The Official LG LH3000 LCD Thread

The undersatnding of 24hz, judder, telecine and all other relevant buzzwords has always been a bit of a grey area for me, and the more the experts talk about it, the more confused I become.
I'm not entirely sure what the hype is about or why 24 hz is that important on the small screen. I know sound is more accurate and a movie might be a tad longer in duration, but I have seen so many people complain about judder - whatever their definition.
True 24fps is very slow and on it's own would look horrible and juddery throughout. In cinemas, the projector shutter speed is clicking away at 24hz too, therefore smoothing out the motion and giving the viewer a much more acceptable 48hz image, which is similar to our British TV's 50hz output.
To accomodate 24hz on blu-ray a Tv uses multiples of 24, in LG's case 5:5 = 120hz.
My first LG didn't employ 5:5, it used 3:2 or 2:3 -whichever way round it goes. As a result, if my player output at 24hz I would get the jump in motion every second or so, but if I output the player at 60hz to match the panel's capability, I'd get smooth playback, the likes of which look the same as 24hz to me. I really can't tell the difference. 48hz at the cinema, 24hz - 120hz on Blu-ray or 60hz (could be 2:2 on 120hz panel?) or 50hz from broadcast material, it all looks very similar.
All this is just the speeding up of material to give a smooth judder less (not judder free) image as far as I know.
Frame interpolation, as also mentioned above, is the use of 100hz to iron out the creases in an LCD panels poor motion performance during fast moving images and sport. Not only does it speed up the image, but also guesses then adds the extra information between frames. For me it produces an artificial image and a sped up look. It works fairly well for sports, but is awful for films as it seems to overide the original 24hz (adjusted) signal.
But like I say, it's all a grey area for me, and what I've said is only my interpretation of it.

 

The difficulty in understand the subject is exacerbated by a lot of inaccurate information being around, I think. I hope I'm not contributing to that - I'm not an expert.

I doubt that much (if any) of this will be news to you, but here's how I see the situation:

Pretty much all movies intended for theatrical release - and many that aren't - are shot at 24p (and have been for many decades). Some TV shows are as well these days.

In Europe (I see you're in the UK), we traditionally use PAL*, which is 50i (50 interlaced fields per second). You can ignore the "50i" for the purpose of this explanation: the important thing is that this standard allows showing 25 full frames per second. Many movies encoded for the PAL market (on VHS, DVDs, etc.) are converted by simply speeding up the movie by around 4.2%, so that 25 of the original movie frames will be shown each second. As you alluded to, the sound also has to be sped up by ~4.2% to match the video. Speeding up audio can introduce artifacts in itself, depending on the source. It also raises the pitch. Sometimes the pitch is also modified to compensate, which can introduce further artifacts.

So the disadvantages for this sort of PAL release are:
1) The movie is played back slightly faster than the original - people talk faster, movement is faster, etc. Most people wouldn't notice.
2) Sound artifacts may be introduced due to the speed up, and/or the sound may play at a slightly higher pitch than the original. This is, I think, noticed more often.

An alternative technique for presenting 24p movies on a PAL output device is to repeat a single field of every 12th frame. This doesn't require any audio adjustment, but means that there is a judder effect twice per second. It's subjective, but this can be even more intrusive than 3:2 pulldown. Another problem that I doubt anyone cares about is that the A/V synchronisation is slightly off by the time the repeated field comes along.

In North America, NTSC is traditionally used, and that runs at 60i. This is actually around 59.94 interlaced fields per second, and therefore around 29.97 full frames per second.

To convert movies to NTSC, the speed-up trick used for PAL won't work - they'd need to speed the movie up by 20%, which would be very noticable. They therefore use another technique: 3:2 pulldown (aka 2:3 pulldown). I was starting to write an explanation, but I see that the Wikipedia article has a better explanation with useful images:

Telecine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The visual result of this process is that instead of smoothly playing a frame every ~42 milliseconds as in the original film source, frames are effectively displayed alternately every ~33ms and 50ms. This gives the unsmooth "judder" effect. Another problem is that combining fields from adjacent interlaced frames can be visually unpleasant when presented on natively progressive devices.

