Gotcha. Unfortunately, this is the one room in my condo that has two huge sliding glass door (windows) in it. I can obviously control it with the shades, but just want to throw that in there.
Many plasma and LCD displays have reflective front glass. Be aware that this will affect things. Still, we have two large windows, then a morning room behind the family room. The reflections are more the issue, and some shades or curtains for when the light really bugs you does a great job. Very unlikely as a kid you don't remember a window bouncing off the tube TV you had that made the TV tough to watch... Same thing to deal with 30+ years later.
Are LEDs thrown into the same category as LCDs at this point as far as performance?
There are cold cathode tube lit LCD displays, and LED lit LCD displays. LED TVs are what they use in Times Square in New York City to produce billboards that are daytime viewable.
In Best Buy you are looking at LCDs, nothing else.
What is "soap opera effect" slang for. I bought my dad a Samsung LCD (6000 series) and I noticed everything looked like a home movie. Couldnt stand it. Need to turn it off.
See below, it's a long explanation.
Which is the 85" plasma?...nevermind.
Panasonic makes it, it is gorgous, it's outrageously priced right now. Unless they come out with a consumer one for under $10K, I don't expect much more life from it.
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The soap opera effect is the use of creative frame interpolation (CFI) or Motion Flow or a dozen different names by manufacturers. CFI converts a 60hz source (ALL TELEVSION!) and deblurs the image and inserts new frames between them. A 120hz display can convert a 60hz image (60 frames) into 120hz (120 frames). A 240hz display may be capable of delivering 240 frames.
The issue is not the additional frames, but the deblurring process. Blur is a natural part of how humans perceive motion. I do NOT like the term 'soap opera effect' - because it doesn't at all look the same.
It is far more close to a 'strobe light effect'. Where a strobe light flashes on and off very quickly, so people seem to be stopped without any blurring at all when moving very quickly.
The concept is that if you shoot a person at 1/60th of a second, then there is some blurring which occurs natually. This looks normal and smooth. If you remove the blur, so shoot the photo at 1/200th of a second (or faster) then show that image for a full 1/60th of a second, it won't look right. It will actually appear to be overly sharp, and there will be 'jumping' from one frame to the next. You see, you take a picture (1/360th of a second for easy math) then you wait another 5/360ths of a second, then you take another picture. You continue this process until you have 60 images to display in one second. But, instead of the natural blur your would have if you took 60 shots each at 6/360ths of a second, you have images with far less blur, and you are missing 5/360ths of a second of motion! You get a jump between each photo.
Video game manufacturers spent years and millions of dollars ADDING blur to the games to make them look more natural. Go into a dark room with a flashlight (non LED) and a LED flashlight - swing them back and forth. The normal flashlight has a lot of blur and moves smooth. The LED flashes on and off to fast to notice normally, but in a dark room, you see a pattern of dots floating in the air. Cool, but not at all natural. Same type of effect.
Not much detail here...
Motion interpolation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia