at some point this must have reversed everywhere except the bubble myself and my friends and acquaintances live in...)
I have a home theater. I don't know how big the market is, but you can buy receivers from a half dozen manufacturers (Denon, Yamaha, Sony, Onkyo as well as a bunch of speciality brands), digital projectors (Epson, Sony, JVC, BenQ and also a bunch of speciality brands), and all manner of ancillary items (sound proofing, audio treatments, theater seating, etc).
I personally, have a 100” dropdown screen, ust projector and a Sonos surround. This last month, I helped my work buddy shop some deals and got him a 75” Dolby Vision TV and surround sound system with sub for $1200. These are affordable things.
> I understand and agree with what you are saying, but I think your preference for motion interpolation is quite unusual.
The number of TVs that have it enabled by default seems to indicate otherwise. I'm not saying that the manufacturers are correct, necessarily, but I don't think they would go through the effort if they didn't think enough people wanted it.
Or: it just "shows" better when they're demo'ing the TV to a potential customer, not unlike the hyper-saturated nature footage they use to get you to look at their TV and not the one next to it.
Because the store chooses to show footage for which it is optimized, not a movie. But there's also the consideration that it looks better at first sight when you walk past it, than it does when you watch a whole movie looking straight at it.
They are in fact quite incorrect. These poor upscale features are horrors crafted in the early days of post-processing nightmares. Half of it was pitched to make football games appear more real. They all murder the soul of the film and jack up delay. The industry even had to invent a synchronized audio mechanism to compensate for the summoning of these Eldridge horrors. What I don’t mind are modern upscalers which look very nice on expensive sets. Other modern features like HDR are also lovely because they focus on reproducing the movie with vibrant lighting. Anyhow, one summer working in a television station will improve your acuity for these things. You might even come to understand how these old creations will be the downfall of civilization. As an aside, do not forget to surgically remove samba tv from any android set with adb.
Just as the people who design google maps navigation don't drive, the people who design parental control features for google and apple surely don't have kids, and the PMs who choose to turn on motion interpolation by default likely don't watch movies on their TVs.
Major, shockingly obtuse sensibility gaps are sadly the norm today in product management.
It seems the side effect of treating customers as users in the classical sense, is the cross-industry adoption of the mantra, "don't get high on your own supply".
It makes everything look like a cheap soap opera to me. I can't stand it. I think this might be either a generational thing or perhaps a cultural thing, or maybe some of both.
Maybe some people can pick up on the fact that those extra frames aren't real more easily than others. Some innate sense thrown off by the interpolation. Motion interpolation gives me an uneasy feeling more than anything.
For example, some people can see a high frame rate and thus can't watch color wheel based DLP because they see rainbowing in the screen. I can't watch my old plasma in 48hz mode because it flickers. My spouse can't see the flicker at all.
For me, the interpolation really seems to separate the "layers" in a shot, and it just completely destroys the illusion of them not being a set with some lights. Like I said, it feels like a cheap soap opera from the developing country no matter what movie or show I'm watching.
Some of the problem for me may be related to the fact that I worked as a camera operator and video editor during the years from transitioning from the old NTSC standard to HD, and I paid hyperattention to detail as HD came online.
For some reason, the interpolation just screams "this is fake" to me.
> For me, the interpolation really seems to separate the "layers" in a shot, and it just completely destroys the illusion of them not being a set with some lights.
"It makes everything look like a cheap soap opera to me"
This is nothing more than conditioning. "Quality" TV shows "film" at 24 fps despite the fact that they were going to be viewed at 30/60. They did this because even though 3:2 pulldown incontestably is a dirty, ugly hack that reduced quality, people were conditioned to think that if something went through that hack, it's quality. If it didn't, it can't be quality.
So when people talk about the "soap opera" effect, what they usually mean is concise and clear.
The best example of this was The Hobbit when presented at the original, director's intention 48FPS. People were so conditioned to movies being a blurring mess at 24FPS that a frequent complaint about the Hobbit was that it had the purported "soap opera effect".
It's not conditioning. Frame rate is a tool in the toolbox, and more isn't always better, just like a colorized black and white film isn't better just because it has added information.
This is most easily apparent in animation, which frequently makes use of variable frame rates to achieve different effects and feelings, often even within elements of the same scene. A character might be animated at 12 fps while the background is at 8 fps. Bumping those all up to 60 would be an entirely different shot with very different vibes.
Surely 24 fps was made the standard to save money on film.
It's about the slowest frame rate that's not very distracting.
Needless to say, film is no longer the major expense it used to be. In the early days the film itself was a fairly big part of the production cost (and don't forget distribution - cost to replicate the film - and operating cost for the projectors - handling film rolls twice as big, etc.).
And standards are sticky, so the industry stayed on 24fps for decades.
It's quite astonishing how terrible 24 FPS really is, but as the GP mentioned it was "good enough" for the time. It's a scale, and costs and processing was prohibited that it was the point where most scenes, especially dramas and human interest type things, were served well by the format.
Action scenes are just brutal at 24FPS. Running, pans, and so on. Either it's a blurry mess at a 180 degree shutter, or it turns into a rapid slide show (like early in Saving Private Ryan).
Of course they can. If you ever try to go back, it looks like garbage. There is no limit to improving the illusion of smooth motion, but it scales non-linearly (you need to double the frame rate each time to improve it noticeably). I can't personally tell apart whether it is running at 144 or 120 fps, but the larger jumps are very obvious.
Yea 120 v 144 isn’t too big of a difference for me. Actually until I got a new GPU that could actually output 120fps at 1440p, I left my monitor on 120hz. When AMDs AFMF drivers came out I actually went ahead and bumped the refresh to 144hz as I was definitely starting to see screen tearing but it was still pretty fluid. I’d be curious on whether the next jump for meto will be 4k 144hz or 1440p 240hz
Absolutely they can, though I found anything above 240hz to be indistingushable for myself personally. Though the monitor I'm writing this on is 300hz; it's motion clarity is only bested by OLEDs and the $2000 AUD (twice what I paid for this) 360hz bigger brother PG27AQN.
I’ve never had a display refresh rate higher than 144, but maybe because I play games but I can definitely tell the difference between 30/60 and even 60/120. After 120 the difference between 120/144 starts to diminish but there’s still a slight difference though it’s more pronounced in very fast moving objects like moving a mouse.
Games are different. Interactive media requires responsiveness. Saying that higher framerate is always better in cinema is a pretty bold statement, one that would fail a simple survey among moviegoers. What does "better" even mean, in this context? Fidelity is just one of many axes of expression when creating art. Higher isn't better than lower, or vice versa.
For me the higher frame rate is not really about response time, it is all about smooth motion. Panning the camera at 60Hz is just barely acceptable. 120Hz is where it starts looking real nice and I can really see things during the pan. 24Hz pans are unwatchable garbage.
A movie properly authored at 120Hz (not interpolated with potential artifacts) would be objectively better than a 24Hz one in every possible way.
Also with higher frame rate I can see subtle patterns in the movement and flow of things (clothes, water, humans). Also the eye can see more details and can recognize the texture of things, the different kinds of fabrics, all kind of details like this.
Only some people try to run at 144/240/360. I set my max FPS on my PC games to 60 because it 1) feels right and 2) uses less electricity/generates less heat. I only bump it for competitive FPS where a higher FPS makes target acquisition easier.
Animation frames are almost totally orthogonal to what we're talking about here. In fact, I'd argue they're the exception that proves the rule. Animation had to develop tricks like spaghettification to look good at 12 fps because it looks inherently worse than higher frame rates. In fact, techniques like smear frames are often used to directly emulate higher frame rates. It's an art form born of limitation, not a neutral tool. Just look at any 3d animated show that just drops the frame rate of mocapped characters to 12fps (Dragon Prince is one that comes to mind) - it looks like jarring, choppy shit.
Those are the origins, but the result is a style that can look good or better than higher framerates depending on what you're going for. Art is not held back by fidelity - instead fidelity is part of what defines it, as well as other constraints.
Firstly: No one on the mass market actually knows what 3:2 pulldown is, so it's hard for people to see it as an indicator of 'quality' -- most of HN, a technical audience, probably doesn't know what it is either: For reference, it's when a 24 frame per second film is converted to 29.97 frames by by interlacing 4 frames together to create 5 frames. That and a tiny bit of a slowdown gets you to 29.97, which is the NTSC frame rate.
Secondly: Why do people in traditionally PAL regions also hate the soap opera effect? Again, for reference, PAL regions ran at 25 frames per second and so got away with a 4% speedup and a 2:2 pulldown that has no real frame-blurring effect.
Thirdly: Generally, I prefer higher frame rate content: I have a 144Hz monitor, and prefer content as close to that as I can, but I still hate watching The Hobbit -- a lot of this has to do with motion blur: 48 frame per second content is not fast enough to get away with appearing seamless, and not slow enough that the per-frame motion blur you get with 24 frame per second 180 degree shutter hides the stuttering.
>No one on the mass market actually knows what 3:2 pulldown is
People don't have to know what it technically is to know it when they see it, and the simple incantation of "soap opera effect" demonstrates that.
Again, almost all dramas shoot at 24 fps. There is zero technical reason for this (there once was a cost saving / processing reason for it, and then people retconned justifications, which you can see earlier in this very thread). They do this because, again, people are conditioned to correlate that with quality. It's going to take years to break us from that.
>I have a 144Hz monitor, and prefer content as close to that as I can
This is not meaningful. Preferring games at a higher framerate has zero correlation with how you prefer movies. And however odd you think the take is, you like 24 FPS because you've been trained to like it, Pavlov's bell style.
people are conditioned to correlate that with quality
Are you sure it’s really just conditioning? Impressionist paintings are obviously a lower fidelity reproduction of reality than photorealistic paintings, yet people tend to like Impressionism more, and I don’t think that’s necessarily just cultural conditioning. Sometimes less is more.
What you're suggesting is that you know better than every cinema-goer and every cinematographer, animator, producer, and director around what their preferences "really" are, which is a pretty wild thing to claim, especially in the face of people telling you exactly why they prefer unaltered 24 FPS content to horribly interpolated uncanny-valley messes.
The reason no one has changed process isn't because there's tonnes of better options that everyone is just studiously ignoring because of pavlovian conditioning. It's absolutely nothing to do with people liking the look of interlaced 3:2 pulldowns. It's because the current options for HFR content just plain don't look very good. Some of this is unrelated to the technical specification of the recording & due to things like action content in HFR looking cheesy -- there's going to need to be a wild change in how content is choreographed & shot before we're anywhere near it being as well understood as current practises.
There are exceptions: 4K 120FPS HDR content for things like documentary content looks pretty good on a high refresh rate monitor (note: no one said games), but we haven't reached an era where that's even nearly commoditised and the in-the-middle stuff you'd want to do for cinema or TV just can't cut it.
Humorously this submission, and so many just like it, are about people who are outraged that their parents / friends / etc actually like motion smoothing. So...I guess? I remember a similarly boorish, ultimately-failed "no one should ever take vertical video!" movement from a few years ago, again pushed by people really, really certain of the supremacy of their own preference.
>and every cinematographer, animator, producer, and director
Now this attempt to appeal to authority is particularly silly. Peter Jackson -- you might have heard of him -- tried to do a movie at 48 FPS for a wide variety of quality reasons, to be lambasted by people just like you. People who are sure that the completely arbitrary, save-our-rolls-of-film 24 FPS is actually some magical, perfect number. It is insane. Everyone else is simply handcuffed to that completely obsolete choice from years ago, and will be for years more.
I'm not going to convince you, and have zero interest in trying. And I am certain you're not going to convince me. But your argument at its roots is "that's the way it's done, therefore that's the perfect way and the way it will forever be done". It's utter nonsense.
>People who are sure that the completely arbitrary, save-our-rolls-of-film 24 FPS is actually some magical, perfect number. It is insane. Everyone else is simply handcuffed to that completely obsolete choice from years ago, and will be for years more.
Instead of trying to jump to 48fps or 60fps, maybe they should just adopt 30fps as the new standard for a while. The 24fps fans won't have too much to complain about, because it's not that much faster (and it's the same as the old NTSC standard), and the HFR fans will at least have something a little better. Then, in a decade, they could jump to 36fps, then 42, then 48, etc.
As a bonus, the file sizes for movie files won't be that much bigger at only 30fps, instead of 60+.
> I remember a similarly boorish, ultimately-failed "no one should ever take vertical video!" movement from a few years ago
But that's more about what you're shooting and where you're watching it.
I typically don't like portrait video because I watch most video on a 16:9 (or wider) screen. 9:16 video leaves a lot of wasted space. I get why people shoot vertical - because they're only using cell phone screens to view and the content is "portrait-oriented" like a person talking to the camera.
But the other side of this is when you see someone shooting portrait orientation and they have to pan around, back and forth, constantly moving just so they can capture the whole scene. It doesn't make sense if the subject(s) are arrayed horizontally. Add to this the simple fact that you can just spin a phone sideways and even mobile viewers can see the whole thing without all the panning.
If anything, the easy switch from portrait to landscape should offer mobile-shooters more flexibility to match orientation to content rather than likely viewing device.
I'm not complaining about pulldown effect. I'm complaining that the interpolation makes people look like they "pop" from the background to my eye, and it emphasizes the lighting, making everything look "over-lit" to my eye, which I associate with soap operas, because soap operas (especially Latin American soap operas, for some reason) really emphasize lighting the actors' faces.
> The best example of this was The Hobbit when presented at the original, director's intention 48FPS. People were so conditioned to movies being a blurring mess at 24FPS that a frequent complaint about the Hobbit was that it had the purported "soap opera effect".
The reason I didn't like the Hobbit was because they went overboard on CGI. They had to make Orlando Bloom (Legolas) appear younger than he was in the Lord of the Rings which was released a decade before.
> They had to make Orlando Bloom (Legolas) appear younger than he was in the Lord of the Rings which was released a decade before.
Tolkien's elves are literally immortal and the time between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is less than a hundred years. Legolas' father is several thousand years old. There is no reason to expect Legolas to look younger in The Hobbit; you'd want him to look exactly the same.
Yeah, there were so many other things I did not enjoy about those movies that any potential weirdness from the higher framerate didn't even come into play. Rewatched them this past year while down with COVID and after finishing the LOTR extended versions.
Production-wise, it was the silly looking CG characters. Even worse was the way they stretched one simpler story into three movies (while the LOTR trilogy just managed a good job of adapting three long books into three long movies without too much oversimplification.)
It looked like absolute soap opera crap. And the worst thing was that I could _easily_ tell when the actors were carrying light prop weapons compared to the real thing.
At 24 fps your eye can't tell, but at 60fps you see the tiny wobble that the foam(?) prop weapons have and it's really jarring. Same with other practical effects, they're easier to hide in the ye olde 24 fps version.
Watching movies in 60fps is the same as when porn moved to 4k. You see every little flaw in great detail that used to be hidden by worse technology. Everyone needs to step up their game in areas where it wasn't needed before.
It's not just concise and clear to me. It's that people tend to "pop" from the background too much, and it reveals the artificial lighting to my brain. Everything looks "over-lit". You know, like a soap opera.
Where does this nonsensical argument keep coming from? No idea what a "cheap soap opera" is even supposed to be. The only thing I notice is that the horrifying judder during camera pans is replaced by minor artifacts that don't distract anywhere near as much. It's literally not possible for me to interpret a 24hz pan as fluid motion.
See llm_nerd's answer below. Conditioning or not, it takes me out of the realism of whatever I'm watching if interpolation is applied. People don't really have to rationally justify it, they're used to a certain way of footage being played growing up and when some folk see interpolation it just feels off to them right away, and reminds them of those soap operas.
There's a point at which these things balance out and work. I'm not sure that 120 frames per second is high enough, but it's much closer. We have anecdotal evidence (the fact that everyone hated The Hobbit) that 48 frames per second isn't.
One of the rules of cinema and shooting at low frame rate is to use "180 degree shutter" (a term that comes from the spinning shutters used in old film cameras), or in other words a shutter that is open for half as long as the frame rate. i.e.: If you're filming at 24 frames per second, use a 1/48th second shutter speed.
The reason for this is that 24 FPS @ 1/48" exposure film adds enough motion blur to each exposure that any movement that occurs over a small number of frames is naturally smeared by a consequence of the exposure time, but anything that is relatively steady across frames tends to look crisp. If you shoot at 24 FPS @ 1/1000", you end up with something that looks like a fast flipbook of static pictures. 24 FPS just isn't fast enough, and people can see that each individual frame doesn't contain movement.
Anecdotally, 120FPS @ 1/1000" on a 120Hz display doesn't exhibit this same problem, at least to me or people I've shown it to, although some people will notice it "feels fast".
48 FPS @ 1/96" seems to be the worst of both worlds: Too fast a shutter for motion blur to compensate nicely, too slow a frame rate to to make it look seamless, so it ends up in the uncanny valley where people know there's something missing, but not what.
