[HN Gopher] Switch off weird smart TV settings
___________________________________________________________________
Switch off weird smart TV settings
Author : DitheringIdiot
Score : 156 points
Date : 2023-12-04 16:08 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (practicalbetterments.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (practicalbetterments.com)
| sp332 wrote:
| And don't forget overscan.
| jaywalk wrote:
| The fact that it's still enabled by default on TVs being sold
| today is an unforgivable sin.
| jandrese wrote:
| We had the perfect opportunity to dump it into the wastebin
| of history when TVs switched to HD, but for some damn reason
| the industry decided to carry it forward.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| You would be surprised how many movies on dvd/bluray have
| junk in the margins. Usually just a line or an overscan of
| the audio track. But a lot of them have it.
|
| I turn off overscan as those artifacts do not bother me.
| xp84 wrote:
| Sometimes you can see the closed captions line of the
| NTSC signal at the top of the frame of the video when
| watching an old show converted to digital from an NTSC
| source. It looks like a single line of black and white
| dashes which dances around quickly every time the
| onscreen captions would have changed and then sits static
| until the captions update again.
| toast0 wrote:
| Provisioning for overscan on 1080i CRTs seems just as
| valuable as with 480i CRTs.
|
| People want content to the edge of the screen, but not to
| pay a TV technician to come and calibrate their tube to
| exacting standards in their home. Content creators need to
| know that some of their broadcast is invisible to some of
| their viewers as a result.
|
| Pixel perfect tvs came later, so the transiton to HD wasn't
| the right time. ATSC3 could have been a reasonable time to
| change, but then broadcasters couldn't use the same feed
| for ATSC1 and ATSC3 ... and who knows if ATSC3 will ever
| win over ATSC1, or if all the OTA TV spectrum will be
| refarmed to telcos before that happens.
| dissident_coder wrote:
| motion smoothing is the worst feature ever conceived by man
| todfox wrote:
| It amazes me that humans continue to have this perverse desire
| to fix what isn't broken.
| kevincox wrote:
| 1. Features on the box.
|
| 2. More pop on the store display.
|
| It turns out that "fixing" these things do result in more
| people picking the TV. Just like an overstated display will
| typically be preferred in a side-by-side comparison.
| jokowueu wrote:
| It's only good for anime where the fps is extremely low
| dully-abrading wrote:
| Animation is the _worst_ use case for motion interpolation
| because the frames are individually drawn and timed by the
| animators to achieve a particular look and feel.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| *Used to be. Now they're rendered
| tuna74 wrote:
| A lot of animation is still drawn. Some CG anime is also
| combined with 2d drawn elements (like in SpiderMan into
| the Spiderverse).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The luddite hacker in me wants to try interpolation on
| early Ghibli movies.
| nyx wrote:
| Counterpoint: this YouTube rant by an animation person called
| Noodle is a pretty good overview of why frame interpolation
| sucks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KRb_qV9P4g
|
| Basically, low FPS can be a stylistic choice, and making up
| new frames at playback time often completely butchers some of
| the nuances present in good animation.
| jandrese wrote:
| Personally I'm dubious. There may be times when the low
| framerate is a stylistic choice, but the vast majority of
| the time it's purely a budget thing.
| tuna74 wrote:
| If you are a good director you can make the most of that
| low budget. Look at the first episodes of Scum's wish
| (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6197170/) if you want a
| good example.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Low FPS can be a stylistic choice, but as a member of the
| audience, I tend to disagree with that choice.
|
| Perhaps it depends on the quality of the execution, but
| there are shows where I wished I had frame interpolation.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I hear it's good for sports.
| drivers99 wrote:
| Sports are already shot at 60 fps. Same for any live TV
| events. It makes movies look terrible, like it was shot on
| video, to me and many others. Soap Opera effect. But for
| things that were shot live on video, it looks like what it
| is.
|
| For the high frame rate version of The Hobbit that I saw, in
| my opinion it looked bad for character shots but cool for
| overhead action views.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Nowadays, TV sets can display a lot more that 60 fps (120,
| 144Hz sets are quite common).
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I use it on a game-by-game basis when playing my Switch,
| because it's so underpowered. It works surprisingly well when
| playing Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.
| smcleod wrote:
| For me it's the absolute most important setting to enable on
| any TV. Without it I really notice the tearing / juddering
| effect that footage <40fps has.
| imp0cat wrote:
| And you know what, you may both be right! Different TV's use
| different algorithms and tricks so what looks great on one,
| might look quite bad on another one.
| smcleod wrote:
| Yeah absolutely true. I've seen some Samsung brand TVs do a
| really bad job of it (also their colours are terribly over
| saturated by default), where I've found the LGs do a good
| job (at least the c and g series).
