There's a lot of talk these days about frame rates in the new Hdtvs. The frame rate is plainly the amount of obvious images a Tv screen can display in a second, and is also known as the display rate or "Hertz". Hertz is the scientific unit for cycles per second, and is abbreviated "Hz". The most recent buzzword is "120Hz", which means a display rate of 120 frames per second. This is twice as fast as most Hdtvs are capable of (60Hz), so it ought to make the inspiring pictures look smoother. But, the human eye can only process about 20 to 25 obvious images per second, so why should it matter what the frame rate is, as long as it is faster than your eyes can see?
The write back comes when you comprehend that not all video is filmed at the same rate. Movies are commonly filmed at a rate of 24 Hz, most Tv is filmed at 30 Hz, and some sports events are now being filmed at 60 Hz.
LCD HDTV
Some simple math will show the qoute and delineate the solution. When a Tv set wants to display 60 frames per second, and the cable Tv firm sends it 30 frames per second, that's easy to deal with: the Tv shows each frame twice in a row, creating an image made up of two consecutive frames. Each image will last exactly 1/30th of a second on the screen, and things will look perfectly smooth.
So what happens when your Dvd player sends 24 frames per second to the Tv, but the Tv still wants to show 60 on the screen? This is a little slower than the cable Tv frame rate, so if it plainly shows each frame twice and then waits for the next one, there will be a black gap in between and the movie will look terrible. So, the Tv needs to triple one frame, double the next, triple the following one, and so on, giving it a total of 60 frames to show each second. This is known as 3:2 Pulldown.
The 3:2 Pulldown trick works Ok, but there is a problem. One image lasts a 20th of a second, then the next lasts a 30th. A 20th of a second is long sufficient for most people to tell that it's certainly a static image, and when the camera pans colse to in a scene, things will seem to move unevenly. But if your Tv is able to display 120 frames per second, it can take the 24 Hz input and plainly show each frame 5 times in a row for a total of 1/24 (or 5/120) second per frame, with no discrepancy from frame to frame. And when 30Hz video comes in, it displays each frame 4 times in a row, for a total of 1/30 (or 4/120) second per frame. qoute solved.
Now that frame rates are fast sufficient to display any kind of input smoothly, Hdtvs not only have high resolution in the x and y (height and width) dimensions, but also in the t (time) dimension. As in all kinds of digital media, higher resolution means smaller units of data, and that means a more lifelike pregnancy of reality. The 120Hz frame rate won't be very tasteless until 2008, but a few Hdtvs already have it, like the Sony Bravia Xbr4 series and the Sharp Aquos 92U series.
Hdtv has certainly entered the fourth size (time), but has skipped the third (depth) in the process. Until we see start looking holographic movies on Dvd, we'll have to wait for true four-dimensional Tv.
Hdtv Enters the Fourth dimension - 120Hz Frame Rates