High refresh rates - what was I seeing on a 2007 TV?

[Vexr]

I recently went from a 60 hz monitor to a 100 hz one, with my only (unproven) previous experience of a higher refresh rate being when I lived with my parents, who bought a new LCD TV when I had a PS3. I remember Guitar Hero II specifically had an unbelievably liquid smooth look to it on that TV even on that old console, with a friend or two I had round commenting how amazingly smooth it looked as confirmation.

Fast forward to now, and my upgrade from 60 hz to 100 hz has been a marked improvement, but it hasn't reached that level of smoothness I recall seeing back then.

I assume what I was seeing was some TV post-processing up-hz-ing magic, and certainly nothing to do with the ancient PS3. I suppose next time I visit I shall have to look up the model (they haven't replaced it), but I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on why I remember a 2007 TV playing a PS3 game looked smoother than a 2018 100 hz PC monitor? Or is this all a warped memory, where if I saw the game now on that TV I'd see it wasn't as smooth as I remembered?

 

[DigitalStefan]

One of the 'big' features of earlier LCD TV's was their ability to interpolate 24, 50 and 60FPS source video to 120FPS or more. It got to an extreme point of ridiculousness where one manufacturer started throwing out silly numbers like "600Hz refresh", which absolutely was not 600Hz refresh.

TBH, if you were playing Guitar Hero with the TV's motion smoothing (the modern name for it), you had a lot of input lag, so I'm surprised that was an enjoyable experience considering that game is particularly sensitive to latency.

Still, one thing to check with your 100Hz monitor is whether it's in 100Hz mode. Sorry if you already know all about how to do that, but it's a common error. Windows, bless it's stupid code, does not select 100Hz unless you tell it to.

 

[Vexr]

One of the 'big' features of earlier LCD TV's was their ability to interpolate 24, 50 and 60FPS source video to 120FPS or more. It got to an extreme point of ridiculousness where one manufacturer started throwing out silly numbers like "600Hz refresh", which absolutely was not 600Hz refresh.

TBH, if you were playing Guitar Hero with the TV's motion smoothing (the modern name for it), you had a lot of input lag, so I'm surprised that was an enjoyable experience considering that game is particularly sensitive to latency.

Still, one thing to check with your 100Hz monitor is whether it's in 100Hz mode. Sorry if you already know all about how to do that, but it's a common error. Windows, bless it's stupid code, does not select 100Hz unless you tell it to.

Sounds about right, although this would still be in the days where we'd not heard of input lag and would probably have adjusted to hitting keys x ms before a certain note was due. What really struck us was the animation after/before a song, with the whole shakey-cam view of your band member. Absolutely liqiud.

And yes, definitely got the 100 hz PC monitor running at 100 hz with FreeSync.

I suppose more would be revealed when I can ascertain the model of my parents TV. Hell, stretching my memory even further back, I remember a bonfire night party at someones house where they were showing Toy Story 2 IIRC on a plasma screen. That also looked unusually smooth for the time... and that must have been about 2002!

 

[NirK]

Yes you were using the TV's frame interpolation, which has different names for different brands. Will make it look smoother but also add a lot of lag.

 

[Freezy]

Or it was a plasma TV that had way better motion clarity than LCD TVs due to the inherent flickering. You could try a monitor that supports backlight strobing (ULMB or similar) to see if you get the same effect.

 

[NirK]

I recently went from a 60 hz monitor to a 100 hz one, with my only (unproven) previous experience of a higher refresh rate being when I lived with my parents, who bought a new LCD TV when I had a PS3. I remember Guitar Hero II specifically had an unbelievably liquid smooth look to it on that TV even on that old console, with a friend or two I had round commenting how amazingly smooth it looked as confirmation.

Fast forward to now, and my upgrade from 60 hz to 100 hz has been a marked improvement, but it hasn't reached that level of smoothness I recall seeing back then.

I assume what I was seeing was some TV post-processing up-hz-ing magic, and certainly nothing to do with the ancient PS3. I suppose next time I visit I shall have to look up the model (they haven't replaced it), but I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on why I remember a 2007 TV playing a PS3 game looked smoother than a 2018 100 hz PC monitor? Or is this all a warped memory, where if I saw the game now on that TV I'd see it wasn't as smooth as I remembered?

 

[Psycho Sonny]

I recently went from a 60 hz monitor to a 100 hz one, with my only (unproven) previous experience of a higher refresh rate being when I lived with my parents, who bought a new LCD TV when I had a PS3. I remember Guitar Hero II specifically had an unbelievably liquid smooth look to it on that TV even on that old console, with a friend or two I had round commenting how amazingly smooth it looked as confirmation.

Fast forward to now, and my upgrade from 60 hz to 100 hz has been a marked improvement, but it hasn't reached that level of smoothness I recall seeing back then.

I assume what I was seeing was some TV post-processing up-hz-ing magic, and certainly nothing to do with the ancient PS3. I suppose next time I visit I shall have to look up the model (they haven't replaced it), but I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on why I remember a 2007 TV playing a PS3 game looked smoother than a 2018 100 hz PC monitor? Or is this all a warped memory, where if I saw the game now on that TV I'd see it wasn't as smooth as I remembered?

it was processing - something which is bad for gaming well competitive gaming and games which require fast input like guitar hero.

you can turn it on, on most tv's nowadays. it's for movie content though. it can induce what is known as soap opera effect though.

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/soap-opera-effect-tom-cruise-wants-you-to-turn-it-off-heres-how/

https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/soap-opera-effect-motion-interpolation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation

any decent tv can do it your parents tv isn't special