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Sadly, (mild) motion interpolation is necessary for those of us
| that get headaches from 24fps video, especially panning shots.
|
| If only filmmakers started with decent frame rates. The few films
| that came out in 48 fps are so much nicer to look at.
| jiayo wrote:
| It's funny, watching films in 48fps in theatres (specifically
| the first Hobbit movie that pioneered the concept) to me looks
| like the actors acted in 2x slow motion and then someone
| pressed fast forward. Everything looks incredibly unnatural.
| sp332 wrote:
| Peter Jackson added more motion blur in those because he said
| that it played better with a focus group. I think sticking to
| a normal 180-degree shutter angle would not feel so weird.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| There was weird motion blur, but to me it looked far more
| normal than most films. I realise it's a minority opinion.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I had a different experience. At first, I found things
| unnatural like you did. After a few minutes, I figured out
| that it was actually the opposite - it had a bit of a
| theatrical thing going on, i.e. live action vs. recorded and
| played back.
|
| At that point I figured out that it was just because I've
| been so used to crappy frame rates that the more natural
| movements feel out of place.
|
| I wonder what the first pass, with less motion blur, would
| have felt like. Maybe better, maybe worse. I kind of feel it
| would make it worse, in the same way that the transitional
| from analog to high definition digital made it look worse to
| me since I could notice the transitions between frames. That
| is, at least at first. I'm used to it now.
| ender341341 wrote:
| I think people blamed the frame rate, but for me it was the
| rest of the effects that put me off, faces were too softened,
| lots of scenes had weird color saturation, as others
| mentioned there was a lot of motion blur, compared to LOTR
| the VFX really pulled me out of lots of scenes.
| Timon3 wrote:
| I'm personally fine with 24 and 48 FPS (without interpolation),
| but what I absolutely can't stand is a variable rate. I saw
| Avatar 2 in the cinema with this, and it ruined the experience
| for me. Switching down always felt like the projector is
| lagging.
| jokowueu wrote:
| I've never heard of headaches from 24fps video , must be rare
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Afaict it's a kind of migraine. Everyone I know that gets
| headaches from low fps also gets migraines.
| Finnucane wrote:
| I'd never heard of it growing up in the era when that's all
| there was. I don't know if it's rare, but it's only in the
| last decade or so I've heard people complaining about it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I grew up in the same era, and I definitely knew people who
| could not watch TV because it induced headaches in them.
| exitb wrote:
| We don't perceive all types of screens in the same way.
| Film projectors and CRTs display parts of the frame, only
| part of the time. TFT and IPS screens introduce a lot of
| inertia and blend the frames. Both of these help the motion
| illusion. OLED on the other hand has the harshest frame
| transition - it displays the entire area for the entire
| time and switches frame content almost immediately.
| smcleod wrote:
| I get it too. I visually see tearing / juddering on most
| video lower than about 40FPS and it's incredibly tiring.
| TylerE wrote:
| Even if they just moved to 30 like normal TV that'd be
| noticeably better.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Just a note that NTSC has 30 fps. PAL has 25 fps.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| TV in the UK is generally 50 , at least.
| TylerE wrote:
| That's interlaced though. Effectively half for a
| progressive scan.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I don't think interlaced video is still broadcast, since
| analog was shut down.
| squidsoup wrote:
| I don't think many cinematographers would agree with you. We
| have the technology to make films at higher framerates, yet
| few choose to do so.
|
| Interestingly, David Lynch shot Inland Empire at 60fps
| interlaced, but the film was released at 24fps.
| lainga wrote:
| Did you get this symptom from the narrow shutter snapshot-like
| filming in Saving Private Ryan?
|
| https://cinemashock.org/2012/07/30/45-degree-shutter-in-savi...
| cpach wrote:
| Interesting. Did you ever go to the movies in the 90s? Those
| were all 24 fps. Did you get a headache then?
| rocqua wrote:
| Cinema has a black period in the middle of every frame, that
| actually prevents these problems.
| thedougd wrote:
| Are we including 3:2 pull down and frame doubling as
| interpolation?
| rocqua wrote:
| There is the alternative of Black frame insertion. It loses a
| lot of brightness, but helps a lot with stuttering at 24 fps.
|
| The problem that causes stuttering is (simplified) that your
| eye is moving smoothly to follow something on the screen,
| whilst the image is moving in discrete steps. So when your eyes
| expect something fixed in side your view, its actually
| stuttering.
|
| Black frames make use of a natural image retention in the eye.
| Where you effectively continue to see the last bright thing.
| Hence what you expect to be stationary in your field of view
| does remain stationary.
|
| This was actually key to film based projectors working, because
| they need a period of black to advance to the next frame.
| Without image retention it would seem to flicker. Though 24 hz
| is a bit to slow for that, so they actually added a black
| period (by just blocking the light) in the middle of each frame
| to even out the effect. They were already doing BFI, not for
| motion smoothing, but for flicker smoothing. It seems likely
| this is accidentally why 24hz film doesn't have stuttering
| whilst 24hz screens do need it.
|
| Personally I care too much about the brightness loss of BFI,
| but it might be interesting for you.
| lucisferre wrote:
| I've tried filmmaker mode and it is just another kind of bad
| smart TV setting, making everything way to dark instead of way
| too bright. Turning of most "features" of these TVs seems to be
| the only sane solution.
|
| Of course perhaps it is the filmmakers that are to blame:
| https://www.avclub.com/how-to-watch-dark-movies-and-tv-shows...
| pipes wrote:
| Yeah I'm finding film maker mode way too dark on my Samsung
| oled.
|
| I can't find any explanation of how it actually works. Does a
| each movie get different settings set up by the director?!
| Doubt it.
| imp0cat wrote:
| It supposedly makes the content look more "just as the
| director intended".
|
| However, Samsung TVs are not exactly known for realistic
| colors. So turn up the eye candy and enjoy!
| room500 wrote:
| Typically, it means that if you put the TV in a dark room, it
| is calibrated to the same specifications that the monitors
| used in post-production used. Therefore, it is what the
| directors "intended" the video to look like since they were
| looking at the monitors (in a dark room).
