A few times a week, I get an email asking me about the differences among all the new HDTV technologies. I try my best to get to them all but instead of responding to them individually I wanted to share this answer with everyone on the site.
When comparing 240Hz technology found in LCD HDTVs and 600Hz sub-field motion in plasma HDTVs you might have wondered which is better. Thanks to the people over in the Blu-ray.com forums I’ve got a great answer:
They’re comparable: top-end LED LCD’s do about 1000 lines on the Merson motion resolution tests, (and besides that, the Merson test is designed to “trip up” the way LCD’s handle motion… it’s always been an apples-to-oranges test that people pass off as an absolute. That’s why some magazines won’t have anything to do with publishing those results). Go judge for yourself. Find a store that will let you check out an XBR8 or Samsung 950. They’re not perfect, (the viewing angles are actually a little bit worse than an XBR4 or XBR5), but motion is not a weakness of either of those two sets, they’ll hold their own against any plasma in that respect; and that’s old news. I haven’t checked out any of the 240hz sets, other than last year’s XBR7, which I wasn’t all that thrilled about. In theory, 240hz sets should have great motion handling. To the human eye, 600 lines at 240hz should be indistinguishable from 1000 lines at 72hz; but as I said, in theory … there’s still a panel response time gap which may be noticeable.
LED HDTVs are definitely going to be more expensive, so unless you want to spend at least $900 on your new television anything with 240Hz might be out of consideration. When it comes down to it, you need to go to an electronics store walk around and take notice of which television you see with the best picture. Technicals and specifications are great from a theoretical standpoint but nothing is better than real world experience.
[Source: forum.blu-ray.com]
Other Must-Read Articles
