Is judder really noticeable on TVs without 24fps support?

[admin_exported]

Many of the 32inch LCDs in this months sub£600 'supertest' appear to be unable to cope with a 24fps signal. Is this really a problem? Does a PS3 not offer the facility to convert the signal so that the TV can deal with it? (Presumably it just needs to repeat one frame each second to create a 25fps signal. Or maybe it just sends the frames to the TV 4% faster so the movie finishes quicker?)

And for the TVs that say they can 'deal with' a 24fps signal, are they not just doing the same thing as the PS3? So wouldn't they suffer from any of the same problems?

 

[Anonymous]

If you think about it, it would not be possible for a PS3 or Blu-ray player to 'speed up' the frame-rate that is being output, in real-time, as the disc reading process would get left behind and wouldn't be able to catch up! Blu-ray players and PS3's actually convert the frame-rate to 60Hz (or basically 60fps). This means every even frame is shown twice while every odd frame is shown three times, to make 24 into 60. This process is known as 3:2 pulldown. This can potentially cause judder. Most of the tvs that can 'deal with' a 24fps signal can switch to a refresh rate that is a multiple of 24, removing the need for an uneven 3:2 conversion. Pioneer's tvs have a 72Hz refresh rate. This means each and every frame is repeated three times. Some of Philips tvs have a rate of 48Hz. I think Sony use 120Hz. As for Panasonic's current tvs, they do actually do a 3:2 conversion, like in the players themselves. However, unlike the players which manage to mess it up, the Panasonics do an excellent job, resulting in a picture that is pratically free of judder.

Some of the 32" tvs in the test may not be able to handle 24fps, but this shouldn't matter at this size too much. The Blu-ray players do manage an alright conversion to 60Hz, and the judder is not too noticeable on a fairly low screen size.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Benjamin, very helpful answer. Although I accept your answer on the 3:2 pulldown, I'm sure a bluray player can read data from the disc faster than 24fps, so it would theoretically be possible to speed up the frame rate.

 

[Anonymous]

Oh yeah I'm sure they could theoretically read the actual disc at a faster speed. That is possible, but they are designed to output 24fps ideally, so converting to another frame-rate for older tvs is kind of an after-thought in a way. I think the norm for players is to always read the discs at real-time, unlike when you watch a video on you-tube and it buffers the video in advance. Or at least, I think this is the case, I may be wrong...