|
| However, if your room has even a little light in it, the
| settings would make the TV too dark.
|
| It will also disable any effects the TV has that aren't "map
| video to screen 1:1" such as motion interpolation, upscaling
| algorithms, etc
| mjmsmith wrote:
| I found FILMMAKER MODE (why is it capitalized in settings?)
| dark and muddy on a Samsung Frame. The "Samsung TV picture
| settings" section in the linked which.co.uk article [1] seem
| like decent advice.
|
| [1] https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/televisions/article/getti
| ng-...
| ryaneager wrote:
| I treat the configuration settings from www.rtings.com as the
| Lord's word.
| pstorm wrote:
| Took me a while to find the configuration settings you
| mentioned. For anyone else, you go to a specific TV model's
| page, and there is a tab called "Settings."
| karmakaze wrote:
| I'm surprised it doesn't mention "sharpness". It's tricky find
| the _zero point_ : e.g. '0', '50', or '100' depending on whether
| it means 'add sharpening', 'smooth/sharp', or 'remove smoothing'.
| jwells89 wrote:
| This is a frustration shared with some monitors, too. Either
| the zero-point should be obvious or there should be a toggle
| that disables the setting altogether.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Agree with sharpness, I undo this on every TV I get a chance to
| touch at friends/family.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| You really go around to people's homes and change their TV
| settings?
| smcleod wrote:
| Motion interpolation is an absolute essential for me. I can't
| stand how choppy TVs (even high end models) are without them.
|
| 30fps videos look very jarring to me, I almost always notice
| "tearing" or "shuddering" - even when in a cinema. Enabling
| motion interpolation / frame rate up scaling usually fixes this
| for me.
|
| It's so distracting and at times almost painful for me to watch
| without it that at times I'll use a tool (Topaz Video AI) to re-
| render videos to 50-60FPS.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Interesting!
|
| I can't stand motion interpolation. Turned off on every TV I
| own. Will literally walk away and do something else if it's on
| a (non-sports) TV in public. There's something "too smooth"
| about it that irks me.
| smcleod wrote:
| It's interesting to think how different our visual systems
| must be right? I'm always saying to friends "how can you
| watch this? It's so choppy!" And some of them agree and
| others don't see it at all.
|
| Biology is weird so I say just give people the options to
| pick what works for them.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I read this (from HN?) awhile ago, and it boggled my mind
| about how much subjective reality is actually invisibly
| self-fabricated.
|
| https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-
| to-s...
|
| I expect refresh rate is similar, given that... if a
| substantial portion of your subjective perception is
| mentally fabricated, then your brain physiology
| contributes, and that's set during childhood.
|
| For reference, I grew up on NTSC screens (29.97 interlaced
| frames per second).
| toast0 wrote:
| > For reference, I grew up on NTSC screens (29.97
| interlaced frames per second).
|
| Considering it as 30 interlaced frames per second isn't
| really accurate. It's 60 fields per second. A lot of
| content intended for interlaced broadcast is not 30 fps
| broken into fields, it's 60 distinct half pictures per
| second.
|
| (Excuse my rounding)
| MandieD wrote:
| That link is an article I really, really wish I'd read
| while learning how to drive, and is something I'll teach
| my kid before he starts riding a bike with traffic. I
| hadn't seen it before, so thanks.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| That and the Dutch(?) bike-safety trick [0] are minimal
| effort life hacks I got from HN.
|
| [0] In urban/bike areas, always open a car door with your
| opposite hand (e.g. driver's side with right hand). It
| forces you to turn your body, which allows you to look
| behind you, which lets you notice bikers approaching from
| behind before you open the door and splat them.
| runeofdoom wrote:
| Same here. It feels like it takes everything, from classic
| B&W to modern SF extravaganzas, and turns them all into
| somebody's home videos.
|
| At the same time, I'm pretty confident that this is a
| subjective phenomenon. My parents have it on all their TVs
| and my mother both prefers it and notices immediately if
| video isn't 60fps or equivalent, while my father says he
| doesn't notice the difference.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| The problem typically is that motion interpolation isn't
| consistently smooth. Generally a fixed framerate 30fps will
| seem smoother than something that goes between 40-60fps. Our
| brains are sensitive to changes in the pacing.
| smcleod wrote:
| The motion of an object isn't the same as the frame rate
| though. You can have a 60fps scene where an object is
| moving fast on one side of the screen and slow on the
| other. It only means that for a given object travelling
| from A to B - it will have more fine detail in its movement
| for a given distance.
| saltcured wrote:
| I tend to avoid it, but don't constantly try out newer
| devices and their settings. I always remember when I first
| saw it on a proud friend's new TV about a decade ago. I was
| deeply disturbed and asked him to turn off the feature.
|
| We were watching an action/fighting movie with swords and
| other martial arts, and I distinctly saw these graceful arcs
| of the actors' limbs and weapons turned into polygons. The
| motion interpolation clearly inferred linear transitions
| between the different positions captured in the actual
| frames. Imagine a large swing tracing out an octagonal path
| with all the physical unreality that would entail.
|
| It seemed like I was the only one in the room who perceived
| this travesty.
