Philips "HD Natural Motion" technology in some TVs...

yesterday, a friend bought a brand new shiny Philips LCD tv. with all the bells and whistles, minus ambilight.

so, we turn it on and check it out. wow. pretty pictures.

hey... what..? uhh did you see that? what the fu...that! ...again! ... what do you mean no? LOOK! she did the weird move again!

and so on, and so on. i'm a bit tired of rambling about this already, but still, the main point:

a few years back, TV set manufacturers thought it would be really cool if the extra frames displayed by the TV would not be just replicated original frames. they thought hey, why don't we calculate new frames between the real ones, so the movement will look more fluid! and the stupid race for the most-hundred-hertz panel was given a meaning, at last.

fast forward, present time. panasonic has a series of up to 600Hz plasma panels with "intelligent frame creation". sony has 200Hz LCDs with "motion flow". philips has up to 200Hz LCD panels with "HD Natural Motion", and i can tell you about that.

it does create frames. and it does make video material appear more fluid. but it feels SO wrong! the movement looks so unnatural, there are some artifacts because of that tech, but i'm not even going to touch that. the "natural motion" itself feels to me like a horrible motion artifact. imagine a perfectly good movie, shot on a film, with a native framerate of 24p. you know, the kind you watch in the cinema.

now, imagine a technology that manages to transform that very same source material (dvd, blueray, divx, whatever!) into a sped-up hilarious/disturbing spasming of mannequins, shot on a mexican-telenovela set. but really smooth! imagine watching blade runner for the n-th time, and having it ruined forever - some things you just can't unsee. somebody else on the net wrote "The motion on the philips looks like the actors are doing electric boogy. extremely unatural."

1) maybe i'm just too used to "the old ways" of 50i/25p (never had a progressive set at home)

2) MAYBE THE TV MANUFACTURERS SHOULDN'T TRY TO CHANGE THE VIDEOS THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN RECORDED!!!

for fuck's sake, on a 600Hz set with this feature on, there are 24 made-up frames for each ONE ORIGINAL FRAME OF VIDEO!?

i'm getting old. i'm quite sure i won't be able to get used to this. somebody tell me this is not where we're going. please.

Where we're going, there won't be any of this. Emptied of bombs, the sky will be maddeningly blue, wide, and beautiful.

it's just manufacturers inventing gimmicks to make up for lack of bandwidth

at the rate things are progressing, that sort of shit will be remembered as the gimmick that it is in 10 years

i only recently saw "moving pictures" on a 100hz TV

i really don't like what it does to the picture. i've not seen the particular TV you're talking about, but if it's anything like the 100hz bullshit, then it would really be a jarring experience for me

dude i know this effect you are talking about and it looks like absolute shit. it makes me feel like im watching a made for TV movie or something!

I enabled this on my monitor once. It's very distracting, you get these fast bursts of unnatural motion... I turned it off after a couple minutes.

oh thank fucking god someone else thinks this looks bad. i was at best buy shopping for a new tv and everything displayed looked like this. they were showing shots of hd movies that i'd seen before, braveheart or whatever, and somehow everything looked like it was filmed for a low budget bbc production. i started thinking maybe that's actually how movies look. like shit. hopefully the fad passes.

yeah these frames usually run in increments; 120hz, 240hz etc. it's mainly for hi def content that blurs onscreen, like many of the first and 2nd gen bluray players. i think it loooks sweet, especially on CG heavy films, and video games but it's a personal preference. also used a lot to demo sports programs that run in 1080i which makes for a lot of motion blur.

it looks like shit. it makes it look like it's filmed on a home video camera, makes everything look cheap.

yes, it looks like shit, to me at least, and obviously to some other people too.

i was really shocked. i never imagined something could change the watching experience so much, either in a bad, or in a good way. and this is in a bad way, very much so. when i saw this, i was so confused - i really wasn't if sure something was different from what i'm used to. but that friend of mine, he said he prefers it this way.

scary. i really hope this idea will die off.

I'm really not sold either way on the effect; it's cool to look at but at the same time, it's disconcerting and the vague 3D effect it places on the images does make it look like it was filmed on videotape rather than film.

None of my current TVs have this, but the one I'm getting for my son's room for Christmas probably will.

I don't think it effects video games, since their framerate is usually fixed by the game itself (30fps or 60fps) - or does it actually make the games look different?

Philips has been doing this kind of shit for years now. It ruins movies.

i thought this when i had a pre hd tv, with a certain motion something setting.. made lord of the rings look like mid 90's neighbours set.. horrible.

UGH! Yes, my parents have this on their TV. It drives me nuts. I'm hoping that as movies are shot at higher frame rates with newer cameras that this will be a non-issue with newer TVs in the future.

  On 9/27/2009 at 11:44 PM, Obel said:

Where we're going, there won't be any of this. Emptied of bombs, the sky will be maddeningly blue, wide, and beautiful.

I want to read the book this is from.

  On 9/28/2009 at 4:36 PM, Joyrex said:

I'm really not sold either way on the effect; it's cool to look at but at the same time, it's disconcerting and the vague 3D effect it places on the images does make it look like it was filmed on videotape rather than film.

 

None of my current TVs have this, but the one I'm getting for my son's room for Christmas probably will.

 

I don't think it effects video games, since their framerate is usually fixed by the game itself (30fps or 60fps) - or does it actually make the games look different?

the idea of smoothing the motion by adding extra frames sounds ideal for games (improving framerate), but unfortunately, the algorithms used today all make use of look-ahead to calculate what's "missing", which means that the resulting video stream is delayed in time. resulting in lag.

i'm really glad so many of you are against this!

  On 9/28/2009 at 4:36 PM, Joyrex said:

I'm really not sold either way on the effect; it's cool to look at but at the same time, it's disconcerting and the vague 3D effect it places on the images does make it look like it was filmed on videotape rather than film.

 

None of my current TVs have this, but the one I'm getting for my son's room for Christmas probably will.

 

I don't think it effects video games, since their framerate is usually fixed by the game itself (30fps or 60fps) - or does it actually make the games look different?

i think it looks best on the hi def consoles, especially FPS games like COD4 or Bioshock, enhances the 3D effect i think, especially if your TV is set to Vibrant. also played around with it on Wii til i got it looking nice, mainly for Zelda which is what i play most. helps reduce the jaggies somewhat and add a semi 3D effect as well.

as for use on video, with more TVs including this feature and more (Samsung is already releasing a 480hz LCD later this year) it will become a matter of preference, just like colorization of black and white films (which i'm against) or people that can stand pan and scan movies (which i hate as well). we're all welcome to our opinions.