There are ways to mitigate the above problems, but having the source as the pure, original "24p" movie and playing it back at exactly the right frame rate on your output device is a much better solution. That's what all the fuss is about.

DVDs are a bit of a mess, modern broadcast TV I have no clue about, but Blu-ray discs tend to have movies encoded in their original 24p form. Also, some devices can detect various pulldown methods and reverse the process to output in the original 24Hz.

You mentioned "small screen"... Is that just a colloquialism for non-theatrical presentation devices? The effects described above are noticable at any reasonable screen size.

* You can actually get PAL (the colour encoding standard) at 60i - I'm using the informal but extremely common definition here.

I think "very slow" and "horrible" are a bit much. Pure 24p, with each frame being shown for pretty much the full 1/24th of a second, actually looks pretty good to me. It's not like looking at motion in real life, but to me it's much better than the alternatives of pulldown-related judder or interpolation.

The shutter speed running at twice (or a higher multiple) of the frame rate is partly to reduce the disturbance of flicker. LCD displays don't really have this problem, since they don't noticably flicker. There are other ways in which the flicker can be considered a good thing, though.

Do you know for sure whether the LH3000 does in fact do 5:5, or 3:2 (outputting at 60Hz)?

It sounds to me like your old LG might have been doing the 50Hz pulldown method I mentioned above, and you prefer 60Hz 3:2 pulldown. If not, your player was doing the frame rate conversion better than the TV, which doesn't say much for LG.

Most of this isn't about speeding up, it's about repeating fields at certain intervals, which is what gives the "judder" effect that some people find disturbing.
Converting from one frequency to an integer multiple of that frequency is of course flawless.

I hope my interpretation doesn't add to the confusion

 

Thanks for taking the time to write all that down. Like I say it's a grey area and I have limited understanding of this one area. It seems like there are so many formats, frame rates and methods of getting pictures to the screen, I never know just what is going on.
I've read the Wiki pages before, so many times over the last year or so, but it's not info that stores easily in my head. But one paragraph stood out...

"PAL material in which 2:3 pulldown has been applied, suffers from a similar lack of smoothness, though this effect is not usually called “telecine judder”. Effectively, every 12th film frame is displayed for the duration of three PAL fields (60 milliseconds), whereas the other 11 frames are all displayed for the duration of two PAL fields (40 milliseconds). This causes a slight “hiccup” in the video about twice a second. Increasingly being referred to as Euro pulldown as it largely affects European territories."

This is my definition of judder and it's the only form of judder i've ever noticed. The continual shakes that others seem to complain about, I've never seen, and would assme this is the outcome of 24hz playback without being sped up or repeated with duplicate frames. The film look that everyone desires, but no one seems to understand, or accept as juddery because they are only getting one lot of 24 frames a secondand not 2 lots or 3 or 4 or 5. Or if the 24 frames are repeated 5 times a second, the judder isn't reduced enough still. But isn't judder part of the 24hz film look?

My last LG certainly suffered from 3:2/2:3 Euro judder but only when it was fed a 24hz signal. Like I say, if the player did the converting, the playback was fine - 60hz in, 60hz out as far as i know. Smooth as a baby's bum!

And according to the LG website, this year's LCD line up, LH3000 included, are all 24hz capable with 5:5 pulldown, implying the panel is 120hz capable and everything in between.
I think that 3:2 pulldown is now only reserved for the USA and other countries that broadcast in 60hz, even though the panel is the same as European and is 24/50/60/100/120hz capable. It's the processing that's different.
I've always wondered what video playback is like in the States.
Thanks again for the info. Little by little, I'm picking it up, but this is not an area I'm likely to be well versed in.

p.s. Small screen refers to televisions at home. Big screen or silver screen being used to describe cinemas.

 

I realised when fact-checking that Wikipedia had pretty good articles on this and I should probably have just referred to them for everything, but never mind...

The main thing I wanted to point out was that 24p films converted to PAL (50Hz) are generally either sped up or have "hiccups" (to use the Wikipedia term below) twice per second. 24p films converted to NTSC (60Hz) generally have hiccups 12 times per second.