The frame interpolation feature that people seem to hate is almost directly designed to fall into this horrible territory.
Motion blur doesn't work on modern TVs (i.e. OLED). They will display a static, blurry frame for 1/24 of a second, then snap to the next one practically instantly with a clearly visible jump. What I get in the end is a juddering mess that is also blurry, so I can literally see nothing.
Motion blur doesn't really work in that way on any device, but what you're missing is that the content's captured frame rate has a relatively important relation to the display frame rate: You can't usually change one & not the other without making everything look worse, at least to most people, and this is what a lot of modern TVs do.
Naive interpolation of inter-frame content is awful, is what a lot of TVs do to implement their smoothing feature, and is why everyone complains about it.
The reason a lot of people hated The Hobbit may be partly because of this problem: It was shot at a 270 degree shutter to try to get a bit more motion blur back into each frame, which to a lot of people felt strange.
There ought not be any juddering since that is an artifact of a varying frame rate rather than a static frame rate, nor should you be "literally seeing nothing". You might be more visually sensitive than the average person, who seems to not care about these things. It reminds me of my spouse, who is really good at detecting motion at night where I see nothing, almost like a super power.
> We have anecdotal evidence (the fact that everyone hated The Hobbit) that 48 frames per second isn't.
Maybe, or maybe we just haven't adapted to 48fps yet. Something I heard a lot about The Hobbit was that the outdoor scenes looked great whereas the indoor seens looked like film sets - which, well, they were film sets, and making a set that looks "natural" will require new techniques. Everyone hates early stereo mixes (e.g. The Beatles), not because stereo sound inherently sounds bad but because production takes time to adapt to new technology.
Of course it seems weird... if you read what I said I implied it's not really rational.
But no one's brain is saying "wow the lack of motion blur really affects the realism here".
I walk into a house and see a TV show playing on a TV with interpolation turned on and it just looks weird because of how TV looked growing up. I mean that's just the simple reality of it. I understand when film nerds come along and explain motion blur etc but that's all very "system 2" thinking. I'm talking about pure system 1 subconscious processing.
What's even weirder is how some folks can never seem to grasp why their explanations of how motion blur is bad can't convince others to suddenly like interpolation.
It's not the motion blur that is a problem for me. For me, interpolation seems to make the actors "pop" from the background. It separates them from the background and makes them look like they are "over-lit".
I think its as simple as the blurriness of 24 fps hides props/backdrops/etc better than at higher frame rates. Its the same with resolution. More detail makes the fake things more obvious. An old film shown on a CRT from the 90s vs. an HD remaster on a modern OLED can be almost distracting in how obvious movie props are. This is a big component of the "soap opera effect", where props and scenes become more obvious and feel "less real", despite the higher detail.
With time, higher quality sets should balance this back out.
Watch a soap opera from Latin America. The actors' faces are lit from every direction to remove shadows. And they are backlit to make them "pop". In other words, to make them stand out from the background.
To my eye, interpolation does the exact same thing. It's like they used too many lights and it makes the layers of depth in the shot "separate" from each other and look flat. It makes the whole shot look completely fake to my eye.
A visual reference [1] that shows what I'm thinking of. Pay attention especially to how they light the actors. They light from several angles so that there are no shadows, which flattens their faces. They also use a strong backlight or a rim light on them to give a shiny look around their head and shoulders to separate them from the background. That's what all interpolated video looks like to me.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9eLHmLRSq0&list=PL7N8vg4EqC...
You can also prefer to not like subtitles, and watch films dubbed from their original language.
You can also prefer to not like black & white films, and watch the colorized versions done decades later.
You can also prefer not to see nudity, violence, or profanity, and watch the edited-for-TV versions of those films.
Finally you can prefer a totally different story or shot composition or artistic choices altogether, and ask Generative AI to recreate, reedit, or augment scenes to your preference.
All of these are valid preferences and we have the technology to facilitate them for you.
But 1) They should never be the default on any technology you acquire. That's the PRIMARY sin of all of the technologies mentioned by OP - it's not that they exist, it's that they're on by default, and since most humans never change the default settings on ANYTHING they change, they experience content in a way that as not intended by the original artist behind the vision.
And 2) Well, this is subjective, and everything is a spectrum. But you are ultimately robbing yourself of the specific experience intended for you by the creator of the film. It's certainly within your right not to care and think that you know better than them, but on a spectrum of that philosophy, carried out across all of society, it's probably not a good thing.
And so they should be shamed. There are professionals working on every aspect of a film, and these options just shit all over their work, ruining their intended vision.
Now if you're talking about watching YouTube or similar content then it's a different story.
"Vision" implies that there is a choice. How many feature films have been made at a frame rate other than 24fps? Ever since the sound era, I suspect you can count them all on your fingers.
So I don't buy this "vision" argument. It's just holier-than-thou. Directors choose 24fps because it's literally the only option. It's no choice at all.
Forcing me to watch your movie as a jerky motion-sickness-inducing mess? I will indeed, to use your words, shit on it.
The default should be what is more popular. The connoisseurs are probably savvy enough to change the settings from those defaults.
Most people don't give a damn about those things. They just want to be entertained, maybe they have other hobbies where they can exercise their particular snobbism, and movies are not particularly important for them as an art form or they don't care much about art at all.
My mind is blown. I didn't think -anyone- could possibly like motion interpolation for watching movies. I hate it so, so much. I'm trying to understand your POV.
How do you feel about watching movies in a theater? The frame rate there is low but the screen is so much larger.
It's even worse in theaters. The screen is HUGE. Panning motions are so bad they often give me motion sickness.
There was one movie that they showed at 48fps - I think it was The Hobbit? I've forgotten. That was amazing. Blissful. My eyes have never been so happy.
Yep. Hate theaters for this reason. Absolutely unwatchable. My LG G3 with motion smoothing provides far better experience. Even in Avatar 2 they put some sections of it in lower frame rate for no reason and I noticed them instantly.
Avatar 2 in the 48 FPS scenes was jaw dropping, it looked so real, as if you were transported there. It does not look the same in the 24 FPS scenes and pulled me right out of the movie.
Movies have a different display though. Film shutters and whatnot. Helps a lot with keeping the motion from just being jerky. OLEDs don't have that, and attempts at black frame insertion don't really work there because they already struggle with brightness. Hence, a mild motion interpolation is useful.
Different display technologies need different things. No difference from CRT filters on old video games played on modern screens.
Lots of people still shoot with film. But distribution will always be digital unless your screening is specifically advertising a film showing. That's usually just big Imax movies like Oppenheimer in select cities, or indie theaters showing old movies who can get access to the film.
There really are a large range of opinions about this. I love high frame rate, but can't stand interpolation. I wish theaters used higher frame rates. I really enjoyed the parts of Avatar 2 that were smoother, and it felt jarring to me whenever it would switch back to low frame rates.
Probably it's just what you're used to and how much you've been trained to notice artifacts.
I'm in agreement with them here, judder on movie screens is so bad to me it's distracting. I don't think I've had a better visual experience in a theater than at home in a long time. The screen is physically larger, but when I sit 4 feet from my TV it's the same size visually.
Audio still wins by a mile in a theater though. Though home theater audio has gotten pretty darn good. I just wouldn't know as long as I'm in an apartment.
You can also always choose when to have motion interpolation on or off. For sports and nature documentaries I think it's just better. For animation it's worse. For other films it depends, I usually prefer it in something fast and actiony, like John Wick.
Your mind is blown that someone might not like to watch movies at a prehistoric 24Hz on a screen that is capable of 120Hz, after video games have been running at this frame rate for a decade already?
Yes! Whenever I see motion interpolation on a TV, it gives me a sense of revulsion. It seems okay for sports, I guess?, but awful for movies, to the point where I would rather turn the TV off than watch a movie with motion interpolation. Perhaps what I'm thinking of is the 3:2 pulldown thing for 60Hz TVs and I haven't seen what it's like on a 120Hz screen?
I don't play games much, but visually I've always distinguished between games and movies. I expect them to look quite different, not at all similar.
And I thought my feelings about this were universal, and had confirmation bias from seeing postings before Thanksgiving like "if your parents' TVs look weird, here's a guide for turning off motion interpolation depending on make and model", etc. I've assumed that the whole point of motion interpolation was for new TVs to impress people with how they look for sports, that this is what sells TVs in Best Buy, and the over-application of motion interpolation to other content was an unfortunate byproduct.
