Samsung LN52A650 - Motion Blur in sports?

[aphex]

Good friend of mine picked up a Samsung LN52A650 a little under a month ago. He just shot me an IM asking if his tv has an issue, or if its working as designed.

He noticed that while watching the Olympics in HD, he's getting considerable motion blur. He's tried messing with the settings somewhat (even tried using Cnet's recommended settings), Auto Motion on and off, no luck. He said its still pretty noticeable with the motion blur.

Any ideas? I've seen sports in person at Best Buy on the panel, and I never noticed much motion blur at all.

Could it be his cable co? The channel? Or the likely TV?

 

[PurdueRy]

Tell him to try OTA, he can avoid some of the compression that way.

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Tell him to try OTA, he can avoid some of the compression that way.

Would the compression cause motion blur? I thought compression only effected artifacts.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: aphex

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Tell him to try OTA, he can avoid some of the compression that way.

Would the compression cause motion blur? I thought compression only effected artifacts.

Oh no. Compression can cause smearing, especially in darker scenes.

Comcast just bought our local Insight system. And last week, they started their infamous compression. What used to be HD that was much better than both sat systems is now a smeary, artifact filled mess. It's very sad.

 

[krotchy]

My guess is you are seeing blurring due to compression as mentioned before. Depending on how good your eyes are this could look like blurring or blocking or a combination of both. HD stations coming through cable lines are notorious for being overcompressed, and something like the Olympics with high frequency imagery will make the feed look awful (high frequency in video means lots of changing detail, aka crowds)

The worst thing you can watch for compression is when they launch confetti when someone wins something on a game show. I feel like I am watching giant block people during it.

 

[nataku00]

I've been watching the olympics on my LN52A650 a little bit in the main living room with OTA HD and it has been great handling sports.

 

[montypythizzle]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: aphex

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Tell him to try OTA, he can avoid some of the compression that way.

Would the compression cause motion blur? I thought compression only effected artifacts.

Oh no. Compression can cause smearing, especially in darker scenes.

Comcast just bought our local Insight system. And last week, they started their infamous compression. What used to be HD that was much better than both sat systems is now a smeary, artifact filled mess. It's very sad.

I thought it was just me thinking the same thing, also in central Illinois.

 

[sivart]

If this is an LCD it could be that also. I notice in golf / racing / hockey you get a lot of ghosting with LCD that isn't present on my 'cheap' Vizio plasma.

 

[SlickSnake]

I hate to break this to you (or your friend) but there are a lot more complaints about the Samsung LN52A650 than about the 46 inch version. The complaints include more flashlight effects and clouding and other possibly heat related issues and also include picture uniformity issues. Which is one reason I decided not to get a 52 and went with a 46 of this series. Mine exhibits no ghosting or flashlight effects, and the picture appears uniform.

Live feeds are not the best way to test these problems out, since they are commonly related to the feed itself like the HD receiver or the source like the broadcast station, cameras, ect., and not really related to the HDTV.

The best motion blur test is a true 1080p source like a high definition player or even a HD game system or a good PC connection. Mine has virtually no noticeable motion blur on a pure HD source. And my 46" Aquos performs just as well on a pure HD source, too. My dad came over a few days ago and was blown away just by the picture on my Aquos in my living room watching the Olympics in HD on my Dish DVR. He couldn't believe how clear and colorful it was. Of course, I spent a while tweeking to get that, too.

The problem with live sports is they frequently use dissimilar cameras to get different shots. So you end up with a hodge podge of various makes and models and lenses when they switch views. And you will see this especially so in an event like the Olympics where they most likely had to rent cameras from other sources just to have enough cameras to show all the events.

Oh, and make sure he is not using the coax connector for the TV. On my HD DVR the coax output only handles 480p. Which is standard definition. If he's getting poor upconversion of the signal, that will effect it greatly.