David Katzmaier from CNET has an interesting article about 240Hz TVs and whether or not you should wait to get a TV with that technology. Overall, I agree with his assessment and I’m glad that he wrote a long article about it.
In short, here’s the situation: movies are shot at 24 or 30fps, which is basically a “sampling” of the real world. When motion is quick (action, sports) the animation isn’t smooth because the sampling is low. You see that even in theaters during a panning shot.
The solution is to have a video processor “create” additional frames by analyzing images backwards and forward. It is called Frame Interpolation or Motion Compensation. That’s how most 120Hz or 240Hz system works, but not all, so beware of the hype.
My take is: 240Hz (or even 120Hz) is a good thing, but the question is: should you pay hundreds of dollars more for it? I would say no. I had to make that choice for my own 52″ TV and I have decided that even 120Hz it’s not worth $400 to $500 hundred more ($200 would be OK). Of course, this is just my opinion, but I get the question often enough that I thought that I would share.
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