how can anyone like motionflow?

[BlahBlahYouToo]

was at a house warming last weekend where the host couple bought a new samsung 55" and a HD movie was playing on cinemax or HBO.
everyone was marveling at beautiful and how realistic everything looked, while i was scratching my head wondering, really???

to me, it looked like crap and of course i kept that to myself. i just nodded in agreement so i would not hurt anyone's feelings.
i was actually shocked when someone finally said it looked like a soap opera.

actually the way I would describe it is very uneven frame rate which made it seem choppy but at a very high frame rate, if that makes sense.
it would appear to speed up to 60fps, then slow down to 20fps (numbers are made up obviously), then back to 60 fps, then back to 20fps, and so on.

also, the characters looked like they popped out of the screen, as if they were photoshopped onto the background, or they were in front of a green screen.

how can anyone stand this crap?

 

[Anubis]

how can anyone stand this crap?

because they dont know any better really, most people leave their TV on torch mode and think it looks great

what you saw soap opera effect is due to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation

and an overly sharp picture (why it looks photoshopped) is a common complaint with new LCDs

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2080478

 

[KeithTalent]

You know I just got my Sony 46EX500 setup last night and it seems to have MotionFlow, which is not something I am used to coming from an old 60hz Samsung.

I fiddled around calibration setting like crazy last night and now I am wondering if one of the problems is this MotionFlow stuff as some of the stuff I watched did seem to have a weird, artificial look, or it had some odd sort of artifacting in certain programming.

I am pretty much using these: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18869413#post18869413 calibration settings (I know it's a different panel than my TV, but it looks ok), with small adjustments to white balance and backlight, but after reading through some other posts on this MotionFlow stuff, it sounds kind of awful.

Is there any good in this setting, or is it just a marketing gimmick?

KT

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

You know I just got my Sony 46EX500 setup last night and it seems to have MotionFlow, which is not something I am used to coming from an old 60hz Samsung.

I fiddled around calibration setting like crazy last night and now I am wondering if one of the problems is this MotionFlow stuff as some of the stuff I watched did seem to have a weird, artificial look, or it had some odd sort of artifacting in certain programming.

I am pretty much using these: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18869413#post18869413 calibration settings (I know it's a different panel than my TV, but it looks ok), with small adjustments to white balance and backlight, but after reading through some other posts on this MotionFlow stuff, it sounds kind of awful.

Is there any good in this setting, or is it just a marketing gimmick?

KT

i really don't see any reason to have this feature on at all.
one of the first things i would do is disable it.

i mean, what blind engineer implemented this and then thought, wow, this looks great!

 

[Anubis]

more then you complaining about this today

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1266403

 

[PuppettMaster001]

I really don't like the look of it either. I have friends who have spent lots of money on TVs that have this "feature" enabled and they actually think it looks good.

 

[JackBurton]

MotionFlow is actually the term Sony uses to describe their frame interpolation. Samsung calls theirs AMP (Auto Motion Plus). Pretty much the same thing and yes, it sucks.

 

[nickbits]

I have it turned off as well. Tried to like it but no go.

 

[scootermaster]

I'll just leave this here:

http://xkcd.com/732/

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

In the defense of this technology, just because you've seen a poor implementation of it does not mean that the idea is without merit.

24fps is not enough to smoothly capture motion. We've all become used to this look in movies over the years. We associate higher frame rates with lower quality video.

If overdone, frame interpolation can make things look very unnatural and cause significant artifacting.

Good frame interpolation solutions will have degrees to which they will insert frames to smooth out motion.

I find the highest setting of frame interpolaiton slightly offensive on my display. The 1st setting seems very subtle, but goes a long way toward smoothing out motion (particular in panning shots, where 24fps makes me want to rip my eyes out). The middle setting is how I have things now. It does an excellent job at smoothing out motion, maintaining detail when the screen is in motion, and still has only minor artifacting.

 

[Emulex]

it sucks. marketing gimmick. 120hz is good for avoiding inverse telecine but having to switch back and forth its just annoying. i'll take my inverse telecine 60hz all day long.

 

[Spicedaddy]

I used to hate 120Hz, probably because older sets sucked at it and most people have it on "High" setting.

But I recently played around with my mom's Sony 46EX500, and thought MotionFlow on "Low" wasn't actually that bad. I couldn't see much difference from my 60Hz set while watching HD cable, and 24fps Blu-Ray movies were much smoother. I guess it depends how sensitive you are to the 24->60Hz conversion.

 

[electroju]

I have no problem with the 120 frames per second or 120 Hz. I have a problem listening to a crappy audio system. If I do not like your audio system, I will let you know. In order to watch movies, you have to have the best audio system compared to your video system in order to experience the movie. Though watching TV shows is an exception, so you need an OK audio system for TV shows.

In order for HBO and Cinemax to look good, both the cable box and the TV have to be HDCP compliant and using either HDMI or DVI-D. If component video is used, the video will look only as good if the DAC in the cable box and the analog to digital converter. If one is not great, expect distortions on the monitor or TV. Some brands have a good way to clean up the noise, but it has limits.

All LCD are crap, but I have to live with it. To show off MotionFlow or 120 Hz correctly you have to use micro reflective displays like DLP and technologies based on LCoS. The speed of these technologies are in nanoseconds. Plasmas uses motion interpolation at a very, very high rate to show that they are as fast as any other technology, but the speed is still 30 to 40 milliseconds. LCD is slow up to 30 milliseconds at some parts.

 

[Gibson486]

It looks awkward when someone looks like they are ice skating across the screen...

As for artifacting, it depends what the source is. On Blu Ray, nope. I do not see any. On DVD...yes, there is. On stuff like anything from a cable box....it makes no difference. I have a sony z5100 and the feature is turned off.

 

[Modelworks]

Regardless of the technology , motionflow and whatever else they want to call it is asking a cpu to look at two sequential frames and decide what it thinks a middle frame would look like. CPU are not even close to doing that where it will look correct for all content types.