Whatever you buy, make sure it has refresh rate of >100hz. Less than that, some action intensive part of games will look annoyingly choppy.

This post has been edited by Satanist: Apr 9 2010, 02:23 AM

That is not true. If Title A has slowdowns on a console, having a display that has 120/240Hz refresh will not help at all.

These 120/240Hz refresh rate is targeted at Blu-Ray movies rather than console games due to the fact that the latest Blu-Ray movies are all encoded @ 24fps. Games on the other hand do not sync with the 120/240Hz displays thus there is no effect at all.

In fact, if you had a video which is not divisible by 24/30/60/120/240 then you'll likely be experiencing Judder as well. (This happens when your video's FPS isn't the same as your panel's refresh rate. Thus, for a natural smooth panning movement, you'll have to make sure your video's FPS, let's say 60 has to be the same as your panel's refresh rate, which is also 60Hz.)

And also, some people experience a so-called 'Soap Opera' effect when they had these refresh rate booster features enabled.



Source

EDIT : Case in point, these features are just 'bonus' features to the display itself. It's the marketing people that exaggerates them by a whole hundred miles. Though for me, I would rather have a display that has a 24Hz refresh option for Blu-Ray movies instead of these 120/240Hz options.

This post has been edited by ffrulz: Apr 9 2010, 02:43 AM

Im not so sure about that, I personally have a Acer H233H which is locked to 60hz. Playing games like GT5 P, exhibits some flicker of vertical lines but the Sony Bravia I have in showroom, doesnt do this.. It the same thing when I used to play games on the PC without turning on the Vsync option esp when the FPS > 60. What does that mean?

100Hz and above are actually not more than clever, and in some cases, remotely useful gimmicks.

It does have its functions, and it usually carries it out quite well.

Playing games is actually worse with 100Hz and all that turned on.

When the TV is processing the frame, you get input lag, and you might notice a slight delay in movement onscreen and the input of commands.

Also, the TV is adding frames, which might cause some artifacts to appear.

For games, it is better to turn off all forms of processing (Noise reduction, black level enhancement, motionflow, etc.) altogether to try and reduce input lag as much as possible.

its really contradicting from what I have read earlier on.. huh!

I won't disagree with what the article says, as Motionflow does make it look 'smoother'.

But as the article said, the TV has to analyse the 2 frames to get the frame in between and that process takes time, which introduces input lag.

It is a bit difficult to explain without going in depth, but Motionflow seems to be a pretty useless feature (although it does seem pretty decent on some animated films, or TV shows)

These vertical lines you speak of is an example of Tearing. Meaning your game's FPS is running higher/lower than the panel's refresh rate. To solve this situation, VSync has to be turned on.



Source

I do give credit to motionflow technology being able to make films look smoother and the like, however I still rest my case that it still doesn't do anything much to games, especially on consoles due to different titles on different machines having different framerates. Some have uncapped FPS, some are VSync-ed, some have slowdowns which motionflow can't even fix because it's due to the hardware being choked thus sloppy FPS.

Motionflow is mainly targeted for Blu-Ray movies to make motion smoother, but some people are not used to it thus they call it the 'Soap Opera' effect which was pointed out in my previous post.

But some models from manufacturers have poorly implemented motionflow technologies and some panels will exhibit artifacts and the like as gnsumas pointed out. Which is why I said when it comes to Blu-Ray movies, a 24Hz refresh rate panel is still the best as it is 1:1 sync-ed to the FPS of the video itself.

This post has been edited by ffrulz: Apr 9 2010, 03:35 PM

Hmm youre maybe right, but where can u get a 1:1 24hz refresh rate panel??? Moreover, ps3 games are > 30 FPS. Does that mean alot of screen tearing?

Here is an old list of LCD TVs that support 1080p24, I can't find a newer list. But if you're looking for one, look at the manual or something that talks about 24Hz or the manufacturer's website.

1080p24 panels

Not all PS3 games have the same FPS, in fact there are a lot of titles that experience tearing, I would think majority of PS3 games exhibit screen tearing, X360 games as well due to unstable framerates.

Head over to http://www.lensoftruth.com, and look at their Head2Head articles to see which games experience screen tearing and which ones don't.

EDIT : Here's an even longer list of displays that support 1080p24 and also 5:5 pulldown without motion enhancers on.

