Question Help finding a jutter-less TV

oneclickwonder

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Hello all,

So I just bought a 55' Sony Bravia 900h over the weekend. On paper it was the right TV at the right price point. The online chatter was great, the professional reviews were stellar - I thought I could do no wrong. But nonetheless I went to my local Best Buy to have a look at the Sony and browse the other TV lineup.

On the floor, the Sony 900 looked fantastic. Best Buy is funny in that you can't really demo a TV, they have their retail demo - which bounces around between movie, animation, gaming and advertising clips - it gives you an idea of overall picture quality but you don't really get a chance to see how it performs. Feeling confident, I bought the Sony, excited to get it home and set it up. And that's when the disappointment set in.

We tested regular cable and streaming like Netflix, Prime and Crave - and found the TV had the motion jutter effect (some call it jitter or stutter). Sometimes it was slight enough - others quite prominent. I adjusted the smoothness and clarity for optimum motion smoothness. Even going max smoothness - which didn't increase the soap opera effect thankfully - didn't fix the problem. The real kicker for me was my wife coming by and asking to watch The Haunting of Bly Manor - a series we started on our old TV, a 42' Sharp 1080p - about 5 minutes in she said: 'this looks funny'. She spotted it right away.

Now - I know a little bit about what causes the jutter - the difference between 24fps content and the 60/120hz refresh rate of the panels. I'm upgrading from a different gen of TVs with lower resolution that masked this effect somewhat BUT I honestly can't believe people would enjoy watching content with a distracting jutter. (although apparently some people dont see it). I absolutely hate it, takes me right out of the moment.

Just looking from some advice from the community on how to get to my end goal - an enjoyable TV experience, preferably with a 4k TV to take advantage of that advanced definition and colour range.

1.) Can my Sony 900h be adjusted further to end jutter or is this just a feature of this particular brand/model?

2.) Is it possible internet speed is contributing to jutter? We have a high-speed connection that's wirelessly going to the TV. Note - the jutter was still visible on content coming from the cable box which is hardwired in via coaxial coming to the home and HDMI to the TV.

3.) 55 inch is a step up from the 42 we were at on our old Sharp 1080p TV. Now the size will no doubt exaggerate the jutter but we sit pretty far back from the TV - like 11 feet or so. Even sitting 6ft from the 1080p I never noticed jutter. Would downsizing to a 49' or smaller be wise?

4.) I'm also looking at a 55' Samsung q70. I have it on order with Best Buy because they were offering a great deal on it and only a few were left. I bought the Sony with the intention of keeping, but had the Samsung as a backup. Does anyone know if Samsungs are less prone to jutter?

5.) Am I essentially doomed to having to own 1080p panels to totally avoid jutter? Hopefully not!

Thanks for any and all advice!
 
To add more info to this - I've done calibration for judder free viewing using rtings.com settings for external 60i/p sources (like my cable box and native apps) displaying 24p content - set motionflo to 'min' smoothness and 'min' clarity. I've also tried '1' clarity as recommended by some people. Still getting judder.

I'm wondering two things - 1.) checking my Netflix account, its a standard def plan - would that have any impact.

2.) I'm using the native apps - but even using a dedicated Apple TV, I'm getting judder. Now its an older version of apple TV - not sure if the newer ones automatically calibrate 24p content for 60/120hz panels.
 
The only real solution as I understand it is for content stopped being filmed at low FPS but that's unlikely to happen any time soon nor solves past content filmed at low FPS.

Rtings do maintain a list of TV's which handle stutter the best, you could try going for one of those.

As for the Sony you could try rtings settings for the BFI (black frame insertion) but at the cost of brightness/flicker, the review says Sonys implementation is not that great.

Try playing around with the motionflow and see if any other settings or preset work for you.

1 - Netflix shouldn't matter though built in apps on TV's don't always switch to 24Hz output.

2 - Old AppleTV does not support refresh rate switching you need the AppleTV 4K for that and it can do this on Netflix and video playback from other sources.

