HDTV Blur - Ways to achieve the least amount

treitz3

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Good morning, gentlemen of the forum. What I would like to discuss and hopefully improve upon is digital blur or what it is commonly referred to as HDTV blur. I have been through 3 TV's in recent months and I have learned that one issue that I have not been able to nip in the bud is HDTV blur. Below is a link to Wikipedia's link to HDTV blur...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDTV_blur

Basically, what I am experiencing is one great picture 98% of the time. This is the case with DirecTV and with my Blu-Ray player. The issue comes into play when a fast moving object [like a person] moves quickly across the screen. The "shaky cam" shots seem to be fine on everything that I have watched so far. When some object moves quickly, there is a digital pixel blur surrounding the entire image. Almost like a ghost image, if you will, of digital pixel blur that surrounds the image as it is moving across the screen. It follows the image until it slows or disappears off the screen and is only limited to a 3" area around the moving object.

Below is a list of gear used for video;

TV - Samsung 46" LED http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/UN46D6050TFXZA Version H301
BDP - Sony BDP S570 http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/st...51&storeId=10151&langId=-1&partNumber=BDPS570
Receiver - DirecTV HR24 whole house DVR http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/content/technology/hd_dvr_receiver

I have 3 HDMI cables at the moment. 1 from Best Buy that retailed for around $40 [probably worth $4] that unfortunately, I did not return in time. 1 from Amazon, supposedly a high speed HDMI and 1 that if I recall correctly, was provided with the Sony BDP. All of them have no real markings on them to tell which is which but they are all just your standard, run of the mill HDMI cables.

From what I understand in talking with folks is that all HDTV's have this issue, some better than others. With the 3 TV's I have had in and out, I tend to agree. The Samsung has a great picture and I have no other complaints [I'm not nearly as picky with my video as I am my audio] with the video aspect. I would just like to learn what things I can do to improve this inherent issue.

What, in your experience, would you suggest to help me and others who would like to improve HDTV blur?
 

treitz3

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Hello and good morning to you, Steve!

The Samsung I have has a 240Hz refresh rate but as I understand it from Wikipedia, there are two classes of sets that claim 240 Hz. In the better class, Samsung and Sony both create 3 additional frames of data to supplement the original 60 Hz signal. Other manufacturers to this date who also claim 240 Hz are merely applying an image strobe to a more traditional 120 Hz approach and calling it 240 Hz.

Also according to Wikipedia, Samsung calls their 100 Hz + technology AMP "Auto Motion Plus". I do not see this anywhere on the box. All I see on mine is "Clear Motion Rate" which they claim is a new motion clarity standard based on the actual measurement of resolution in a moving scene. I have no idea if this is the same technology or which one may be better.
 

Steve Williams

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The Samsung I have has a 240Hz refresh rate but as I understand it from Wikipedia, there are two classes of sets that claim 240 Hz. In the better class, Samsung and Sony both create 3 additional frames of data to supplement the original 60 Hz signal. Other manufacturers to this date who also claim 240 Hz are merely applying an image strobe to a more traditional 120 Hz approach and calling it 240 Hz.

that was what I referring to
 

NorthStar

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Tom, LCD LED HDTVs (120Hz true) are much more prone to motion blur than plasmas (600Hz refresh rate).

And even with plasmas, when the camera moves sideways, the picture still get distorted.
There is no more focus, and it appears simply as blurring images. It's normal.

Technology ain't there yet... Between recorded images from the cameras and reproduction on our screens.
That's my view.
 

treitz3

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I would like to consider myself as one who is not too picky with my video but if this is normal, I wonder why it is so widely accepted. Try looking at a horses legs while they run. If they gallop, all is well. If they are running full bore, everything in between the full extension of the legs and background is a digital blur. Only the head, neck and body of the horse is in HD and clearly visible and it's very irritating. At least it is to me. I was talking to a friend of mine who has 3 HDTV's and now 4. The 4th being a plasma and he mimics what you say. It's still there, albeit with the least amount of HDTV blur.