How much of that high FPS or interpolated media have you seen? At first I too was jarred by it, as if it were sped up somehow, but after a few hours, I couldn't watch regular 24 FPS anymore as it literally looked like a slideshow. I distinctly remember watching Thor: Love and Thunder in theaters and when they panned over the pantheon, you literally couldn't see anything. In contrast, Avatar 2 with the 48 FPS scenes was one of the most immersive movies of my life.
A lot of lower end TVs have really bad implementations of it. Maybe try it again on a LG G3 or a Sony A95L and it might be completely different from what you remember.
Theater is fine -- I have a home theater w/ a 24p projector. I wish it had 120Hz smoothing, but at least it's not dim like my local theater.
24p content at 60Hz is really, really bad (3:2 pull down what not). At least we can agree on that. That seems to be what "turn off motion smoothing" is about, to me.
24p content at 24Hz is fine, but 120Hz is better.
EDIT: I should say that the input lag (gaming) is much greater for smoothing, so even at ~30 fps I'd run my PlayStation at 60Hz no smoothing (game mode on &c).
The problem with motion interpolation is because most of it is the cheap variety. I don't like motion blur, it is annoying, but bad motion interpolation is worse.
I like interpolation too, but it must be high quality, not the low quality that's built into TVs. For example, I use SVP 4 which does interpolation with your GPU, works great.
Movied are even worse, I can absolutely see the judder especially when panning. It is one reason I prefer to wait for home releases and will go to movies that are specifically phenomena irreplaceable at home, such as Oppenheimer in 70mm IMAX.
I like the feature, too. I remember watching the Battlestar Galactica remake with the interpolation setting active and getting an even deeper sense of realism out of the scenes. They were already aiming for a documentary style with the camera work and special effects, so the higher prosumer framerate fit with the style very well. On other films and TV shows I like the interpolation for panning shots which jidder a lot on the standard framerate.
Seriously... No! Our first LCD TV (several years old by now) had this, and watching LOTR on it - was wtf is this - am I in a theater? We both sit with my wife and watched it, and we were secretly annoyed but dared not to say or complain about it, because we just spent tons of money on it... Then we found it and fixed it!
New TV I've got has the `Filmmaker mode` - wasn't sure what exactly is that, turned it On and yes - it's how it should be. This article cleared it for me now
My hope is that thanks to stuff like DLSS frame generation in video games (or maybe AR/VR) that the opinion of a majority of people will change over time. So that eventually maybe... we might actually see movies being filmed in higher framerates. People's conditioning really stands in their way, imo.
The only bad thing about motion interpolation on most TVs in my book is the fact that the /implementation is often pretty bad/. If perfect frame interpolation was a thing, I'd watch everything upsampled to 165Hz of my monitor. Well, I do it anyway using the Smooth Video Project. But that also suffers from artifacts, so is far from perfect. Much better than judder though...
DLSS 3 really is fantastic technology. It works amazingly well for interpolating a game from 60 to 120 (or higher). It fails pretty hard if you start with 24 though. We'll need something like RIFE for that, but currently no hardware exists that can run it in real time...
Isn't the manufacturer doing a worse/larger version of this assumption normalisation by having these things on by default?
More articles explaining how to customise the settings is better than less because it draws attention to the fact these options are being forced on all consumers.
Shaky-cam action movies are their own unique problem :)
I think they exist because it saves a fair bit of cash on fight choreographers and the time it takes to train the actors to do it realistically. On the flip side, it really increases the respect I have for properly choreographed action scenes that are consistent and visible.
No one was shaming you, get over yourself. The author repeatedly framed recommendations in the context of how the creators produced it. If you feel shame that’s all you.
> it assumes that everyone likes the same things and feels the same way
I don't think this is about feelings. (But it just might be in a small minority of cases IMO, and if it's the case for you, then all the power to you.)
In the case of this article, all the points are about discernment. Some people not only notice the issues, but are also able to identify them and articulate precisely what is happening. The rest don't.
Juddering 24fps footage means you have a display that isn't displaying 24fps properly (see here: https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/motion/24p). The refresh rate and frame rate aren't matching, most modern TVs account for this and can correctly display it.
We could be confusing terms here... I mean 'judder' as uneven frame times, it looks like things skip slightly out of time. Uneven frame times shouldn't even happen with a cinema screening unless something has gone terribly wrong.
Most people see smooth movement. The brain usually interpolates for us as part of its normal wetware, such as blind spot filling, blur when moving your eyes quickly, low light vision, etc. People who are more visually sensitive and get motion sickness from moving pictures probably just have different circuitry that is more sensitive to the digital/analog mismatch.
I would say your visual experience is fairly rare, but common enough that I regularly encounter people that have various issues with digital motion. I have no problems with low framerates myself, but I do find camera shake (especially as so common in video games now) to be nauseating, though it seems most people have zero issue with it.
Don't know how you do it. I can't stand the jelly effect. Motion interpolation was the first thing I turned off when we got our A95K earlier this year.
> The thing I hate about "advice" like this is that it assumes that everyone likes the same things and feels the same way
It's so ironic that at the end you gave an advice:
> I suggest that the next time you watch a shakey-cam action movie, you try turning it on too!
Are you assuming that everyone likes the same things you like? I guess not. The same for the article—it doesn't assume that.
No advice fits everyone, but good advice fits many people. And I'd argue that the article's advice fits many, if not most, people.
TV is probably the only screen many people have that has motion interpolation on by default. They watch movies on theaters, PC monitors, laptops, tablets, and phones probably more than on TVs.
Many people are already used to what movies "look like." Non-tech-savvy ones might not know what "FPS" means, but they would likely be able to notice that watching movies on their phone feels different from on a TV with the default setting. The article's suggestion to disable motion interpolation on TVs makes the watching experience more consistent across all screens.
Noise reduction and dynamic brightness aren't too bad if done tastefully. But it's really up to the TV manufacturers to do it properly which is why there is just general advice to turn it off.
A couple years ago, my Samsung TV slowed to a crawl. Each click through a menu took multiple seconds. I eventually discovered a new setting buried deep to turn off "real-time anti-virus scanning". That immediately fixed the performance problems.
How would my TV get a virus? This was a Tizen TV, not an Android TV where I'm installing shady apps.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 443 ms ] threadI turn off overscan as those artifacts do not bother me.
People want content to the edge of the screen, but not to pay a TV technician to come and calibrate their tube to exacting standards in their home. Content creators need to know that some of their broadcast is invisible to some of their viewers as a result.
Pixel perfect tvs came later, so the transiton to HD wasn't the right time. ATSC3 could have been a reasonable time to change, but then broadcasters couldn't use the same feed for ATSC1 and ATSC3 ... and who knows if ATSC3 will ever win over ATSC1, or if all the OTA TV spectrum will be refarmed to telcos before that happens.
2. More pop on the store display.
It turns out that "fixing" these things do result in more people picking the TV. Just like an overstated display will typically be preferred in a side-by-side comparison.
Basically, low FPS can be a stylistic choice, and making up new frames at playback time often completely butchers some of the nuances present in good animation.
If it had looked better with frame interpolation the studio could have baked it in, before release.
Perhaps it depends on the quality of the execution, but there are shows where I wished I had frame interpolation.
For the high frame rate version of The Hobbit that I saw, in my opinion it looked bad for character shots but cool for overhead action views.
If only filmmakers started with decent frame rates. The few films that came out in 48 fps are so much nicer to look at.
At that point I figured out that it was just because I've been so used to crappy frame rates that the more natural movements feel out of place.
I wonder what the first pass, with less motion blur, would have felt like. Maybe better, maybe worse. I kind of feel it would make it worse, in the same way that the transitional from analog to high definition digital made it look worse to me since I could notice the transitions between frames. That is, at least at first. I'm used to it now.
It’s not worse. In fact it’s so vastly better. Watching a 3 hour movie in 3D without getting a headache from 24 FPS judder (“magic”) was a revelation.
But different bad.
There was just something very wrong with it. It kept feeling like suddenly parts of the movie were sped up and going at 2x speed. To the point where I wonder if the cinematographer was just not experienced with the technology to make it work right (like, maybe there are collaries to the 180 rule that need to be experimented with)
I watched it in 2D, I'm sure for 3D it makes a whole different experience.
What it reminded me of was silent era film that’s been slightly sped up on purpose for comic effect. All the walking looked kinda jerky, like it does when you speed up footage of someone walking, for instance. Or very early manual-timing film that was cranked a bit inconsistently. It was so distracting I could hardly focus in anything else the entire movie. If it’d been a better film, I’d say that gimmick ruined it, but… well.