| jandrese wrote:
| Decades of TV being filmed on cheap(er) video cameras that had
| lousy picture quality but captured at 60 fps vs. film that
| looked beautiful but only captured at 24 fps has taught people
| that blurry smeary motion is the ideal.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| I used to think that but now I'm not so sure. Yeah 24fps is
| bad for panning and sweeping movements, but....
|
| There is something about 24fps that I believe may have
| something to do with how the eye or brain works that makes
| viewing more immersive. Perhaps it's due to historical
| cultural reasons, but I'm not sure that totally explains it.
|
| FWIW I play valorant on a 390fps monitor so I am not a "the
| eye can only see 60fps" truther.
| smcleod wrote:
| 24/30fps looks dreadfully unnatural and distracting to many
| people though. It's almost painful to watch on larger
| screen sizes.
| smcleod wrote:
| If it's blurry or smeary then your TV / source is doing it
| very wrong or just can't keep up or is too low resolution /
| lacks quality upscaling.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's blurry and smeary in the movie theater. You just can't
| capture fast motion at 24 fps. Once you train yourself to
| look for it you will never be able to stop seeing it.
| smcleod wrote:
| Oh sorry you mean it's blurry and smeary at 24 fps in the
| cinema! Yes I agree. Sorry I thought you meant that
| higher frame rates looks blurry.
| xnx wrote:
| Is tearing common? What video source are you watching where the
| frames recorded in the video do not match the frames displayed
| by the display?
| smcleod wrote:
| Very common for video footage lower than 40FPS. It doesn't
| matter what the source is (AppleTV, laptop with HDMI, nvidia
| shield, PS5) - this is very noticeable to a large chunk of
| the population.
| wolfd wrote:
| What do you mean by "tearing"? Like, VSync-off tearing or a
| different effect?
| Zetobal wrote:
| Must be vsync off otherwise nobody would watch movies.
| smcleod wrote:
| Sorry I was conflating juddering and tearing, I meant
| juddering.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Perhaps you're conflating juddering and tearing? - they are
| distinct. Judder is what you see with, for example, low-fps
| panning, but tearing is where one segment of the screen
| (usually a horizontal strip) is out of sync, still
| displaying the previous frame, while the rest of the screen
| has moved on. This is not normal on a correctly configured
| system.
| smcleod wrote:
| Sorry - yes I am - I had to look up some examples but I'm
| talking about juddering.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Same. It's more noticeable on large screens because more is in
| the peripheral vision. Screens are larger today (and perhaps
| people are putting bigger TVs into smaller rooms than before)
| so we see more of the screen in our peripheral vision than
| before.
|
| Peripheral vision has a lot of rods (instead of cones) which
| are more sensitive to rapid motion. I can certainly pick up
| flicker and "perceive the frames" more clearly when looking in
| my peripheral vision.
|
| Same goes for the old CRT monitors: 60 Hz was an absolute no-
| no, 85 was tolerable but higher was better.
|
| Edit: CRTs were worse, of course, because they were constantly
| flashing light-dark, unlike LCDs which simply transition from
| frame to frame.
| wolfd wrote:
| A major issue with motion interpolation is that it can't be
| perfect, and is often far from it. The implementation on many
| TVs is jarring, you'll see super-smooth motion while an object
| is moving a slow or medium speed, but as soon as the patch of
| pixels that it's tracking goes really fast, it assumes the
| patches are distinct, and the motion will be juddery.
| Individual objects switching from high-framerate to low in the
| span of a half-second is quite noticeable to my eyes, but I
| admit that most people around me don't seem to care.
|
| Maybe one day the real-time implementation will be good enough,
| but I find that it's shockingly bad most of the time.
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| Is it possible what you're seeing is 'judder'[1] or bad 3:2
| pulldown? I really don't think much actual 'tearing' [2] makes
| it to screens in theaters - that would be a big screwup!
|
| 1 - https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/judder
|
| 2 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing
| smcleod wrote:
| Yes sorry, Judder is the correct term.
| smusamashah wrote:
| For me when motion interpolation is on, I can immediately see
| that it's interpolated. And then I keep noticing the artifacts
| where the lines meet and boundaries. It's very distracting. I
| experimented with this setting while watching Koyaanisqatsi and
| for me it was better when it was very slight interpolation (at
| 3 on the scale of 1 to 10).
| Retr0id wrote:
| > Motion interpolation or motion smoothing increases the frames
| per second from 24fps to 60fps
|
| It's pretty common for TVs to have even higher refresh rates
| these days - my 4 year old mid-range LG OLED is 120hz, for
| example. Conveniently, 24 evenly divides 120, so when you turn
| off the interpolation you get perfectly consistent frame times.
|
| As a more general note, don't be afraid to experiment with the
| settings. If you're watching low-bitrate netflix streams, some of
| the artifact-reduction filters can be worthwhile, especially on
| the lower intensity settings.
|
| For watching bluray remuxes however, "filmmaker mode" or
| equivalent settings is generally the way to go.
| fortyseven wrote:
| Genuinely tired of people telling me what an awful person I am
| for the weird shit I like. You do you.
| vsskanth wrote:
| I'm one of those people who turns on motion smoothing. For some
| weird reason, it makes older shows like friends or sound of music
| crystal clear on my LG C2 OLED. I can't explain why.
| teddyh wrote:
| Also: <https://rootmy.tv/>
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I find the headline to be seriously clickbaity, as the word
| "smart" (in the context of TVs) generally refers to a network
| connection that facilitates streaming, telemetry, ads, etc. but
| TFA is not discussing that category of features whatsoever. It's
| discussing features totally unrelated to the growing popularity
| of disabling "smart TV" features for the sake of privacy and
| fewer ads.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't know that there's a generic non-jargon
| word for this collection of settings, but let's not solve for
| that by overloading the word "smart"!
