Yesterday I got little kind of confused when I used my MKV playback on my Samsung flat-screen as backup cause my HTTP PC with XBMC/Frodo 12.2 was offline with a mainboard upgrade. I am using Video playback with my HTPC for some years now with very different hardware and and it really looks great. But comparing it with the Samsungs playback quality it noticed a clear difference in picture/playback experience. It is hard to describe cause the picture wasn't much sharper. It was more about playback/frame rate. Perhaps someone already had the experience of that new high frame rate movies in cinema. The movement is smoother but looks/feels a bit unnatural. The difference between playing the same 1080p movie on XBMC/PC and Samsung TV it quite about that kind of feeling. Smoother, but somehow unnatural. And it doesn't matter to play the movie with VLC or XBMC. PC is connected with HDMI 1.4, graphics is/was some different ATI Radeon cards/APUs. I adapt video mode framerate to movie framerate.
Is there someone out there who knows what' s the reason for this different playback experience?
This is just a guess, but probably something with the GPUs not being able to be exact about framerates. They're "close" but almost never right-on for something like 24 FPS. I'm guessing the Samsung TV directly is able to playback more closely to, or dead-on, 24 FPS.
Based on you saying that the playback was both smoother and unnatural looking, it's almost certainly the response rate. Different manufacturers have a different name for it, but I think Samsung calls their 120 Hz mode Clear Motion Rate (or some such).
Take a look at this
explanation, and this
one. Also do a google search on "soap opera effect".
The option can be turned off.
Oh yeah, I didn't even think of that. My Vizio TV has that option as well, and I hate it.
You're good guys! You were on the right path. Thanks to that hint with the soap opera effect I found an option named "Motion plus" deep in the menus of my Samsung TV set. By deactivating it the picture got unsmoother und much more convinient! Cause of this I doubt that this new high fame rate cinema introduced by the movie "The Hobbit" will be a success..
Hard to say. The Hobbit will at least have a real framerate rather than have artificial "smoothing" frames made by the TV, so it should look better than what "Motion plus" does. The movie might still be... different, though. I haven't seen the 48 FPS version, so who knows :)