Like I can watch an animated show, and I have no expectations of it looking real. I can still get lost in the story and enjoy it. I don't need it to look like I'm actually there.
I then rewatched the movie (also in theaters) in 2D 24 fps and it was infinitely better.
I have the same with YouTube videos. I can't stand 60 fps videos (except for gaming content); it causes headaches for me. If it's something I really want to watch, I'll download the 24 fps version and watch it offline (YouTube has it on their servers, but only serves it to certain clients or something).
I know other people who just can't see a difference, or rather, they don't notice it much. I feel like I can spot a 60 fps YouTube video in about 2-3 seconds (usually I pause then to check and reconsider whether I really want to watch it). I also tend to notice 30 fps videos (compared to 24), although they don't really bother me.
Considering that I've always been the only one at movie nights to notice when the TV's frame interpolation setting is on, I guess I'm an outlier.
This is going to be interpolated from 60 FPS. At least get a 30 FPS version that can just drop frames from 60.
It was the writing that was the problem.
I've heard this called the sample-and-hold effect. It looks a bit like a fast slide show, and really stands out in high-contrast, steady motion scenes.
> All HD channels in the UK broadcast at 1080i, apart from Sky Sports Main Event UHD channel and the BT Sport Ultimate 4K
Interestingly, David Lynch shot Inland Empire at 60fps interlaced, but the film was released at 24fps.
https://cinemashock.org/2012/07/30/45-degree-shutter-in-savi...
The problem that causes stuttering is (simplified) that your eye is moving smoothly to follow something on the screen, whilst the image is moving in discrete steps. So when your eyes expect something fixed in side your view, its actually stuttering.
Black frames make use of a natural image retention in the eye. Where you effectively continue to see the last bright thing. Hence what you expect to be stationary in your field of view does remain stationary.
This was actually key to film based projectors working, because they need a period of black to advance to the next frame. Without image retention it would seem to flicker. Though 24 hz is a bit to slow for that, so they actually added a black period (by just blocking the light) in the middle of each frame to even out the effect. They were already doing BFI, not for motion smoothing, but for flicker smoothing. It seems likely this is accidentally why 24hz film doesn't have stuttering whilst 24hz screens do need it.
Personally I care too much about the brightness loss of BFI, but it might be interesting for you.
It solves a problem, yes, but a different problem than what is solved by interpolation.
Black frames resolve ghosting. That's great! I want to see one frame at a time, no more.
Motion interpolation resolves jagged motion. Instead of making my brain do the extra work of filling in gaps of motion, it lets my brain see an image move smoothly through time.
The higher resolution gets, the larger the group of pixels are that need to be moved each frame. This causes two unique and interdependent problems:
1. Low shutter speed creates blurry images, which makes high resolution worthless.
2. Low framerate creates gaps in motion, which makes high detail painful.
The faster the shutter, the more detail is visible. Filmakers are happy to solve this as extremely as they can. New cameras and lenses capture incredibly sharp and bright images with very short frame times.
The more detail in motion, the more confusing gaps between frames become. Filmakers (and the industry in general) refuse to increase framerate, so they give us ever increasing gaps instead.
Of course perhaps it is the filmmakers that are to blame: https://www.avclub.com/how-to-watch-dark-movies-and-tv-shows...
I can't find any explanation of how it actually works. Does a each movie get different settings set up by the director?! Doubt it.
However, Samsung TVs are not exactly known for realistic colors. So turn up the eye candy and enjoy!
However, if your room has even a little light in it, the settings would make the TV too dark.
It will also disable any effects the TV has that aren't "map video to screen 1:1" such as motion interpolation, upscaling algorithms, etc
[1] https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/televisions/article/getting-...
If you care about film and getting the closest result to what the actual thing is supposed to look like you're going to need to couple correct settings with a light controlled room for best results. Or don't use OLED, because, it simply can't achieve the brightness of cinema projection, not even close.
Personally I like the results of a 120hz OLED so much better than other options that I strongly favor a light controlled space for movie watching. For lower grade junk it's usually easy enough to swap to another viewing preset that is brighter.
30fps videos look very jarring to me, I almost always notice “tearing” or “shuddering” - even when in a cinema. Enabling motion interpolation / frame rate up scaling usually fixes this for me.
It’s so distracting and at times almost painful for me to watch without it that at times I’ll use a tool (Topaz Video AI) to re-render videos to 50-60FPS.
I can't stand motion interpolation. Turned off on every TV I own. Will literally walk away and do something else if it's on a (non-sports) TV in public. There's something "too smooth" about it that irks me.
Biology is weird so I say just give people the options to pick what works for them.
https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-s...
I expect refresh rate is similar, given that... if a substantial portion of your subjective perception is mentally fabricated, then your brain physiology contributes, and that's set during childhood.
For reference, I grew up on NTSC screens (29.97 interlaced frames per second).
Considering it as 30 interlaced frames per second isn't really accurate. It's 60 fields per second. A lot of content intended for interlaced broadcast is not 30 fps broken into fields, it's 60 distinct half pictures per second.
(Excuse my rounding)
[0] In urban/bike areas, always open a car door with your opposite hand (e.g. driver's side with right hand). It forces you to turn your body, which allows you to look behind you, which lets you notice bikers approaching from behind before you open the door and splat them.
At the same time, I'm pretty confident that this is a subjective phenomenon. My parents have it on all their TVs and my mother both prefers it and notices immediately if video isn't 60fps or equivalent, while my father says he doesn't notice the difference.
We were watching an action/fighting movie with swords and other martial arts, and I distinctly saw these graceful arcs of the actors' limbs and weapons turned into polygons. The motion interpolation clearly inferred linear transitions between the different positions captured in the actual frames. Imagine a large swing tracing out an octagonal path with all the physical unreality that would entail.
It seemed like I was the only one in the room who perceived this travesty.
Also, you get used to it after a while. At first I was similarly jarred by the smoothness, as if it were fast forwarded, but after a few hours of getting used to it, when I saw 24 FPS content, it was literally unwatchable as it looked like a slideshow to me.
There is something about 24fps that I believe may have something to do with how the eye or brain works that makes viewing more immersive. Perhaps it’s due to historical cultural reasons, but I’m not sure that totally explains it.
FWIW I play valorant on a 390fps monitor so I am not a “the eye can only see 60fps” truther.
Peripheral vision has a lot of rods (instead of cones) which are more sensitive to rapid motion. I can certainly pick up flicker and "perceive the frames" more clearly when looking in my peripheral vision.
Same goes for the old CRT monitors: 60 Hz was an absolute no-no, 85 was tolerable but higher was better.
Edit: CRTs were worse, of course, because they were constantly flashing light-dark, unlike LCDs which simply transition from frame to frame.
Maybe one day the real-time implementation will be good enough, but I find that it’s shockingly bad most of the time.
1 - https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/judder
2 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing
It's pretty common for TVs to have even higher refresh rates these days - my 4 year old mid-range LG OLED is 120hz, for example. Conveniently, 24 evenly divides 120, so when you turn off the interpolation you get perfectly consistent frame times.
As a more general note, don't be afraid to experiment with the settings. If you're watching low-bitrate netflix streams, some of the artifact-reduction filters can be worthwhile, especially on the lower intensity settings.
For watching bluray remuxes however, "filmmaker mode" or equivalent settings is generally the way to go.
If I walk into a bar or restaurant and see a TV with it, it's instantly offensive from 20ft away. It boggles my mind how people really can't see it, or think it looks good.
Unfortunately, I don't know that there's a generic non-jargon word for this collection of settings, but let's not solve for that by overloading the word "smart"!
I suppose there are two differences:
1. The artist retains control of the interpolation between drawn frames.
2. The computational resources available to the artist far exceed those available in the TV.
Apologies if this is an uninformed question, I watch animation but don't know how it is produced.
I suspect with modern digital animation you could do a lot of the tweening automatically on the computer, but even then you would be carefully selecting them and fine tuning it to match your vision.
Then at the end you would actually have 24 frames per second to turn into your final video. You shouldn't have any frames where something is mid-movement and blurred between the two positions.
A good example is FUNKe[0], He's got a style with very pronounced changes in framerate. One movement will be 3fps and the next 30, never mind that the lipsync tends to be at a high framerate no matter what the rest of the animation is doing. Imagine trying to convert that to 60fps and still have it look good.
[0] e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maqIaT_ZUxs
Not to mention that after 6 years the TV becomes useless junk killed by bulky modern app updates. I think there is a market for something like "Framework TV".
