TV Specs Demystified: Frame Rates
aka scan rates or refresh rates
1080 – 24P – 60P – 120Hz – 240Hz – 480Hz

So you’re shopping for a new 1080P flat panel TV to update your home theater system and one of the many confusing terms you’re seeing on all of these TVs are 24P, 60P, 120Hz, and 240Hz. And that’s not the end of it. 480Hz is on the immediate horizon and there are a few plasma TVs boasting “600Hz Sub-field drive”.

Well like almost everything else in life, it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. 600 is only better than 60 if you do it right.

A little background in case you’re not a videophile. 24P means 24 frames per second (fps). That is the frame rate that most Hollywood movies are filmed in. So every second of a movie is actually made up of 24 individual pictures. TV is a little different. Most TV shows are filmed at 30 frames per second. The people in charge will tell you that there are very good reasons for the difference, but they’re full of crap. They did it to screw with us.

The difference between 24 and 30 frames per second used to be a big deal in the days of CRT “tube” TVs, because they sucked, but now with today’s TVs, there is a little less sucking going on. Today’s TVs have no problems switching between 24 and 30fps, but even if you play back 24fps just as it is supposed to be, it looks a little choppy. Well the people who make the TVs are smarter than the people who make the movies we watch on them, right? Of course they are. So they decided to screw it all up and gave us 120Hz.

By the way, Hz, is short for Hertz, which is a measure of frequency over the course of one second. It is named after German physicist Heinrich Hertz. He was smart way back when chicks thought it was cool to be smart. If you didn’t graduate elementary school, frequency means how often something happens over a given duration. The rate at which the Earth circles the sun is measured in a frequency referred to as a year.

So now that you know frequency, you know that Hertz and frames per second are the same thing, so 24fps = 24Hz, right? Wrong. The reason they call it Hz, and not fps, is because they aren’t really showing you 120 unique frames each second. They are just taking the 24 or 30 original pictures each second, multiplying them, occasionally tweaking them, inserting a few all-black “dark frames” here and there and making that mess of crap add up to 120. So there’s a shred of honesty in the “120Hz” moniker, though I have a feeling it wasn’t done on purpose.

So now that we’re friends, and you know I’m not BS’ing you, I can let you in on a little secret. 1080/60P is really 1080/30P, and pretty much any time you see plain old 1080P on a TV set, they mean 60P … or rather 30P because they’re just taking the 30-frame image and showing it twice. Well that little trick gave them an idea.

Since there is no good way to convert Hollywood’s 24fps into TV Land’s 30fps without doubling every 4th frame (aka 3:2 pulldown) and causing judder, the TV manufacturers remembered a trick from their 4th grade math class called the “lowest common multiple“. Guess what’s the LCM of 24 and 30? Yep, it’s 120. Going to 120Hz made all the image processing much easier. For 24fps film sources they have 5 cycles to work with on every frame and for 30fps video sources, they have 4 cycles. To take advantage of this, they can just flash the same image 4 or 5 times, they can insert full black frames into the mix, or if they have a lot of video processing horsepower, they can actually interpolate intermediate frames to smooth out the motion.

Most manufacturers are taking some mix of all of these options and making their own recipe to create the 120Hz image. Some do it better than others and some are just downright bad. But in my opinion, none of them have perfected 120Hz yet, so I am baffled by the new 240Hz sets already out and especially by the 480Hz that will be here any day now. Most LCD TVs are technically incapable of even displaying 480 unique frames in one second, even good ones. It requires a 2 millisecond (2ms) response time (1/480 = .002), which is not impossible, but certainly not common in the world of LCD TVs. Just a few years ago, an 8ms response time was a big deal.

Now there are a few plasma sets branded with various forms of 600Hz marketing taglines, but most are not as advanced in terms of video processing as the better 120 or 240Hz LCD sets. I am sure that there is some technicality that lets them legally call it a “600Hz subdural hematoma” or whatever, but for the most part, it’s marketing.

Summary: The reason we have all these different frame rates is because there’s no good way to convert film’s 24 frames per second to TV’s 30 frames per second. And even if there was, 24 frames per second is still a little choppy when stuff moves. So the TV manufacturers wanted to kill two birds with one stone. 24 x 5 = 120 and so does 30 x 4. That works out quite nicely. But everything about TVs is a bogus numbers-based pissing contest so 120 led to 240 which led to 480 even though it’s not technically possible. No one has managed to perfect 120Hz yet, much less 240Hz. Some of them look good, dare I say very good. But even those are far from perfect.

Ask Jason About TV Specs

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1.) The Soundbar

This is probably the fastest and easiest way to add a surround sound-ish system to your home. Why do I say surround sound-ish? Well because a sound bar does not actually have side or rear speakers, so it is surround-ish. While some units like the Yamaha DSP series attempt to create the sound of additional speakers; they cannot be completely convincing. Other units like the B&W Panorama are designed to provide very good sound quality but really only posses a Left, Center, Right type of configuration; there is no real attempt made to sound like there are side or rear speakers. Most of these types of solutions do have or provide a sub woofer output so you can add bass and get a fuller sound. These types of units are for situations where adding side or rear speakers are either very undesirable or impossible. A sound bar will give you much better sound than what is built into your television, and give you added volume but it is definitely not real Surround Sound system.

