Motion smoothing involves a more sophisticated technology, called frame interpolation. (Check out our TV Ratings, available to subscribers, to see how well each set we've tested does with motion blur.) So what, exactly, is motion smoothing? LCD TVs have a tendency to blur during fast-moving scenes, and manufacturers have found ways to reduce that effect, including repeating frames, or inserting black frames into the video signal. This is referred to as the "soap opera" effect, because soap operas are typically shot with 60Hz video cameras. When a TV's smooth motion feature is activated, movies can start to lose much of their character.
That's why video of sports, and reality and game shows, has smoother motion than 24Hz films. In contrast to movies, video is typically shot at 60Hz. The jerky motion is most evident on scenes with camera pans. This appearance comes about because movies and a lot of prime-time TV shows are shot at a relatively slow 24 frames per second, or 24Hz.
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And it's yet another one of those features that sounds like a good thing-who, after all, wants an unsmooth picture?įor one, movie lovers, who are uncompromising when it comes to preserving the "film look," which means faithfully reproducing a slightly stuttering effect called judder.
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To make things even more confusing, companies tend to give this feature their own proprietary names, such as Auto Motion Plus (Samsung), Motionflow (Sony), and TruMotion (LG). Like a spy or credit-card fraudster, motion smoothing has many names, including smooth motion, motion estimation/motion compensation, and motion interpolation. Note: Some models have a zero setting in the center of the control, so lowering it beyond that point might actually soften the image. At first glance this might give the impression of greater detail, but what it's actually doing is masking fine detail-and oversharpened images can add a halo around objects.
What it really does is artificially boost fine detail and texture, while accentuating the edges of images in the picture. Turn off noise reduction and you'll have more picture detail and a more natural-looking image.Īnother denizen of the "sounds good, but really isn't" department is sharpness control, which oxymoronically doesn’t actually make the image sharper. The problem with engaging noise reduction is that it comes at the expense of detail and fine texture-these tend to get smoothed over when the feature is active. But for the most part, you're getting much cleaner, higher-quality digital source content these days, whether its over-the-air digital broadcasts, high-def signals from cable and satellite TV services, or pristine video from Blu-ray discs. And, yes, when TVs upconvert video signals from lesser-quality sources you may see still some noise. Noise was a bigger issue with older analog TVs, and especially with lower-definition analog signals. "Hey," you might argue, "why do I want to turn off noise reduction? I don't want to see any noise on my TV!" That would seem to make sense, except it doesn't.