Also, you cat reset an old, slow TV, put it in "dumb" mode, then add something like a Vero V or another box.
How much TV are you people watching such that this statement becomes even remotely accurate? My 2017 LG OLED display says it has 6400 power-on hours and it looks as good as new.
https://www.marketingcharts.com/television/tv-audiences-and-...
I've tried to get her to change oh so many times, all in vain...
No rational explanation either. Just... that's how she rolls I guess.
Still, the objective tests from RTINGS seem to suggest that it's the LCD sets that look all fucked up after a few years, while almost all the OLED ones look perfect. And they OLED sets aren't showing a downtrend in overall brightness over time.
https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/longevity-results-after-10-m...
For the lifespan of the screen, it doesn't matter if anyone actually directs their eyes at it.
Why is that?
They also shift the image around by a few pixels to prevent logos and tickers from permanently marking the screen.
And when turned off, they also try to level the brightness of individual pixels by displaying different patterns - again to combat "burn-in".
You can make an OLED visibly burn in within a couple months if you max the brightness, cover it in static content and then leave it running constantly.
Or it can last a decade if used lightly, on lower brightness, with good burn-in compensation software, with few to no static images.
I have a 4K OLED from 2018. Since then, I think the only notable improvement in the models from the same manufacturer is maybe enhanced-ARC? That is a neat feature, but not sufficient imo. Maybe a 120Hz refresh rate, but very little content even uses 60, let along 120 - at least in the cinema and TV space.
2004 is the first year I remember watching a HD widescreen TV show (Lost). There were a handful of test clips and the like earlier, but they were a rare thing. E.g.: there's a HD video taken of the aftermath of 9/11 because the operator was just learning to use this (at the time) brand new technology.
That lasted about a decade, and then 4K become a thing around the 2013-2014 timeframe. I got a Sony 4K TV in late 2013 and a Dell 4K monitor in 2014.
However, both of those were standard dynamic range, albeit with a fairly "wide" colour gamut.
I got my first OLED HDR display in 2021, and an OLED HDR TV in 2022.
In other words, every "generation" of television technologies has lasted about a decade before being superseded by something significantly newer and better.
Display technology still has some ways to go. No current consumer panel reproduces 100% of the Rec.2020 colour gamut. Similarly, there are no consumer panels that can reproduce the full HDR10 or Dolby Vision brightness range of up to 10,000 nits. There are 8K displays that are close to that target spec, but they're either one-off experimental models or more expensive than a luxury car.
A decade from now, around 2033 mark, I full expect something like VR technology to have replaced TVs for many people. Apple's new headset (available next year!) will set a new quality bar that no traditional TV can ever hope to match, such as an extremely wide field of view, stereo, and very bright HDR in combination. Sure, they're expensive now, but after a decade of further development? They'll be amazing and cheap.
You are likely right about your specific use cases. Though you might also want to see how early on some people predicted that TV would never take off, because families just didn't have the time for it.
We don't have a TV at home, and we would just do different activities in the situations you described. (But, yes, those activities in these situations would likely not include hanging out with headsets on.)
Many young people live by themselves and can't afford a "huge" TV. Meanwhile VR will give them a virtual TV as big as they like.
Another potential future technology that might obsolete the current 55-85 inch typical TV sizes is "OLED wallpaper", or something similar that would allow wall-sized televisions.
Even before the 2030s I expect something like quantum nanorods to replace OLED panels, potentially allowing up to 10,000 nits in an affordable panel that doesn't suffer from burn-in.
On another front, I've noticed a lot more people watching something like TikTok, YouTube, or Netflix on their hand-held devices instead of traditional TV. I can picture a future super-thin, super-light Apple iPad with an OLED HDR display becoming very popular, especially for people on a budget that can't afford a huge TV.
Coordinated asshole design.
I can't decide if it's better to check for such things before purchase, or just return it as defective if I end up getting a model that does this.
If it doesn't say on the box "requires constant internet to function" in big bold letters, it should.
That would be a ridiculous requirement, because people expect that TVs need electricity. But the producer can argue that people these days also expect TVs to need the internet, can't they?
You can fix that with a piece of tap or blu-tack.
I recently acquired a very old Sony TV it reminded me how lag-free TV interfaces are supposed to work. But nooooo LG is like "we're going to make great TVs but the UI is a poorly written web page running on a 386, enjoy!"
No separate box seems to do all of 4K, Atmos, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HLG without some weird restriction like 'except the Netflix app'. Even worse if you wanted DV IQ I assume, but I think my TV doesn't support it anyway.
And honestly I think I prefer WebOS to Fire sticks' UI for example. Stock Android TV isn't great either. If I was into playing Xbox/PS games I imagine that would make a better 'hub', since it's presumably (I have no idea) more organised around your own content/games at least rather than random adverts and features you don't want. Also probably more money being spent on designing it.
The home screen on my LG TV seems to devote the top 60% of the page to sponsored content. Is this not an issue for you?
But my friend has a Samsung TV and it shows him ads for things he can buy from eBay, ads for games etc. in a similar area .. and yeah that's nonsense, that would really get on my nerves.
I just want to watch a film.
I don't want to hack my forks either. Or my microwave. I just want to heat stuff and then shovel it in the appropriate foodhole so I can get on with things.
This place isn't for just hackers, not anymore at least. And that brings good and bad.
A NUC is generally the way to go for smart TV functionality in general, IMO: you get way longer support, and it's much easier to diagnose problems as compared to some locked-down, proprietary, do-it-ourselves OS.
This is all subjective of course, but I think you'll find that in cheap cameras, overdone noise reduction is the culprit, rather than noise reduction itself. If you're able to look at the raw sensor data, I think you'll find something even worse still. Small sensors are inherently very noisy, in typical lighting conditions.
So yes, the images look worse than optimal, but not worse than if there was no filtering at all.
For example, Dialog Clarity/Enhancement, TruVolume (automatic volume leveling), and DTS Virtual:X?
Why or why not?
Do you use Spatial Audio on your Apple products (which sounds great to me)?
Also nice that they mention how to turn off ACR and other privacy related features as well.
https://www.consumerreports.org/mycr/benefits/tv-screen-opti...
It’s been awesome. The TV is fast to boot up, responsive, doesn’t spy on me, and doesn’t need useless software updates.
Build quality and software invasiveness are both going to keep trending in the wrong directions until people stop buying smart TVs. And it's not like you need to break the bank or order commercial displays - $150 on Amazon for a dumb 43" 1080p, $260 for a 55" 4K.
I never observed what TFA is complaining about, does someone have an screenshot?
But they just do it better than the other manufacturers do?
Are you saying the original artistic intent of the creators to insert unskippable ads at the beginning of the disc is more important than the consumer's right to control the playback of the content they bought? Plus I heard it might kill babies.
See? It's just silly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bravia/comments/7ztuwv/what_is_moti...
Sadly disabling "recommended content" on the Google TV launcher also disabled voice search from the remote, but I am pretty sure that is a Google problem and not something Sony chose.
(Also my Sony TV cannot stay connected to my WiFi network for more than half an hour before I have to toggle WiFi on and off again...)
1. Controlling Spotify 2. YouTube videos 3. Photo Albums from Google Photos
No network connectivity would render my TV completely useless.
Though I think I could show photo from a thumb drive, so I'd have that going for me I guess.
To clarify, my TV shows a list of apps, and that is it, aside from a single "suggested channel" at top I cannot get rid of.
No content previews, no "watch now!" no special promos, just a list of apps.
To explain a bit more what I said up above, Sony TVs cost more than other TVs with identical specs, ~$200-$300 USD more, but compared to a mid-range LG or Samsung, Sony opts you out of advertising by default (the initial setup is hilarious, for the most part you'd have to manually select a bunch of checkboxes to opt into tracking!).
So, my choices are really between Sony and Samsung, and I think I might just bite the bullet on the Sony and pay the extra amount.
Thank you.
WTF.
But definitely use the "override current launcher" setting. The description implies this is a "only if you're having problems" option, but I find it makes a variety of subtle things work the way they should.
I like motion interpolation. I always have it turned on, and I chose my TV based on the quality of its motion interpolation.
Screens are so big these days, that if you're watching a 24fps movie, any panning movement becomes a horrible juddering shaking movement. Judder judder judder... ugh. I can't stand it.
With motion interpolation turned on, everything is silky smooth, and I can actually see what's on the screen, even when the picture is moving.
So no, I won't be turning it off, and I suggest that the next time you watch a shakey-cam action movie, you try turning it on too!
Perhaps it is a preference that will change with generations.
[1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
#:~:text=In 2021%2C 81%25 of households,17 years old — owned tablets.
That query fragment is what triggered it, which means theres some Javascript taking that in and highlighting whats on the page
(I guess at some point this must have reversed everywhere except the bubble myself and my friends and acquaintances live in...)
/r/hometheater/ has nearly a million members.
https://www.avsforum.com/ is pretty active.
TVs are still getting larger and they've recently crossed the 100" in size.
So yeah, there's a least a few dozen of us!
The number of TVs that have it enabled by default seems to indicate otherwise. I'm not saying that the manufacturers are correct, necessarily, but I don't think they would go through the effort if they didn't think enough people wanted it.
Major, shockingly obtuse sensibility gaps are sadly the norm today in product management.
Maybe the group who doesn’t want it too life like is inoculated, or the other way around.
For example, some people can see a high frame rate and thus can't watch color wheel based DLP because they see rainbowing in the screen. I can't watch my old plasma in 48hz mode because it flickers. My spouse can't see the flicker at all.
Some of the problem for me may be related to the fact that I worked as a camera operator and video editor during the years from transitioning from the old NTSC standard to HD, and I paid hyperattention to detail as HD came online.
For some reason, the interpolation just screams "this is fake" to me.
Great description. It's the same for me.
This is nothing more than conditioning. "Quality" TV shows "film" at 24 fps despite the fact that they were going to be viewed at 30/60. They did this because even though 3:2 pulldown incontestably is a dirty, ugly hack that reduced quality, people were conditioned to think that if something went through that hack, it's quality. If it didn't, it can't be quality.
So when people talk about the "soap opera" effect, what they usually mean is concise and clear.
The best example of this was The Hobbit when presented at the original, director's intention 48FPS. People were so conditioned to movies being a blurring mess at 24FPS that a frequent complaint about the Hobbit was that it had the purported "soap opera effect".
This is most easily apparent in animation, which frequently makes use of variable frame rates to achieve different effects and feelings, often even within elements of the same scene. A character might be animated at 12 fps while the background is at 8 fps. Bumping those all up to 60 would be an entirely different shot with very different vibes.
It's about the slowest frame rate that's not very distracting.
Needless to say, film is no longer the major expense it used to be. In the early days the film itself was a fairly big part of the production cost (and don't forget distribution - cost to replicate the film - and operating cost for the projectors - handling film rolls twice as big, etc.).
And standards are sticky, so the industry stayed on 24fps for decades.
Except, it is very distracting. Around 60 it starts to become bearable for me and allow camera pans to be interpreted as fluid motion.
Action scenes are just brutal at 24FPS. Running, pans, and so on. Either it's a blurry mess at a 180 degree shutter, or it turns into a rapid slide show (like early in Saving Private Ryan).
24hz on an OLED with very quick pixels is a very different experience than 24hz on a CRT or 24hz on a film projector.
A movie properly authored at 120Hz (not interpolated with potential artifacts) would be objectively better than a 24Hz one in every possible way.
Firstly: No one on the mass market actually knows what 3:2 pulldown is, so it's hard for people to see it as an indicator of 'quality' -- most of HN, a technical audience, probably doesn't know what it is either: For reference, it's when a 24 frame per second film is converted to 29.97 frames by by interlacing 4 frames together to create 5 frames. That and a tiny bit of a slowdown gets you to 29.97, which is the NTSC frame rate.
Secondly: Why do people in traditionally PAL regions also hate the soap opera effect? Again, for reference, PAL regions ran at 25 frames per second and so got away with a 4% speedup and a 2:2 pulldown that has no real frame-blurring effect.
Thirdly: Generally, I prefer higher frame rate content: I have a 144Hz monitor, and prefer content as close to that as I can, but I still hate watching The Hobbit -- a lot of this has to do with motion blur: 48 frame per second content is not fast enough to get away with appearing seamless, and not slow enough that the per-frame motion blur you get with 24 frame per second 180 degree shutter hides the stuttering.
People don't have to know what it technically is to know it when they see it, and the simple incantation of "soap opera effect" demonstrates that.
Again, almost all dramas shoot at 24 fps. There is zero technical reason for this (there once was a cost saving / processing reason for it, and then people retconned justifications, which you can see earlier in this very thread). They do this because, again, people are conditioned to correlate that with quality. It's going to take years to break us from that.
>I have a 144Hz monitor, and prefer content as close to that as I can
This is not meaningful. Preferring games at a higher framerate has zero correlation with how you prefer movies. And however odd you think the take is, you like 24 FPS because you've been trained to like it, Pavlov's bell style.
Are you sure it’s really just conditioning? Impressionist paintings are obviously a lower fidelity reproduction of reality than photorealistic paintings, yet people tend to like Impressionism more, and I don’t think that’s necessarily just cultural conditioning. Sometimes less is more.
The reason no one has changed process isn't because there's tonnes of better options that everyone is just studiously ignoring because of pavlovian conditioning. It's absolutely nothing to do with people liking the look of interlaced 3:2 pulldowns. It's because the current options for HFR content just plain don't look very good. Some of this is unrelated to the technical specification of the recording & due to things like action content in HFR looking cheesy -- there's going to need to be a wild change in how content is choreographed & shot before we're anywhere near it being as well understood as current practises.
There are exceptions: 4K 120FPS HDR content for things like documentary content looks pretty good on a high refresh rate monitor (note: no one said games), but we haven't reached an era where that's even nearly commoditised and the in-the-middle stuff you'd want to do for cinema or TV just can't cut it.
Humorously this submission, and so many just like it, are about people who are outraged that their parents / friends / etc actually like motion smoothing. So...I guess? I remember a similarly boorish, ultimately-failed "no one should ever take vertical video!" movement from a few years ago, again pushed by people really, really certain of the supremacy of their own preference.
>and every cinematographer, animator, producer, and director
Now this attempt to appeal to authority is particularly silly. Peter Jackson -- you might have heard of him -- tried to do a movie at 48 FPS for a wide variety of quality reasons, to be lambasted by people just like you. People who are sure that the completely arbitrary, save-our-rolls-of-film 24 FPS is actually some magical, perfect number. It is insane. Everyone else is simply handcuffed to that completely obsolete choice from years ago, and will be for years more.
I'm not going to convince you, and have zero interest in trying. And I am certain you're not going to convince me. But your argument at its roots is "that's the way it's done, therefore that's the perfect way and the way it will forever be done". It's utter nonsense.
Instead of trying to jump to 48fps or 60fps, maybe they should just adopt 30fps as the new standard for a while. The 24fps fans won't have too much to complain about, because it's not that much faster (and it's the same as the old NTSC standard), and the HFR fans will at least have something a little better. Then, in a decade, they could jump to 36fps, then 42, then 48, etc.
As a bonus, the file sizes for movie files won't be that much bigger at only 30fps, instead of 60+.
But that's more about what you're shooting and where you're watching it.
I typically don't like portrait video because I watch most video on a 16:9 (or wider) screen. 9:16 video leaves a lot of wasted space. I get why people shoot vertical - because they're only using cell phone screens to view and the content is "portrait-oriented" like a person talking to the camera.
But the other side of this is when you see someone shooting portrait orientation and they have to pan around, back and forth, constantly moving just so they can capture the whole scene. It doesn't make sense if the subject(s) are arrayed horizontally. Add to this the simple fact that you can just spin a phone sideways and even mobile viewers can see the whole thing without all the panning.
If anything, the easy switch from portrait to landscape should offer mobile-shooters more flexibility to match orientation to content rather than likely viewing device.
The reason I didn't like the Hobbit was because they went overboard on CGI. They had to make Orlando Bloom (Legolas) appear younger than he was in the Lord of the Rings which was released a decade before.
Tolkien's elves are literally immortal and the time between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is less than a hundred years. Legolas' father is several thousand years old. There is no reason to expect Legolas to look younger in The Hobbit; you'd want him to look exactly the same.
Production-wise, it was the silly looking CG characters. Even worse was the way they stretched one simpler story into three movies (while the LOTR trilogy just managed a good job of adapting three long books into three long movies without too much oversimplification.)
It looked like absolute soap opera crap. And the worst thing was that I could _easily_ tell when the actors were carrying light prop weapons compared to the real thing.
At 24 fps your eye can't tell, but at 60fps you see the tiny wobble that the foam(?) prop weapons have and it's really jarring. Same with other practical effects, they're easier to hide in the ye olde 24 fps version.