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Or indeed being a sort of tech apologist by describing it as
| "weird".
| j45 wrote:
| TVs were sold to us with some degree of smarts, they weren't
| really smart, and upgrading or replacing the smarts is too much
| work.
| izzydata wrote:
| Frame interpolation is so incredibly awful looking in my opinion.
| Especially when it comes to animation. I can not comprehend all
| of the people on Youtube that take a beautiful drawn animation
| that is intentionally 24 frames per second and increase it to 60
| thus ruining the hand crafted perfection of the drawn key frames.
| tuna74 wrote:
| Very little hand drawn animation is done a 24 fps. Which make
| interpolating the actual movements even crappier.
| imhoguy wrote:
| Modern smart TVs are so disappointing that I just prefer watching
| films on my 27" IPS computer monitor - no bloatware and every
| video just looks right.
|
| Not to mention that after 6 years the TV becomes useless junk
| killed by bulky modern app updates. I think there is a market for
| something like "Framework TV".
| imp0cat wrote:
| Well, an OLED will be pretty much dead after six years anyways.
|
| Also, you cat reset an old, slow TV, put it in "dumb" mode,
| then add something like a Vero V or another box.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > Well, an OLED will be pretty much dead after six years
| anyways.
|
| How much TV are you people watching such that this statement
| becomes even remotely accurate? My 2017 LG OLED display says
| it has 6400 power-on hours and it looks as good as new.
| sb057 wrote:
| The average American watches five hours of television every
| day, or just shy of 11,000 hours over six years.
|
| https://www.marketingcharts.com/television/tv-audiences-
| and-...
| sgt wrote:
| Lots of people leave their television sets on for almost
| the entire day, even when not watching. Never understood
| that.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That explains a few things.
|
| Still, the objective tests from RTINGS seem to suggest
| that it's the LCD sets that look all fucked up after a
| few years, while almost all the OLED ones look perfect.
| And they OLED sets aren't showing a downtrend in overall
| brightness over time.
|
| https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/longevity-results-
| after-10-m...
| eropple wrote:
| Yeah, that's a wild claim to me too. My 2018 LG C8 has
| about 5800 hours on it and it is indistinguishable from
| new. (Though I've never run it at max brightness because it
| would be blinding.)
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > Well, an OLED will be pretty much dead after six years
| anyways.
|
| Why is that?
| imp0cat wrote:
| They get dimmer as they age and might also develop "burn-
| in".
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| This depends a LOT on both how, and how much the display in
| question is used.
|
| You can make an OLED visibly burn in within a couple months
| if you max the brightness, cover it in static content and
| then leave it running constantly.
|
| Or it can last a decade if used lightly, on lower brightness,
| with good burn-in compensation software, with few to no
| static images.
| ptmcc wrote:
| A decade is still a really short lifespan for a TV
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Anecdotally, My cheap old TCL dumb LED tv light burned out
| after about six years which is about average from what I'm
| seeing online but maybe I can fix it. But I did use it as
| suggested with a mi box.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| Convert the Smart to DumbTV by offloading all apps to your
| favorite streaming device (for example, Apple TV or Nvidia
| Shield). If it helps, don't ever enable internet connectivity
| to the Smart TV.
| lintimes wrote:
| Worse yet, now high end monitors (Samsung Odyssey G9 OLED) are
| offered with poorly implemented smart TV hub features.
| peruvian wrote:
| It's not that hard to get around this. I kept my TV offline and
| plugged in an Apple TV immediately.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Some Webos LG TVs, like mine, can be rooted. I can now do
| wonderful things like install an ad-blocking version of
| youtube(still works in spite of recent changes). And SSH into
| my tv and mess around with the Linux system if I want to.
| IshKebab wrote:
| But can you make the UI not super laggy?
|
| I recently acquired a very old Sony TV it reminded me how
| lag-free TV interfaces are supposed to work. But nooooo LG is
| like "we're going to make great TVs but the UI is a poorly
| written web page running on a 386, enjoy!"
| smusamashah wrote:
| I have done this on family and friends' TVs a number of times
| already. Most of these settings are crapy and very visibly making
| picture worse instead of better. Worse offender in my opinion is
| the noise reduction or sharpness. Noise reduction is incidentally
| also the one which makes Smart phone or other cheap camera
| outputs worse.
| Retr0id wrote:
| > Noise reduction is incidentally also the one which makes
| Smart phone or other cheap camera outputs worse.
|
| This is all subjective of course, but I think you'll find that
| in cheap cameras, _overdone_ noise reduction is the culprit,
| rather than noise reduction itself. If you 're able to look at
| the raw sensor data, I think you'll find something even worse
| still. Small sensors are inherently very noisy, in typical
| lighting conditions.
|
| So yes, the images look worse than optimal, but not worse than
| if there was no filtering at all.
| hammock wrote:
| Does the same apply for audio settings as picture settings?
|
| For example, Dialog Clarity/Enhancement, TruVolume (automatic
| volume leveling), and DTS Virtual:X?
|
| Why or why not?
|
| Do you use Spatial Audio on your Apple products (which sounds
| great to me)?
| sbliny wrote:
| Consumer Reports has a "TV Screen Optimizer" that aims to give
| users optimal picture settings by Brand/Model.
|
| Also nice that they mention how to turn off ACR and other privacy
| related features as well.