2.) The Home-Theater-In-A-Box

The HTIB is supposed to be a step up from the Sound Bar approach as it will typically have side or rear speakers included. There is a very big however included in this sentence. Most HTIB systems are really designed to be very inexpensive or to ultimately be given away with TV’s. So what does this really mean? It means that although there are more speakers in a HTIB the quality of the speakers and electronics is generally pretty poor, resulting in your taking the time to run wires to the back of your room and still ending up with a pretty disappointing outcome. In fact I would go so far as to say that as a rule I would probably recommend a good sound bar over a typical HTIB. Yes I am sure there are some good HTIB systems out there at some price points, but if you think that is the case please read on.

3.) A Receiver based Home Theater System

Ok, now it is getting interesting. At this point you are starting to look at some good stuff. Please keep in mind that a system based around an A/V Receiver and speaker package from Ask the Advisors could easily sell for $649.00 or so, and that includes products from companies like Klipsch and Yamaha. So this is not all about money. In fact you may spend the same or less here than you could on a Sound Bar or an HTIB. The big advantages here include a few things, like getting to pick speakers you like the sound of that are made by speaker manufacturers. Picking an A/V Receiver that has the features you want or need for your home. Not having to buy everything from one company, because believe it or not most companies do not do everything well. Big receiver companies are rarely good speaker companies, most TV manufacturers should not try to make and sell speakers at all, etc., etc. You see here we are doing the product decisions a-la-cart. You do not have to take what is in the box, you get to decide what is important to you and with our help design the system you want. I will also go so far as to say that this approach dollar for dollar will give you the best sound for your money. These systems are also easy to upgrade and add additional components to; which many HTIB systems are not. So if you are looking for the best bang for the buck and we can run wires for the sides and/or rear speakers this is a better way to go.

4.) A Separates based system

This is the Holy Grail of A/V Systems. Here we are going to choose a Pre-Amp Processor, a separate Amp or Amplifiers, and the Speakers and Sub Woofer to make our room really sing. This type of system has the very best sound and picture, the most flexibility and the most upgradeability of all the types discussed here. Here we are going to look at brands like B&W, Klipsch, Snell and Aerial Acoustics speakers, not to mention sub woofers from all of the previously mentioned companies but also from Velodyne and JL Audio, Rotel, Classe, McIntosh, Marantz and Integra Electronics, and more than likely an RTI Home Theater Master Remote Control to make it all easy to use. This is also going to be the most expensive of the 4 approaches, but if the ultimate in Sound and Image quality is your goal this is the place to be. Needless to say we at Ask the Advisors also carry a wide range of products in this category, and have the people to help you decipher the differences and choose the system that will full fill your desire.

Hopefully this little primer on the 4 main approaches to A/V System nirvana is helpful. Of course we are always happy to answer questions and play equipment for you at the shop. So come on in, get a demonstration of whichever products you are interested in and then go home set it all up and enjoy, or have us do the install and then enjoy.

Ask Ron About Surround Sound

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The new construction housing market has slowed. Remodels and retrofit projects are still vibrant. Green is the ultimate buzz word.

The concept of this project was to create a home theater in combination with a green component, the choice of which was solar panels. The power developed by the panels would more than offset the usage of the theater. We chose to use four Sharp 175 watts panels. These produce 700 watts per hour, which was tied into the main panel of the house. No battery is required because the entire house draws off the solar panel not just the theater system. Each geographic area gets varying amounts of usable sunlight. (Please Note: there is a map with usable hours of sunlight for every US city location is in this binder.)

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The theater consists of the following items;
a front projector, a 100 inch screen, six speakers including a subwoofer, a blu-ray player, an AV receiver, a green power conditioner, a universal remote control, an Ipod dock, HDMI cables, and two rows of theater chairs to accommodate six people. We chose to use a green power conditioner that turns off all items that would normally draw power in a standby configuration thereby conserving energy. The leather seats were made with a unique method that does not require the use of chromium in the tanning process. This is the “green element” of the seating.

The solar panels can produce approximately 22,000 watts weekly. (700watts per hour X 4.5 usable hours X 7 days in a week) Based on the combined power consumption of the theater, a family could enjoy 16 hours per week without using any electrical power from the grid. Any less viewing would send power back to the grid and diminish the accumulated usage of the entire house for that month.

An added benefit is the federal tax credit. Currently 30% of the price of the solar panels, inverter, roof rack, cabling, and installation earn the homeowner a deduction of 30% from their federal tax obligation. In this case the solar system priced at $5,880 including installation, which entitles the homeowners to a tax credit of $1,764.

The retail price of the theater components including the seating is $21702. A eight percent discount was offered to the buyer. The price of the gear was $19,995. Installation of the theatre was $3,000. The construction of the riser and carpet was $780. The total price the package installed was $29, 575 before the tax credit.

Please follow the link below to discover additional local rebate and incentives information for virtually all communities in North America:

http://www.dsireusa.org/index.cfm?EE=0&RE=1

Thank You,

Home Theater Specialists of America

Check out this video of the complete build.

* For more information on the Guiltless Green Home Theater, go to htsa.com.
* Article courtesy of HE Magazine

Ask Wayne About Incorporating Solar Energy

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