TV question.... 120hz vs 60hz

[Riot]

So I've been looking at TV's to get with Christmas money. This one looks sexy:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6889102208 $1300

OR

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6889253124 $1000

OR

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... u=L49-4236 $1200 after shipping

Basically, the Samsung is 120hz and a little more expensive. I'm willing to pay more if it's going to be a lot better. I will be using it for a PC monitor, tv, and a gaming console if I ever get a 360 or PS3. I hear 120hz makes movies and stuff unnatural or almost "too realistic" or something. Does it make games and stuff with fast action that much better? At least $300 better? I'm just curious how many of you have experience or have seen the difference in 120hz vs 60hz.

[MonMotha]

The 120Hz stuff is all upconversion. Sadly, none of them let you feed it a 120Hz vertically refreshed signal (e.g. from a PC). TV is all 60Hz anyway. Basically, it takes two frames, compares them, does some motion estimation, and slides things around to attempt to make the picture smoother. This adds a little latency and sacrifices some vertical resolution (which 1080i is already kinda lacking). The result looks decent, though. It is smoother than normal TV. Perhaps the "artificial" aspect is just that you're used to TVs being a little more jittery, especially with interlaced signals lke 1080i and conventional NTSC (480i). This is even more true on movies since they are actually only 24fps progressive!

What is much more worth considering is contrast ratio and black level. The numbers provided are always inflated, so it's easiest to just do subjective comparisons. Go into a store and put all your candidates next to each other, then properly set them (this usually means turning down brightness and contrast and even backlight level on LCDs, too). The one that has the darkest black while still having a decently bright picture is "the best". Then just make sure it doesn't have terrible scaler latency and you're good to go.

Your links are abbreviated, so I can't see the products (and newegg isn't usually the best place to get this stuff as their return policies suck). Samsung does have some VERY nice TVs out there. The first LCD TV I ever mistook for a plasma was a Samsung: the black levels were amazing compared to the rest of "the wall". However, not all their TVs are great (though I wouldn't call any of them "bad"). Some do have scaler lag which is bad for e.g. Bemani games. You may also want to check out some of the Sharp Aquos series; they've gotten pretty good recently, too.

Also, if you can, try to find one with an LED backlight instead of CCFL. They are more even, can reproduce a better color gamut, and they'll last longer. Many TVs also take advantage of them to produce better black levels.

[Riot]

Yeah sorry, I copy-pasted from another post I made on another forum. I fixed links. Thanks for feedback! Check links now. The Samsung has 50000:1 Contrast Ratio. Also, are you saying you don't think there is much difference in gaming for example with 120hz and 60hz. I hear different things from everyone. Some claim it's a huge difference, some say it's not much. Hard to know the truth.

[Potter]

I'm too tired to read all of brandons post, and he knows what hes talking about so he probably already said this

120hz tvs murder the 24p gorgeous filmic look 99% of movies have, and is completely ridiculous. They are hugely frowned upon among filmmakers, and make me feel woozy to watch. Theres no reason at all for frame doubling to 120hz lulz

[Riot]

Is there any way to "tone down" the 120hz effect though? Say I want to have it full blast for gaming, can I tone it down for movies or TV or whatever? I know there are different settings for 120hz signal I've read about, but not sure how much the lowest setting of it will actually make a difference.

[Potter]

It's a marketing gimmick, just get a tv without it and be done worrying. doubling random frames for a "smoother" (read: jerkier and unnatural) look would probably throw your game and timing off terribly. Like brandon said, it doesn't actually accept 120hz signals. It just temporally upscales the picture

[MonMotha]

Almost all the 120Hz TVs (and certainly all the Samsungs I've looked at) allow you to turn the upconversion feature on and off at your whim. So, if you don't like it, you can just turn it off. There are some things it does make look a little nicer: those tickers on news channels look smoother, for example. However, like potter said, it makes film look strange since 1) it isn't what you're used to and 2) that's a whole lot of interpolation going on; the TV is attempting to create about 4x more data than exists, and of course that won't always look like it should. Sports look smoother, but I prefer to get the full res (especially on interlaced stuff) rather than try to get a fake fast frame rate, so I'd probably leave it off for e.g. football. The 120Hz upconversion often introduces a 1-4 frames of latency in the display, so it could be bad for gaming. Do a "lag check" to see.

While it's not exactly a great feature to buy based on, don't discount all TVs with 120Hz upconversion. They tend the be the higher end models and usually have better panels, better backlights, and better scalers. The 120Hz upconversion just isn't a big feature to shop on; instead, shop based upon other criteria like those I mentioned before.