I thought that (being in a PAL region) you would have had little experience of 60Hz output, but as you pointed out, you were running your old TV at 60Hz. Since you didn't have a problem with that, it seems that you're just not as sensitive to the effect as other people, which is probably a blessing. It could also be that if you do more comparisons or look for it more closely you'll identify the problem and start noticing it more - not necessarily a good thing.

I think the use of "2:3 pulldown" here is incorrect, and the (admittedly awkward) term "2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:3 pulldown" should have been written. But perhaps people do also refer to this as "2:3 pulldown" informally, so I'm not confident about editing the Wikipedia article. It's certainly confusing.

For LCD TVs, "5:5 pulldown" (displaying 24p at 120Hz, repeating each frame 5 times) is just an implementation detail - assuming the display isn't flickering at all, and there's no further processing, it's exactly the same as displaying each 24p frame just once for 1/24th of a second. There's no change in speed of playback, and the fact that internally the LCD is "repeating" frames is irrelevant to the viewer. The same applies to "2:2 pulldown" (24p presented at 48Hz), "3:3 pulldown" (24p presented at 72Hz), etc. They're all equivalent to the viewer.

These are all pure presentations of 24p - showing exactly the original frames at exactly the original timings. 24p *is* jerky to the human eye, but also calling this jerkiness "judder" conflates two rather different issues. Pure 24p has a consistent jerkiness, with the jump from frame to frame occuring with a consistent period. It's what we've learnt to think of as the "film look", as you said.

As you're aware, there are various methods of "improving" 24p playback. One is by interpolating frames, and another is by inserting black frames at high frequency (basically reproducing the double-/triple-shutter effect used in the cinema, which has some advantages). Frame interpolation looks hideous to a lot of people, either because of the artifacts inevitably created by the insertion of "fake" frames or because film just looks "wrong" with smooth motion since we're trained to expect the "film look".

There's basically no way that 24p can be presented without judder at 60Hz - there must be something like 3:2/2:3 pulldown going on (performed by your player).

I don't know why your LG gave worse results when fed 24p - my guess was that it's outputting at 50Hz, and many people find "Euro judder" (the two "hiccups" per second) even worse than the judder of 3:2 pulldown (12 hiccups per second). Alternatively, you weren't using real 24p sources - playing a PAL DVD at 24p could look terrible, for example.

My issue is with the first post in this thread, where it suggests that 24p is presented using 3:2 pulldown - this disagrees with the "5:5 pulldown" specification from the website. So I have no idea which is correct, and don't want to risk buying one of these TVs.

Yep, I think that's pretty much right. Another place you're likely to see this is on LCD computer monitors, which are often (inexplicably) fixed at 60hz at their native resolution.

Thanks for the clarification.

Pure 24p playback is also a big issue for projectors - I wouldn't buy one for film playback without this capability these days.

 

THIS TV IS AWESOME! £550 OH yeah!

 

Is that the 37" for that price, please say not the 42?

I just had to exchange my second faulty LG42PQ6000 Plasma, and Richer Sounds were great - they'd normally charge £650 for the 42LH3000, but did a straight swap - so I effectively paid £600.

Its interesting comparing the LCD to the Plasma.

The LCD unit does considerably better smoothing of standard def images than the plasma, and the resolution seen in gaming (GT5 Prologue) is definitely better.

Colour is nowhere near as vivid though.

 

my 42" cost £550

 

I seemed to have missed the 42 inch deals but landed a 32 inch with delivery for £420. The TV is sitting nicely in a box waiting for me to get enough time to set it up.

Anyone have any ideal settings for the TV yet?

 

Assuming they're all on similar firmware, just use the built-in settings wizard - takes a few minutes to go through, but its done a stellar job.

 

Hi All, Just got the LG32 lh3000 which is brill, does anyone know the Sky+ code for it, have looked everywhere all day with no luck, Hope someone can help

Thanks in Advance
Cowselder

 

I had to buy the new rev8 sky+ remote and the code is 0206.

 

still not received mine currys seem to be messing me around. it was 28 day delivery time when i ordered but there is still no delivery date and customer services keep implying that this usually indicates that they cannot get any more (end of line). bah.

what makes matters worse is that a store about 20 miles from me has a bunch in stock but they wont let me have one of them.

 

Awesomeness - Yes payed 550 for 42 inch!

