Monday, August 24, 2009

Are Your Eyeballs Ready For a 480Hz LCD TV? [Rumor]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/zLTiQ_wYzwo/are-your-eyeballs-ready-for-a-480hz-lcd-tv

Or for that matter, are anyone's? These are the questioned posed by a bizarre report that Samsung, who've been doing the whole 200Hz frame interpolation thing for a while now, will bring a 480Hz LCD HDTV to IFA this year.

Here's how Flatpanelshd says it will work:

The upcoming Samsung 400 Hz (or 480 Hz in the US.) utilizes the so-called BFI/DFI principle. BFI/DFI stands for (Black/Dark Frame Insertion), and means that the TV inserts very short black frames between the original picture frames.The method utilizes the principle that the human eye does not "forget" light instantly.

I have to say, as someone who knows next to nothing about the human ocular system, this sounds entirely plausible! Look at all the acronyms!

If this does come to pass, it's worth noting that it wouldn't display a true 480Hz (or 400Hz outside the US), since it's not really refreshing the source material on the screen 480 times a second—it'll just simulate that effect by inserting black frames in between actual content. The story is made doubly weird by the fact that, hey, a lot of people kind of hate the artificially high-Hz sets. Like me! At any rate, IFA starts in less than two weeks, so I'll abstain from biased ranting until they actually materialize. [Flatpanelshd via Pocket Lint]