I was looking at the refresh rate of the combined three parameters today [Samsung] and they have a model identical to mine. About the only difference I could find is that the other model, which costs a cool 1K more, offers 3D. I could care less about that. Not a big fan of 3D here but what I did notice was that the CMR [Clear Motion Rate] was considerably higher than the model I currently have. Mine has a rate of 240 and the model up from mine has a CMR of 720. Since I am unfamiliar with these technologies, would this be a big jump up in HDTV blur correction? Possibly better than a Plasma or no?

I'm a little late jumping onto the HDTV bandwagon. It's only been a little over a year since I purchased my first HDTV from a neighbor. Please forgive my complete ignorance on the topic, I'm still what many folks would consider a video virgin.
 

amirm

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Let me see if I can make a few points and shed more light on this.

1. Forget all the refresh specs on TVs. It is all marketing junk. LCDs for example, do not have fixed response time. Their response time varies based on what value you are starting with, and what you are ending with. TV companies take the smallest change and use that as part of their refresh rate computation. You will have a hard time getting the right information. Best you can do is do what I do which is stand in the showroom and watch a number of screens at once and see has the lest softening. This can be tricky because often this is in the source.

2. If you are seeing the problem in HDTV live broadcasts, especially sports, the bigger problem is not the above. But the fact that we have such poor standard that motion can create a ton of artifacts. To get around this problem, the encoder dynamically softens the image. The idea being that consumers prefer a soft image to a "pixelated" one.

3. The fastest technology is DLP which is only used in projectors today. To know if you have a source issue or not, the only option is to use such a projector side by side.

4. As Bob said, Plasma is faster (not 600 Hz faster but faster). Find a place that has them side by side with LCDs.
 

NorthStar

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Tom, the top LCD LEDs from Samsung have a claimed CMR (Clear Motion Rate) of 960 CMR.

But that still won't improve what today's cameras can record, when moving.
A camera and the human eye are different, and without being an expert on this subject;
we are not near the treshold of perfect vision capture, when in motion.

If our eyes are steady looking at a basketball match, viewed from distance, and without moving our eyes (head), as in filming with the most advanced cameras, in the same circumstances;
then there shouldn't be any blurring.

But as soon that our eyes move, as with the camera, the blurring effects take place from their own technical reality.
In real life we lost focus when moving our eyes watching action 'deroulements'.
Our brain reconstruct the missing parts.
In HDTVs, they reconstruct it with mechanical frame's interpolation.
But it is far from perfect, as it is not reality. And even reality in motion is a blur.

I know exactly what you mean; but this is part of normality.
And even if in the future they develop better and more advanced cameras with 8K video resolution,
the blurring effects will still occur, IMO.

Only when stand still can we focus properly on the action. As soon the eyes, or camera moves,
everything moves in unison, and the eye lost full perception.

Like I said, I'm not an expert on this, but that is my view.

* A Video guru would be welcome. :b
 

fas42

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But that still won't improve what today's cameras can record, when moving.
A camera and the human eye are different, and without being an expert on this subject;
we are not near the treshold of perfect vision capture, when in motion.
I don't think that it is the case, Bob, it's more a cost issue. If you watch some sports events they do special shots every now and again with super slow motion, so that you can pick every fine aspect of what's going on. It was recorded in real time at an extremely high rate, and captured every nuance perfectly.

Where this all falls apart is then saving that footage, and transmitting it to you. The amount of footage, data, information is enormous, so massive hard disk storage is required to retain all that fine detail. Compression helps, but can only go so far and then artifacts start appearing again. Then, how to get the video to you with this extra detail? Well, pay for massive bandwidth on a fibre data link or take over most of the broadcasting spectrum for a while. Or, have a download running over a couple of days onto your enormous hard disk capacity. Not really cost effective at the moment, shall we say ...

As mentioned by me in a couple of post this was tried in the cinema world decades ago. It worked beautifully, technically, but was a commercial dead end, because it was too realistic. People watching could not stop their instincts switching on, so a scary sequence would result is a number of heart attacks, etc.

