TV & Home Theater

[bambas68]

So we just bought our TV 2 months ago, and the last couple of weeks we have noticed that the picture quality is not so great.  Every once in awhile the picture will sort of studder, and with motion, it's like the tv can't keep up with the picture/motion.  We've tried changing the settings on the auto motion plus and the judder/blurr reduction, nothing makes it better.   It didn't do this right away when we bought it.  We have had terrible luck with tvs, so we're just wondering if there's any advice out there.  We do have the 4 year warranty, so i'm probably going to end up having the geek squad just come take a look and see if we need a different one.  TECHNOLOGY!!!!!

[NoNoBadDog]

What is the source of the picture?  How is that source connected to the TV?  Be aware that what you describe scould be the fault of your cable provider. 

FWIW, the 120Hz "motion" is a complete myth...nothing more than marketing...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=832822

http://www.avtechnologyonline.com/article/40606.aspx

All of your broadcast sources are 60Hz.  They cannot be "smoothed" by averaging fields.  Sorry...any setting but off will degrade your picture.

[consagra]

I've found that the clear (low) setting works best on my Samsung LCD. I also have to switch it from clear to standard (med) and back to clear on mine when I turn the TV on. Otherwise, it will eventually studder. Then every once in a while (a few times a week), it will start to studder anyway. It's always relieved by rewinding and fast forwarding on my DVR, changing the channel or switching to standard and back to clear again. My panel itself is otherwise flawless, so I put up with this minor inconvenience. Samsung's AMP is great when it works right. I will tell you that there are a few shows that I watched recently during which it was absolutely the cable feed and not the TV (notably two football games - Bucs in London and Gator game on Saturday). My friends told me they saw the same thing and I saw it on my old CRT TV too. Otherwise, yeah, try geek squad to see what they say. I'll be interested to know their solution.

[consagra]

Quick follow up... my TV always stutters in standard and smooth to some extent (med/high). And the solutions I mentioned above are either/or, not all, when the TV begins to stutter. Mine also tends to stutter more when AMP is left off than when it's on clear. Strange.

[DarkWingDUCK]

NoNoBadDog is right, 120Hz and 240Hz are a myth and technically do not exist.  They are an easy way to market a complicated feature to a mass public.  Your TV interpolates extra frames in effort to "smooth out" the smearing/blur of fast motion.  The downside of this process is that the TV basically has to guess were to insert the next frame of motion.

take for example if a character waves hello to another on screen.  When his hand moves to the left, the TV begins to anticipate that it will continue moving left, and will interpolate extra frames to smooth out that motion.  However it cannot anticipate the hand suddenly changing direction towards the right side of the screen, which produces a "stutter" quality to the picture.

Too much interpolation can be distracting, taking you out of the moment and causing you to focus on the faults in the picture as opposed to the narrative on screen.  CLEAR seems to be the perfect balance on Samsung displays.  You get some benefits of a low amount of interpolation, and it seems to keep the "jerkiness" to a minimum.

Frame interpolation does help LCD screens, but too much of a good thing can be bad, which is what you are noticing.  My advice, if your room lighting is acceptible, go plasma.  If not, try the CLEAR motion setting.  You'll find it less distracting.