You could try gambling on the ATV4K, you should manually set its output to 4K 60hz SDR then turn on match refresh rate and dynamic range in the settings.
 
How frequent is the judder?

Are you talking about a hiccough once every few seconds - some sort of dropped frame - or a constant lack of smoothness (which may be more apparently in some scenes than others)?

As next says 24fps is somewhat of a juddery frame rate to begin with and it could have been that your new, less blurry TV was just showing up the flaws. Turning on motion interpolation should have sorted that though (albeit at the cost of potential artefacts).
 
How frequent is the judder?

Are you talking about a hiccough once every few seconds - some sort of dropped frame - or a constant lack of smoothness (which may be more apparently in some scenes than others)?

As next says 24fps is somewhat of a juddery frame rate to begin with and it could have been that your new, less blurry TV was just showing up the flaws. Turning on motion interpolation should have sorted that though (albeit at the cost of potential artefacts).

It's definitely not constant, its variable - sometimes it seems entirely motivated by movement in the scene, and sometimes that can be small movement, like a character gesticulating while talking or having big facial expressions. Sometimes its camera movements - like pans. And sometimes it just seems to come out of nowhere - like there's a momentary lag in the stream and the picture hiccups.

The best I've been able to get so far is to turn the TV picture to cinema mode, then turn the motion flow setting to level '1' smoothness and level '1' clarity. Any higher on smoothness and it feels more juttery - I believe setting smoothness to 2 engages Sony's Xmotion Clarity feature which may cause problems in and of itself. Any higher on clarity and it gets dark. Which is sort of counter intuitive because from what I understand increasing motion smoothness should smooth out the image but give it more of the soap opera effect.

I'm going to continue to play around to see if I can optimize it. And you're right, maybe I'm just seeing the world through new eyes now going from a 1080p to 4k. I may have the Best Buy geek squad come down and look - although I wonder if its worth the cost.

Do you think its worth upgrading my apple TV and ditching the native apps?

Thank-you.
 
It's a good thing you didn't buy an OLED TV.
Owners of those have it worse.

I'm looking to buy an x950h and now I'm worrying I might have the same problems as you. 😥

I'm still on the fence though.... It's either the Sony or a q90t.

I'd return it and try another one. Maybe you just got a defective unit?
 
It's a good thing you didn't buy an OLED TV.
Owners of those have it worse.

I'm looking to buy an x950h and now I'm worrying I might have the same problems as you. 😥

I'm still on the fence though.... It's either the Sony or a q90t.

I'd return it and try another one. Maybe you just got a defective unit?

Don't let my previous post discourage you. It took a lot of trial and error but I finally got it to stop juttering. Essentially, you have to turn off nearly all of the image features - that come preset to 'on'. With a little tweaking you get a fantastic image. I love it! I've watched hours of content now- and haven't seen the dreaded jutter that plagued me in the beginning.

Full disclosure - I haven't tested any true 4k or HDR/Dolby Vision so I can't speak to any possible jutter in those formats. The reason - I haven't upgraded to a 4k capable Netflix account, nor rented anything or have a blu-ray player. I also have Amazon Prime and Crave TV, but neither seem to stream 4k content. Although Amazon does claim to, I'm just not sure they do so in Canada. I'll consider getting an apple 4k TV in the future though - mostly because I've heard its better than your native smart TV apps for 4k content - and I do rent movies on iTunes from time to time.

This is a pretty solid calibration vid worth checking out if you do go forward with the x950h.



Good luck!
 
Thanks for the informative reply.

As an avid movie watcher and cinephile I've always turned off all processing. Can't stand the soap opera effect and everything else just adds artifacts to the image.

One of the main reasons I'm going for a Sony x950h and not the 900h is because I wanted smooth gradation and higher peak brightness. Not too worried about HDMI 2.1 as I don't plan on buying a new console anytime soon.

Above all else, I'm looking for the best picture quality and motion. Sony is synonymous for those things. I'd rather have a little bit of bloom than have black crush.
 

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