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/mycr/benefits/tv-screen-opti...
| shijie wrote:
| I recently went down the rabbit hole to find a dumb TV. It was
| surprisingly difficult. I ended up with a Sceptre 65 inch TV, to
| which I've plugged in a rooted, jailbroken Chromecast.
|
| It's been awesome. The TV is fast to boot up, responsive, doesn't
| spy on me, and doesn't need useless software updates.
| codetrotter wrote:
| The _smartest_ thing you can do with a "smart tv" is to keep it
| unconnected from your WiFi and instead plug a Raspberry Pi into
| one of the HDMI ports and use that for your YouTube etc needs.
| varjag wrote:
| None of the functions TFA discusses has anything to do with
| connectivity.
| codetrotter wrote:
| No but my point is that if you keep your "smart TV" offline
| you don't need to worry about any of the settings on it. And
| that's just aside from all of the problematic things of
| allowing it to connect.
| clintfred wrote:
| But their point is that your comment doesn't have anything
| to do with what the article is talking about. TVs having
| picture settings have nothing to do with connecting it to
| the network.
| Liquix wrote:
| Or don't buy products that are subsidized by recording and
| selling your data! Not to mention these half-baked "features"
| produce thousands of hours of headaches, tech support calls, and
| general unhappiness. $tvManufacturer could care less because red
| line go up.
|
| Build quality and software invasiveness are both going to keep
| trending in the wrong directions until people stop buying smart
| TVs. And it's not like you need to break the bank or order
| commercial displays - $150 on Amazon for a dumb 43" 1080p, $260
| for a 55" 4K.
| clintfred wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree, but this article doesn't talk
| about any of that. It's talk about picture setting, like motion
| smoothing, dynamic range, local dimming, etc.
| jowea wrote:
| > Wouldn't I have remembered Elaine being a 9ft tall blue
| humanoid alien with a tail?
|
| I never observed what TFA is complaining about, does someone have
| an screenshot?
| bkm wrote:
| Just get a modern Sony TV and be done with it. They perfected
| Motionflow to the point where you no longer think about framerate
| (choppiness nor soap opera). It's clearly a priority, probably
| because they are the only manufacturer with their own studios
| (Columbia/Sony pictures). There is a reason people pay the $800+
| Sony tax over any TV that has the same panel.
| richwater wrote:
| Is it just that easy? Do you have any specific model recs?
| deanCommie wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. Are you saying these TV's still
| butcher the original artistic intent of the creators for the
| sake of arbitrary petty consumer desires to have their
| expensive TV purchase be justified?
|
| But they just do it better than the other manufacturers do?
| flir wrote:
| C'mon, that's a reddit-level wilful misinterpretation of what
| he actually said. I mean, look:
|
| Are you saying the original artistic intent of the creators
| to insert unskippable ads at the beginning of the disc is
| more important than the consumer's right to control the
| playback of the content they bought? Plus I heard it might
| kill babies.
|
| See? It's just silly.
| chpatrick wrote:
| But then what framerate is it?
| thedougd wrote:
| Are they changing their interpolation settings based on source
| material? Some TVs will disable motion interpolation when they
| detect 24 frame rate content.
| com2kid wrote:
| The Sony tax is because ads on Sony TVs can all be turned off.
| Plenty of TVs have their price subsidized by ads, where as when
| going through initial setup, I've had Sony TVs with ads
| disabled _by default_ and questions asking if you want to turn
| them on.
|
| Sadly disabling "recommended content" on the Google TV launcher
| also disabled voice search from the remote, but I am pretty
| sure that is a Google problem and not something Sony chose.
|
| (Also my Sony TV cannot stay connected to my WiFi network for
| more than half an hour before I have to toggle WiFi on and off
| again...)
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The thing I hate about "advice" like this is that it assumes that
| everyone likes the same things and feels the same way, and it
| comes across as an attempt to shame anyone otherwise.
|
| I _like_ motion interpolation. I always have it turned on, and I
| chose my TV based on the quality of its motion interpolation.
|
| Screens are so big these days, that if you're watching a 24fps
| movie, any panning movement becomes a horrible juddering shaking
| movement. Judder judder judder... ugh. I can't stand it.
|
| With motion interpolation turned on, everything is silky smooth,
| and I can actually _see_ what 's on the screen, even when the
| picture is moving.
|
| So no, I won't be turning it off, and I suggest that the next
| time you watch a shakey-cam action movie, you try turning it on
| too!
| Angostura wrote:
| I understand and agree with what you are saying, but I think
| your preference for motion interpolation is quite _unusual_.
|
| Perhaps it is a preference that will change with generations.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Probably not, young people watch most of their content on
| phones/etc, not big TVs with motion interpolation.
| nomel wrote:
| This is absolutely the case with all of the nieces/nephews
| that I know. They prefer that they see the majority of,
| tablets, which 81% of kids have these days [1].