Displays that support 1080p/24 signal at multiplies of the original frame rate

This post has been edited by ffrulz: Apr 9 2010, 04:12 PM

My arguement is this:

If you use a 24hz only LCD. Wouldnt you get a more pronounced screen tearing issue coz, PS3 games > 30 FPS > 24Hz?

Screen tearing in gaming terms usually means that the TV/display refresh rate cannot handle the higher output of the video card.

The list of the multiplied LCD TV you gave, with 5:5 pulldown or 24hz/p compatible, they are >100hz TVs isnt it?

Would you not agree then, In order to get the best experience of both worlds (games/movies), a >100hz TV is cool?

I specifically said that I would rather have a 24Hz display for Blu-Ray movies. I did not said that I would use them for gaming.

If you have read the link, I would assume you would already know about there are two type of panels that are >100Hz. One that displays true multiples of 24 via 5:5 pulldown. And another that adds motion interpolation (motionflow) to the image.

Some of them are 120/240Hz and some of them display it natively 1920x1080 @ 24Hz.

EDIT : So in the end, to get the best out of Blu-Ray and the now defunct HD-DVD movies, you would be better off with a panel that displays 1080p24 or make sure your display is outputting @ a true multiple of 24, which in this case is 120Hz via 5:5 without motionflow features.

As for gaming, screen tearing will only be solved via VSync, if Title A on the PS3 does not have VSync turned on, therefore tearing will occur whether or not your panel is >100Hz or 50/60Hz, which brings me back to my original post stating that neither motionflow nor >100Hz refresh rate will do much difference to games.

This post has been edited by ffrulz: Apr 9 2010, 05:35 PM

If you read my recommendation post, I did not say anything about motionflow did i?

As for gamin, correct...screen tearing will occur but it will be more PRONOUNCED in a TV thats < 100hz. It will be even more WORSE with a 24hz~50hz TV.Do you not Agree?

Your original post could mean either >100Hz with motionflow or without motionflow. In regards to these panels, some will only output >100Hz with motionflow (or rather frame/motion interpolation) while some will output >100Hz without motionflow provided you turn something off.

As to whether screen tearing will be more pronounced or not, that depends on how much of a difference between your game's FPS and the display's refresh rate.

Let's say Title A's FPS is 30 FPS. Your display is currently set to output @ 1920x1080 24Hz. If you had it VSync-ed, your game will run at 24FPS. Thus tearing will not occur. However if the game is not VSync-ed tearing will occur however it might or might not be that noticeable due to the fact that 24 and 30 is only 6 digits away.

If your game is running at 30 FPS while your display is set to 120Hz, the difference itself is already huge, so tell me which will be more prominent in regards to tearing then sir?

For consoles, tearing most of the time is unavoidable since the FPS is all over the place for different titles.

For PC Gaming however, if your GPU can manage to push out >100FPS for every title, then by all means, get a >100Hz panel and VSync it (Important). If your GPU cannot push out such framerates, do you not agree then a standard 60Hz display is better then?

I'm not sure which ones will force motionflow to be ON all the time. That wasnt the emphasis of my recommendation.

As I've said, screen tearing will be more pronounced when the video output of the PC/PS3 exceeds the refresh of the TV

In your example, a 120hz TV is capable of supporting frames until 120FPS. Whats a measly 30-70FPS to it then sir?

Yes, your recommendation states that one has to get a panel that supports a refresh rate higher than 100Hz to avoid choppy scenes, which is not true.

These choppy scenes in games are influenced by the hardware (in this case PS3) not being able to output sufficient frames during intensive scenes, which in this case we call it lag/stutter.

Refresh rate of the monitor does not influence the smoothness during gaming. Refresh rate will only play a part to avoid screen tearing if VSync is in play. Thus these are two different topics.

In regards to whether 60Hz or 120Hz is better to avoid screen tearing, for the PC, generally a 60Hz panel will be sufficient, provided your GPU is able to output more than 60FPS for every title, therefore you can VSync to avoid tearing. If you are confident your display can output more than 120Hz for every title, then by all means get a panel that supports 120Hz refresh rate and VSync it to avoid tearing.

If you do not wish to VSync your PC Games and your GPU is able to output >60FPS but <120FPS then get a 120Hz panel then, however there are some games that if are left running at uncapped FPS and it's >70FPS~ then you might experience fast forward/turbo mode glitch for those titles.