Frank
 

NorthStar

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Slow motion video mode in all my Blu-ray players is terrible!

* But I think that I know what you mean Frank.
Today's HDTVs simply cannot display all the information from top notch moving pictures captured from the best high def res cameras.
Perhaps too, Blu-ray is very low video resolution as well. Because even on my 'nod bad' plasma display, I am not happy at all regarding what Tom is talking about. But I just take it for normality granted.

Amir was talking about DLP front projectors; are they much better in that regard?

Do you guys experiment blurring movements from let's say IMAX theaters?

Do we need dual stacked front projectors?
 

fas42

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Bob, it's all about the number of real, not "fake" or made up from the normal, frames of footage reaching your eye a second. I don't have a handle on all the numbers in this game, but the 25 or so frames you get with basic video is absolutely borderline: as soon as anything moves quickly it looks terrible! So you push up the rate using various tricks, in Australia it's 200Hz on LCD, which looks pretty good to me, in the shops.

But ultimately there is no reason why you couldn't go to 400, 800, 1600, etc, with real, not made up frames a second. Just someone has to pay the money to make it happen; especially you, the consumer ...

No problems with Blu-ray resolution: put on Baraka, go to the spot where people are circling the Islamic structure, walk up right next to the screen and pick out the individual faces of the participants ...

Frame rate is different from resolution: if those people were running around then there would be blurring. As there is with all cinema. This is a case where the display mechanism is not the problem, it's the source that lacks information. Since we're moving into an era where massive storage is getting cheaper and cheaper there will probably be a trend for doing "tricks" to create extra effective frames from old material, and re-releasing it. Just so long as it doesn't get into that "dangerous" area of becoming too "real" ...

Frank
 

NorthStar

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Peter Jackson (LOTR, King Kong, ...) is filming 'The Hobbit' at 4K and 48 frames per second,
I believe. And probably also in 3D with new state-of-the art cameras.

Perhaps that would help?
 

fas42

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Peter Jackson (LOTR, King Kong, ...) is filming 'The Hobbit' at 4K and 48 frames per second,
I believe. And probably also in 3D with new state-of-the art cameras.

Perhaps that would help?
Yep, that 48 frames will certainly help! I'm getting inspired to try and track down the history of that ultra-quality cinema development done, oohhhh, 30 years ago ...

Frank
 

amirm

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amirm

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Bob, it's all about the number of real, not "fake" or made up from the normal, frames of footage reaching your eye a second. I don't have a handle on all the numbers in this game, but the 25 or so frames you get with basic video is absolutely borderline: as soon as anything moves quickly it looks terrible!
This is a good point so let me expand on it.

When shooting movies, the frame rate is a very low 24 frames a second. If you shoot movement with that, it will look like it is strobing. Normal live broadcast TV is at 50/60 frames a second (e.g. for sports). To get rid of strobing, slow shutter speed is used. That way, the frames will look like they are blurring into each other. When sports is poorly shot on film like a super bright day, forcing fast shutter speed, you can see the strobing effect quite well where motion is not smooth at all like TV. So yes, if you are watching high-speed action on film, likely each frame has blur in it as otherwise it will look wrong.

Ironically, we are so used to the low frame rate of the movie that when it is taken away, we feel like it is wrong. That is what the motion interpolation does in TVs where they advertise higher frame rate. The electronics in the set is creating in-between frames. This creates the so called "soap opera" effect, named after soap TV shows which are shot with video cameras at 50/60 Hz. Ironically, the upsampling to these rates makes the video more "correct" but subjectively, it completely takes away the "look of film." For this reason, most people leave this setting off or at very low mode. Unfortunately when you do this, you also lower the frame rate of the TV as otherwise, they play tricks to get faster frame rate such as flashing the backlight on and off to force a distinction between frames.

It will be interesting to see if consumers adopt 48 fps as the proper look of film.
 

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