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=
| web&c...
| RussianCow wrote:
| > I understand and agree with what you are saying, but I
| think your preference for motion interpolation is quite
| _unusual_.
|
| The number of TVs that have it enabled by default seems to
| indicate otherwise. I'm not saying that the manufacturers are
| correct, necessarily, but I don't think they would go through
| the effort if they didn't think enough people wanted it.
| gffrd wrote:
| Or: it just "shows" better when they're demo'ing the TV to
| a potential customer, not unlike the hyper-saturated nature
| footage they use to get you to look at their TV and not the
| one next to it.
| RussianCow wrote:
| I don't buy that. Why would motion interpolation look
| better in the store than it does in your own home?
| nemo44x wrote:
| I think it's because of the content used for it. Some
| things do look better. But movies absolutely do not.
| Timwi wrote:
| Because the store chooses to show footage for which it is
| optimized, not a movie. But there's also the
| consideration that it looks better at first sight when
| you walk past it, than it does when you watch a whole
| movie looking straight at it.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| They are in fact quite incorrect. These poor upscale
| features are horrors crafted in the early days of post-
| processing nightmares. Half of it was pitched to make
| football games appear more real. They all murder the soul
| of the film and jack up delay. The industry even had to
| invent a synchronized audio mechanism to compensate for the
| summoning of these Eldridge horrors. What I don't mind are
| modern upscalers which look very nice on expensive sets.
| Other modern features like HDR are also lovely because they
| focus on reproducing the movie with vibrant lighting.
| Anyhow, one summer working in a television station will
| improve your acuity for these things. You might even come
| to understand how these old creations will be the downfall
| of civilization. As an aside, do not forget to surgically
| remove samba tv from any android set with adb.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| It makes everything look like a cheap soap opera to me. I can't
| stand it. I think this might be either a generational thing or
| perhaps a cultural thing, or maybe some of both.
| j45 wrote:
| It feels like the jump to 4K and 240hz tv at the same time as
| one groups normal and another groups exception may have
| something to do with it.
|
| Maybe the group who doesn't want it too life like is
| inoculated, or the other way around.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| I suspect it has to do with the degree to which your past was
| plagued with cheap soap operas vs poorly performing video
| games.
| thedougd wrote:
| Maybe some people can pick up on the fact that those extra
| frames aren't real more easily than others. Some innate sense
| thrown off by the interpolation. Motion interpolation gives
| me an uneasy feeling more than anything.
|
| For example, some people can see a high frame rate and thus
| can't watch color wheel based DLP because they see rainbowing
| in the screen. I can't watch my old plasma in 48hz mode
| because it flickers. My spouse can't see the flicker at all.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| For me, the interpolation really seems to separate the
| "layers" in a shot, and it just completely destroys the
| illusion of them not being a set with some lights. Like I
| said, it feels like a cheap soap opera from the developing
| country no matter what movie or show I'm watching.
|
| Some of the problem for me may be related to the fact that
| I worked as a camera operator and video editor during the
| years from transitioning from the old NTSC standard to HD,
| and I paid hyperattention to detail as HD came online.
|
| For some reason, the interpolation just screams "this is
| fake" to me.
| ilamont wrote:
| I noticed this too after getting a 4K TV earlier this year.
| It really ruins a lot of films.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| "It makes everything look like a cheap soap opera to me"
|
| This is nothing more than conditioning. "Quality" TV shows
| "film" at 24 fps despite the fact that they were going to be
| viewed at 30/60. They did this because even though 3:2
| pulldown incontestably is a dirty, ugly hack that _reduced_
| quality, people were conditioned to think that if something
| went through that hack, it 's quality. If it didn't, it can't
| be quality.
|
| So when people talk about the "soap opera" effect, what they
| usually mean is concise and clear.
|
| The best example of this was The Hobbit when presented at the
| original, director's intention 48FPS. People were so
| conditioned to movies being a blurring mess at 24FPS that a
| frequent complaint about the Hobbit was that it had the
| purported "soap opera effect".
| deanCommie wrote:
| You can also prefer to not like subtitles, and watch films
| dubbed from their original language.
|
| You can also prefer to not like black & white films, and watch
| the colorized versions done decades later.
|
| You can also prefer not to see nudity, violence, or profanity,
| and watch the edited-for-TV versions of those films.
|
| Finally you can prefer a totally different story or shot
| composition or artistic choices altogether, and ask Generative
| AI to recreate, reedit, or augment scenes to your preference.
|
| All of these are valid preferences and we have the technology
| to facilitate them for you.
|
| But 1) They should never be the default on any technology you
| acquire. That's the PRIMARY sin of all of the technologies
| mentioned by OP - it's not that they exist, it's that they're
| on by default, and since most humans never change the default
| settings on ANYTHING they change, they experience content in a
| way that as not intended by the original artist behind the
| vision.
|
| And 2) Well, this is subjective, and everything is a spectrum.
| But you are ultimately robbing yourself of the specific
| experience intended for you by the creator of the film. It's
| certainly within your right not to care and think that you know
| better than them, but on a spectrum of that philosophy, carried
| out across all of society, it's probably not a good thing.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Oh look the exact type of shaming OP was talking about.
| jonstewart wrote:
| My mind is blown. I didn't think -anyone- could possibly like
| motion interpolation for watching movies. I hate it so, so
| much. I'm trying to understand your POV.
|
| How do you feel about watching movies in a theater? The frame
| rate there is low but the screen is so much larger.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| It's _even worse_ in theaters. The screen is HUGE. Panning
| motions are so bad they often give me motion sickness.