Watching movies in 60fps is the same as when porn moved to 4k. You see every little flaw in great detail that used to be hidden by worse technology. Everyone needs to step up their game in areas where it wasn't needed before.
One of the rules of cinema and shooting at low frame rate is to use "180 degree shutter" (a term that comes from the spinning shutters used in old film cameras), or in other words a shutter that is open for half as long as the frame rate. i.e.: If you're filming at 24 frames per second, use a 1/48th second shutter speed.
The reason for this is that 24 FPS @ 1/48" exposure film adds enough motion blur to each exposure that any movement that occurs over a small number of frames is naturally smeared by a consequence of the exposure time, but anything that is relatively steady across frames tends to look crisp. If you shoot at 24 FPS @ 1/1000", you end up with something that looks like a fast flipbook of static pictures. 24 FPS just isn't fast enough, and people can see that each individual frame doesn't contain movement.
Anecdotally, 120FPS @ 1/1000" on a 120Hz display doesn't exhibit this same problem, at least to me or people I've shown it to, although some people will notice it "feels fast".
48 FPS @ 1/96" seems to be the worst of both worlds: Too fast a shutter for motion blur to compensate nicely, too slow a frame rate to to make it look seamless, so it ends up in the uncanny valley where people know there's something missing, but not what.
The frame interpolation feature that people seem to hate is almost directly designed to fall into this horrible territory.
Motion blur doesn't work on modern TVs (i.e. OLED). They will display a static, blurry frame for 1/24 of a second, then snap to the next one practically instantly with a clearly visible jump. What I get in the end is a juddering mess that is also blurry, so I can literally see nothing.
Naive interpolation of inter-frame content is awful, is what a lot of TVs do to implement their smoothing feature, and is why everyone complains about it.
The reason a lot of people hated The Hobbit may be partly because of this problem: It was shot at a 270 degree shutter to try to get a bit more motion blur back into each frame, which to a lot of people felt strange.
Maybe, or maybe we just haven't adapted to 48fps yet. Something I heard a lot about The Hobbit was that the outdoor scenes looked great whereas the indoor seens looked like film sets - which, well, they were film sets, and making a set that looks "natural" will require new techniques. Everyone hates early stereo mixes (e.g. The Beatles), not because stereo sound inherently sounds bad but because production takes time to adapt to new technology.
But no one's brain is saying "wow the lack of motion blur really affects the realism here".
I walk into a house and see a TV show playing on a TV with interpolation turned on and it just looks weird because of how TV looked growing up. I mean that's just the simple reality of it. I understand when film nerds come along and explain motion blur etc but that's all very "system 2" thinking. I'm talking about pure system 1 subconscious processing.
What's even weirder is how some folks can never seem to grasp why their explanations of how motion blur is bad can't convince others to suddenly like interpolation.
With time, higher quality sets should balance this back out.
https://youtu.be/MFlz5cCDMmc?t=25
To my eye, interpolation does the exact same thing. It's like they used too many lights and it makes the layers of depth in the shot "separate" from each other and look flat. It makes the whole shot look completely fake to my eye.
You can also prefer to not like black & white films, and watch the colorized versions done decades later.
You can also prefer not to see nudity, violence, or profanity, and watch the edited-for-TV versions of those films.
Finally you can prefer a totally different story or shot composition or artistic choices altogether, and ask Generative AI to recreate, reedit, or augment scenes to your preference.
All of these are valid preferences and we have the technology to facilitate them for you.
But 1) They should never be the default on any technology you acquire. That's the PRIMARY sin of all of the technologies mentioned by OP - it's not that they exist, it's that they're on by default, and since most humans never change the default settings on ANYTHING they change, they experience content in a way that as not intended by the original artist behind the vision.
And 2) Well, this is subjective, and everything is a spectrum. But you are ultimately robbing yourself of the specific experience intended for you by the creator of the film. It's certainly within your right not to care and think that you know better than them, but on a spectrum of that philosophy, carried out across all of society, it's probably not a good thing.
Now if you're talking about watching YouTube or similar content then it's a different story.
So I don't buy this "vision" argument. It's just holier-than-thou. Directors choose 24fps because it's literally the only option. It's no choice at all.
Forcing me to watch your movie as a jerky motion-sickness-inducing mess? I will indeed, to use your words, shit on it.
Most people don't give a damn about those things. They just want to be entertained, maybe they have other hobbies where they can exercise their particular snobbism, and movies are not particularly important for them as an art form or they don't care much about art at all.
How do you feel about watching movies in a theater? The frame rate there is low but the screen is so much larger.
There was one movie that they showed at 48fps - I think it was The Hobbit? I've forgotten. That was amazing. Blissful. My eyes have never been so happy.
Even if I forgot the plot already.
Different display technologies need different things. No difference from CRT filters on old video games played on modern screens.
Probably it's just what you're used to and how much you've been trained to notice artifacts.
Audio still wins by a mile in a theater though. Though home theater audio has gotten pretty darn good. I just wouldn't know as long as I'm in an apartment.
You can also always choose when to have motion interpolation on or off. For sports and nature documentaries I think it's just better. For animation it's worse. For other films it depends, I usually prefer it in something fast and actiony, like John Wick.
I don't play games much, but visually I've always distinguished between games and movies. I expect them to look quite different, not at all similar.
And I thought my feelings about this were universal, and had confirmation bias from seeing postings before Thanksgiving like "if your parents' TVs look weird, here's a guide for turning off motion interpolation depending on make and model", etc. I've assumed that the whole point of motion interpolation was for new TVs to impress people with how they look for sports, that this is what sells TVs in Best Buy, and the over-application of motion interpolation to other content was an unfortunate byproduct.
Theater is fine -- I have a home theater w/ a 24p projector. I wish it had 120Hz smoothing, but at least it's not dim like my local theater.
24p content at 60Hz is really, really bad (3:2 pull down what not). At least we can agree on that. That seems to be what "turn off motion smoothing" is about, to me.
24p content at 24Hz is fine, but 120Hz is better.
EDIT: I should say that the input lag (gaming) is much greater for smoothing, so even at ~30 fps I'd run my PlayStation at 60Hz no smoothing (game mode on &c).
Movied are even worse, I can absolutely see the judder especially when panning. It is one reason I prefer to wait for home releases and will go to movies that are specifically phenomena irreplaceable at home, such as Oppenheimer in 70mm IMAX.
New TV I've got has the `Filmmaker mode` - wasn't sure what exactly is that, turned it On and yes - it's how it should be. This article cleared it for me now
The only bad thing about motion interpolation on most TVs in my book is the fact that the /implementation is often pretty bad/. If perfect frame interpolation was a thing, I'd watch everything upsampled to 165Hz of my monitor. Well, I do it anyway using the Smooth Video Project. But that also suffers from artifacts, so is far from perfect. Much better than judder though...
More articles explaining how to customise the settings is better than less because it draws attention to the fact these options are being forced on all consumers.
Shaky-cam action movies are their own unique problem :)
I think they exist because it saves a fair bit of cash on fight choreographers and the time it takes to train the actors to do it realistically. On the flip side, it really increases the respect I have for properly choreographed action scenes that are consistent and visible.
I don't think this is about feelings. (But it just might be in a small minority of cases IMO, and if it's the case for you, then all the power to you.)
In the case of this article, all the points are about discernment. Some people not only notice the issues, but are also able to identify them and articulate precisely what is happening. The rest don't.
I would say your visual experience is fairly rare, but common enough that I regularly encounter people that have various issues with digital motion. I have no problems with low framerates myself, but I do find camera shake (especially as so common in video games now) to be nauseating, though it seems most people have zero issue with it.
It's so ironic that at the end you gave an advice:
> I suggest that the next time you watch a shakey-cam action movie, you try turning it on too!
Are you assuming that everyone likes the same things you like? I guess not. The same for the article—it doesn't assume that.
No advice fits everyone, but good advice fits many people. And I'd argue that the article's advice fits many, if not most, people.
TV is probably the only screen many people have that has motion interpolation on by default. They watch movies on theaters, PC monitors, laptops, tablets, and phones probably more than on TVs.
Many people are already used to what movies "look like." Non-tech-savvy ones might not know what "FPS" means, but they would likely be able to notice that watching movies on their phone feels different from on a TV with the default setting. The article's suggestion to disable motion interpolation on TVs makes the watching experience more consistent across all screens.
How would my TV get a virus? This was a Tizen TV, not an Android TV where I'm installing shady apps.
https://www.techspot.com/news/78967-samsung-loading-mcafee-a...