For the console, it does not matter whether your display is 60Hz or 120Hz, since most console titles can't reach 60FPS constant in the first place (other than Dante's Inferno).

(For this I apologise for not stating earlier that 24Hz is only supported for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies only AFAIK. When it comes to the PS3 and other consoles, during gaming, they will not output @ 24Hz, but rather 60Hz or 50Hz depending on the region of the game itself)

So in this case, if a game is 30FPS constant and the panel is 24Hz, (albeit impossible during gaming), yes tearing will occur. However, if you remember that tearing does not occur only when the FPS is > than the Refresh Rate of the display only. It occurs because the FPS does not sync with the Refresh Rate of the monitor.

Thus regardless of whether you get a 60Hz or 120Hz panel for your PS3, tearing will still occur due to the fact that PS3 titles do not have a constant FPS output.

ATM, I don't think there are any TVs that are only 24fps.

Most of them have normal refresh rates, but switch to 24fps when a 24fps signal is fed into it.

My TV has 100Hz, but also supports 24fps viewing.

Screen tearing and frame drops would actually be more pronounced on a TV with a interpolation.

'Motionflow' (or whatever else it is called) does nothing but add frames between whatever is being fed by the signal, so if the 2 frames it samples are torn, the frame it adds will also be torn, essentially giving you more torn frames.

Sony's implementation of this is one of the better ones though, and I don't see Bravias introducing much artifacting, so kudos to Sony for that

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Added on April 9, 2010, 7:11 pm
for those who don't get what i'm trying to say

This post has been edited by gnsumas: Apr 9 2010, 07:11 PM

Of course I said >100hz, coz I experienced slight flickering even with my 60hz LCD. Okaay, maybe choppy wasn't an accurate word for screen tearing coz thats what it looks like firsthand to me.

As I came from a PC gaming scene first and I can first hand tell you that even for PCs, the framerate is also never constant so its not what causes screen tearing. You can test this with old games like Quake 3 or benchmark utilities.

The screen tearing problem occurs when the FPS output exceeds the LCD framerate which is why I turn on the V-Sync or limit the FPS output to less than that of the monitor's. You'll never get screen tearing problem with framerates below the monitors refreshrate. When it dips down to sub 28FPS, you'll get lagging.



This post has been edited by Satanist: Apr 9 2010, 07:58 PM

Yes for PCs Tearing is the result of the FPS being higher than the Panel's RR. However for consoles this is not the case. Explain then why is there tearing @ sub 60 FPS with a 60Hz display then? It's because it's out of sync with the display's RR.

Somehow, tearing on console games are an example that you can get tearing on a 60Hz display but yet the game's FPS is way below that.

Bottom line is, if you want no tearing = VSync, it doesn't matter whether you have a 60Hz or 120Hz or 480Hz plasma display. Console Games are hardly VSync-ed.

This post has been edited by ffrulz: Apr 9 2010, 07:57 PM

If PS3 is not v-synced as you said it yourself, there is also no telling if it sometimes exceed the 60FPS mark hence screen-tearing. In addition PS3 RSX is based off a NVidia 7800 series which is available for PC as well??

Lensoftruth doesnt explain how they get those torn frames but are they refering to screen tearing as we are discussing?. What I'd guess is that there is a glitch in rendering department where sometimes 1 of the frame gets rendered faster than 1/60 of a second.

Perhaps my Acer LCD isnt QCed properly

Or getting a >100hz TV.

This post has been edited by Satanist: Apr 9 2010, 08:24 PM

The RSX is indeed based off the architecture of the nVidia 7800GTX albeit there are some differences.

Yes, LoT is referring to the exact same tearing we are discussing about. Most PS3 games do not even manage to get 60FPS constant, hence why game developers did not implement VSync into the game.

The tearing that most people experience in PS3 games is due to the uncapped FPS. Tearing does not necessarily mean your FPS has to be more than the RR of the display like I said before, even though on the PC, tearing seems to only happen when the FPS exceeds the RR of the display. However, on the PS3, this is not the case, even on the 360 even, it's games are hardly ever rendered at 60FPS or above, to game developers on consoles, as long as they manage 30FPS, it's smooth to them.