|
| There was one movie that they showed at 48fps - I think it
| was The Hobbit? I've forgotten. That was amazing. Blissful.
| My eyes have never been so happy.
|
| Even if I forgot the plot already.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Movies have a different display though. Film shutters and
| whatnot. Helps a lot with keeping the motion from just being
| jerky. OLEDs don't have that, and attempts at black frame
| insertion don't really work there because they already
| struggle with brightness. Hence, a mild motion interpolation
| is useful.
|
| Different display technologies need different things. No
| difference from CRT filters on old video games played on
| modern screens.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Nah, it is just that filmmakers avoid a lot of panning
| shots because it looks like crap.
| cobbal wrote:
| There really are a large range of opinions about this. I love
| high frame rate, but can't stand interpolation. I wish
| theaters used higher frame rates. I really enjoyed the parts
| of Avatar 2 that were smoother, and it felt jarring to me
| whenever it would switch back to low frame rates.
|
| Probably it's just what you're used to and how much you've
| been trained to notice artifacts.
| DHPersonal wrote:
| I like the feature, too. I remember watching the Battlestar
| Galactica remake with the interpolation setting active and
| getting an even deeper sense of realism out of the scenes. They
| were already aiming for a documentary style with the camera
| work and special effects, so the higher prosumer framerate fit
| with the style very well. On other films and TV shows I like
| the interpolation for panning shots which jidder a lot on the
| standard framerate.
| malkia wrote:
| Seriously... No! Our first LCD TV (several years old by now)
| had this, and watching LOTR on it - was wtf is this - am I in a
| theater? We both sit with my wife and watched it, and we were
| secretly annoyed but dared not to say or complain about it,
| because we just spent tons of money on it... Then we found it
| and fixed it!
|
| New TV I've got has the `Filmmaker mode` - wasn't sure what
| exactly is that, turned it On and yes - it's how it should be.
| This article cleared it for me now
| rubatuga wrote:
| Noise reduction and dynamic brightness aren't too bad if done
| tastefully. But it's really up to the TV manufacturers to do it
| properly which is why there is just general advice to turn it
| off.
| cpeterso wrote:
| A couple years ago, my Samsung TV slowed to a crawl. Each click
| through a menu took multiple seconds. I eventually discovered a
| new setting buried deep to turn off "real-time anti-virus
| scanning". That immediately fixed the performance problems.
|
| How would my TV get a virus? This was a Tizen TV, not an Android
| TV where I'm installing shady apps.
|
| https://www.techspot.com/news/78967-samsung-loading-mcafee-a...
| tuna74 wrote:
| "At first this seems great. Why shouldn't 90s sitcoms seem like
| they were filmed in 4k at 60 frames per second? Then you start
| noticing things..."
|
| Interpolation will never give the same results as actual capture,
| so the author is wrong here.
| fideloper wrote:
| One thing I seemingly can't disable is how my samsung tv gets
| louder when ambient noise is high.
|
| I absolutely do not want my TV to get louder when one of my kids
| is shrieking. Just adds stress on top of stress
| j45 wrote:
| I believe there is a setting for that.
|
| Using an external receiver can help too.
| Daneel_ wrote:
| Open TV. Find microphone. Apply tape.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| Apply dollop of superglue, THEN tape for maximum quiet
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Just gotta find a proprietary Samsung screwdriver first.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| > an external receiver
|
| Yes, passthrough digital audio to an AVR if at all possible.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| External bluetooth transmitters/receivers are also the cure
| for shitty PC bluetooth stacks.
|
| They don't switch to garbage quality mode every time an app,
| website, or game queries the microphone. They don't re-enable
| shitty defaults every software update. They don't require
| text config files in linux and the critical settings in those
| files don't get ignored due to open source politics. They
| don't mess up pairing every time you reboot into a different
| OS. They just work. $50 will banish all your bluetooth
| troubles to the deepest pits of the underworld, where they
| belong.
| j45 wrote:
| I should have been more clear. An audio/video receiver.
|
| Beyond Bluetooth optical audio is quietly pretty decent.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yes, TOSLINK is a godsend. It's immune to ground loops
| _and_ motherboard manufacturers that don 't give a shit,
| which is all of them, even ones that brand around having
| decent audio (ProArt I'm looking at you).
| j45 wrote:
| Another neat idea is to connect all "smart" equipment to an
| isolated vlan and separate wifi that can still be seen by your
| normal network devices.
|
| For example if your wifi was called "Home", an additional "Home-
| IoT" is for every device.
|
| The IoT devices can then be set to not sniff your network, or
| even connect out if you want.
|
| A good example of this is in this EdgeRouter setup guide, which
| is a pretty decent guide on how to plan a home network for more
| than just basic home browsing.
|
| https://github.com/mjp66/Ubiquiti/blob/master/Ubiquiti%20Hom...
| rocqua wrote:
| The local dimming suggestion isn't fully in line with the rest.
|
| It's about bringing some parts of the image closer to whats
| intended by the filmmaker, at the cost of other parts of the
| image (usually noticeable by adding gradients to flat color).
| That isn't going against the filmmaker's intention, so much as
| respecting the contrast the filmmaker wants at the cost of some
| gradients. It's a different way to approximate the actual signal
| the TV should send.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I wonder what it would look like if you designed a movie to
| glitch these settings as badly as possible.
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