Tweet What is the best TV format for watching old B/W films.

Hi all, I recently bought a 42 inch full HD 50 hz LED/LCD TV and connected it to DVD and Bluray players via HDMI.

On first impression there is a vast improvement in picture quality but with one issue that I find unacceptable. I sorely miss the smooth action motion of my old CRT TV. I find it a problem with the slow refresh rate of these new fandangled TV's. The image can be jerky and blured when fast action moves across the screen or even when people are just walking across the screen. It is very tiring on the eyes and sometimes I have to squint to get some relief. The TV has cinema, sports and game modes for different viewing but I find it works best with all these settings turned off. I have read some people don't have a problem with this issue but with others like myself and my wife too it is certainly annoying.

Should I have gone for a plasma TV or a LED/LCD with higher refresh rate? I hear the TV's with a higher refresh rate have their own issues in giving old films a plasticky video look.

Any advice on this problem?

Thanks

Paul

Your problem is different than mine. Mine is graininess. My old CRT with less resolution makes many DVDs look less grainy, depending on the transfer. Now, 50 Hz seems slow for an LED/LCD set what with the feeping creaturism (old computer joke) of the latest televisions at my local Costco, but it may be that you're more sensitive to that issue than some. I particularly dislike the look of 3D televisions, and I doubt I'd watch one for more than the few minutes I have.

Should I have gone for a plasma TV or a LED/LCD with higher refresh rate? I hear the TV's with a higher refresh rate have their own issues in giving old films a plasticky video look.
l

Plasma is indeed better for fast action sequences.

Also read this: http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your- ... ovies.html That link has good information about how to avoid that video look with new tv models.

Should I have gone for a plasma TV or a LED/LCD with higher refresh rate? I hear the TV's with a higher refresh rate have their own issues in giving old films a plasticky video look.
l

Plasma is indeed better for fast action sequences.

Also read this: http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your- ... ovies.html That link has good information about how to avoid that video look with new tv models.

Thanks for this. I thought plasma looked more film-like in the stores, but didn't know why.

I think I just learned why the motion becomes so jerky in the Flynn ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD in the first fight scene at Sir Guy's banquet for Prince John. I think the motion was speeded up in the original film but watching the blu-ray version the other night it looked like somebody had pressed the "FF" button. I have an LG set so I'll turn off the "Tru-Motion" effect and hopefully Errol and Basil can fight properly. Thanks very much.

[Christopher Jacobs]

A 50Hz set would be designed for PAL, so DVDs transferred at 25fps and mastered for PAL should look smooth, but playing NTSC DVDs, which are converted from 24fps to 30fps at 60Hz and then played back through a 50hz monitor would likely display jerkiness due to the various speed changes, which might have been masked on a CRT's slower response time.

I run movies (NTSC, PAL, and Blu-ray 24p) through an LCD projector (Panasonic AE 2000) and find that many if not most DVDs look drastically better than on an old CRT whereas certain others actually look much, much worse than they do on an old CRT. It's likely a combination of your TV set's capabilites, the configurations (through the setup menu) of both your TV and Blu-ray/DVD player, and also how any particular DVD or Blu-ray was mastered, authored, and compressed.

I've found that a more than a few 24p Blu-ray transfers still seem to have inexplicable skips in picture action on occasion. I expect this may be due to either faulty mastering, or a disc error that results in the player continuing to display one frame for two or three frame-cycles until it gets good data again. There may be similar things happening on DVD playbacks that look jerky (it happens all the time on digital TV broadcasts with both picture and sound together or one or the other separately). While analog video may have its own problems, it tends to deal with video and audio signal anomalies in a much smoother, less distracting way than digital video does. Someone else may have more detailed (or accurate) information about such playback problems).

--Christopher Jacobs
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs/Old ... BluRay.htm
http://hpr1.com/film

I've always found Plasma to look the best. Also if you are viewing a Bluray. A TV with the 24/p option where the screen refreshes at intervals of 24 like 48hz etc makes for a smoother experience. That is if the movie was encoded at 24fps. Not sure if it has any effect on interlaced content. Ideally you would be able to set the refresh and player to the exact frame rate of the silent film being watched. Personally I never realized how smooth a movie didn't look using 3:2 pulldown until I enabled this option.