 

which 42" lcdtv is better: LG5000 or LH3000 ?

 

Depends what your plugging into it, like say if your plugging a 360 into it for example both will look ****. lol

 

i will plug a 360, a dvd, the computer. in the future a bluray.

wich on is better between lh3000 e lg5000 ?
the lh3000 is more recent both....

 

do the asterisk mean something good or bad?



picked mine up yesterday and it looks ace. not entirely convinced by the whole "energy saving" feature. thought it would be something to do with standby power not just dimming of the backlight.

cant seem to change any of the picture settings in the advanced bit. tried running the picture wizard but the outcome is a rather dark/browny display rather than the nice bright "white is white" the default profile gives.

any tips so far?

 

I see the 32LH3000 is now on offer for £399 in Comet - thinking about getting it. Anyone have this model and use it for HD Gaming? This is my primary concern, as i've heard so lower budget TV's have bad motion blur and ghosting.

Thanks

 

get it, friends got it and it's the ****.

 

can these tellies do picture in picture? i cant see owt but thought it was a pretty basic feature these days

 

just played my 360 on it for pretty much the first time, res evil 5 and getting some pretty horrific screen tearing going on at pretty much all points in the game when there is movement. running in 1080p.

is that the telly or what? there's not a lot of settings i can that might sort it.

 

Nope, LG took off that feature last year on ALL models

 

resident evil has tearing full stop, its programmed to "not" use v-sync.
switch the 360 to 720p,in its video settings, and it should stop.
resident evil runs at lower than 720p anyway, so its all scaled no matter what you set it to, but 720p should stop the tearing.

 

LH3000 is FullHD (HD ready 1080p)..but...I conected this LCD TV on PC and my max. res on that is only 1360x768. But in manual is clearly desribed that LH3000 have 1920x1080 on any input also on PC input via D-sub or DVI/HDMI.
Where is problem?My graphic card support this resolution without problems i have other monitor in fullHD.i tried force resolution but wihtout success.

Any opinion or solution?

i think that this LCD tv isnt fullhd or is firmware problem(what ist latest firmware for this device?).

 

my 42" is full HD, on my ps3 it otputs at 1080p

 

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i'm running my htpc through it at 1920x1080. i had to install a monitor driver on vista though so that it opened up the options of >720 rez's. I couldnt find a proper driver for the exact telly which is unfortunate as my old 32" sammy had a driver. so i chose something like a generic 1920x1080 digital flat screen 60hz.

if you still can get the resolutions then your graphics card might not be able to handle it.

I recently put my old laptop onto my 32" sammy in my dining room and i cannot output 1280x768... can only get 1024x768... seems to be the graphics card not being able to handle it as i know the telly was working fine in 1280x768 when i had it connected to my htpc.

 

NO as i told my graphic card havent problem with fullHD resolution i have GF9800GT and i have 21" FullHD native monitor. Only when i connect FULLHD LCDTV LH3000 on that i can get only HD ready resolution.

 

Well the LH3000s are 1080p for BD etc. Maybe there is a compatibility issue why not call LG.

 

Hi Guys

First post!

Bought this the other day after reading reviews on here and several instore visits. Cant beat the LG for value and really happy with the picture quality and great for dvds. SD is reasonable too. Just had two questions.

1. Wondered what peoples preference is for using the onboard freeview vs a stand alone box. The guide is pretty reasonable on the LG but found the old box easier to use. If we are looking as a standalone being better we may go for the Humax recorder option??

2. Plugged in my xbox360 the other day and really happy with the quality, not noticing any tearing or jerking. However I am having to run this through the composite input as I have an arcade and not the foresight to buy HDMI version . Just wondering if there is any advice on settings in this case. Should I set xbox to 720p output or leave at 1080p (doing no harm) actually finding that most settings out of box are pretty good.

Would totally reccomend this 37' at £449 from richer sounds.

D

 

PLEASE tell me you meant component and not composite?!?!?!.... its a crime to not run an XBOX 360 in HD!! don't worry about HDMI though, i think in order of quality it goes VGA - Component - HDMI but i reckon you could only really tell the difference between one running on HDMI vs VGA not component IMHO...