Are Your Eyeballs Ready For A 480Hz HDTV?

1:20AM August 25, 2009 | John Herrman

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 TV 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 materialise.

[Flatpanelshd via Pocket Lint]

Comments

  • matt

    August 25, 2009 at 9:18 AM

    I love the high frame rate effect. I’d rather they focus more on the interpolation algorithm tho, to stop it breaking and artifacting in certain scenes, than improving refresh rate, which is quickly becoming an activity in diminishing returns

  • glennc

    August 25, 2009 at 9:36 AM

    my panasonic plasma already does 480Hz from what i know.

    • GGP

      August 25, 2009 at 9:48 AM

      Yeah the article is a bit misleading – there’s already “600hz” stuff out too, but this TV is different because of the BFI/DFI principle, not the 400/480hz.

  • Daniel

    August 26, 2009 at 10:42 PM

    Hahahaha! my eyeballs stopped paying attention at 100hz! i mean seriously, wtf! the naked eye doesn’t even see past that much! any higher than this current frame rate, and it’d be just a marketing technique used for the technology-illiterate people out there.

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