Problems with Planet Earth

[Preeminent]

OK, I know in the past I came across some things about trailing I believe it's called? I just popped in Planet Earth on my 46inch Samsung and 99% of it looks fantastic! The problem I am seeing though is when birds are flying or something was running pretty fast, I see blurring/lines/flickering all around the outline of the animal. Is there anything that can be done for this? What causes it? I do apologize if this is a tired subject.

[SonOfArathorn]

Many lower end LCDs as well as some higher ends have problems with motion blur, perhpas that is the issue? Is it only PE? Do you watch sports, because many sports programs have the same issue due to the amount of fast movements.

PE has many issues as far as PQ goes but this is one I'm not familiar with.

[Rob J in WNY]

It could be a number of different things causing this type of artifacting (additional video information not native to the source), but I'll take a stab at one possibility. First off, it would be nice to know what specific model of Samsung TV you have.

If your Samsung TV is an LCD model with a 120Hz refresh-rate panel, and its corresponding "Auto Motion Plus" motion smoothing feature is turned on, there can be some miscalculating on the 'interpolated frames' that the TV generates and inserts into the native video stream. Wow, I hope that didn't sound too confusing!

By default, most 120Hz LCD TVs will have their motion smoothing feature turned on, at least to a "low" setting. Although the use of motion smoothing can dramatically smooth out "juddery" video motion, side effects include the "live TV" or "soap opera" effect, where standard film frame rates begin to look like live video. Some find this look appealing. Others, not so much.

However, another by-product of motion smoothing is that the intermediate frames it interpolates (generates based on the surrounding frames) may not contain accurate image information. I have a Sony XBR4 with a 120Hz panel, and it provides really nice motion smoothing with its "Motion Enhancer" turned all the way up. But for all that, the occasional artifacting produced by inaccurate interpolation proved to be more of an annoyance for me - and they almost always occur along the boundaries of motion on the screen (like around the birds in flight in your case). I have yet to see any LCD TV with a frame interpolation feature that does not produce artifacts with the feature turned on.

Turn your Auto Motion Plus function off for your Blu-ray input on the TV (if your TV is so-equipped) and replay the video. I'm guessing you might be surprised at the result!

I keep all motion interpolation completely off for my Blu-ray movie viewing. The resultant picture quality is at its maximum this way, and is being displayed just as the director intended it to look, and it's a picture free of those annoying artifacts around the edges of movement.

Just educate you a bit farther, keep in mind that when you turn off motion smoothing software in your TV, you are not turning off the native refresh rate of your screen. A 120Hz TV will always refresh its image 120 times per second, no matter what the motion smoothing software is set to, or off.

Hope this helps you!

[SonOfArathorn]

Way better than my answer. My knowledge of the inner workings of the tech is still a layman's at best.

[Col. Zombie]

What a jip. Here I open this thread thinking somone was going to b**** and whine about this planet we live on and here the OP is just talking about some stupid-sexy blu-ray. Such a let-down.

[Preeminent]

Whoa, great replies, thanks! I have the 2008 Samsung 46A850. Amazing Tv. But yes Rob J, I did have Auto Motion Plus turned on. It's funny because I was telling my wife that this feature will be good for when we watch Nature or Documentary and it is proving to not be good for that either. I just got Baraka from Netflix and I will try it out again. I guess we will see soon enough how football looks with it turned on. I can see how the manufacturers are really pushing this. Good for selling Tvs. Haven't really found anything that it noticeably improves. Thanks again for an informative reply

[SquidPuppet]

Originally Posted by Preeminent

Whoa, great replies, thanks! I have the 2008 Samsung 46A850. Amazing Tv. But yes Rob J, I did have Auto Motion Plus turned on. It's funny because I was telling my wife that this feature will be good for when we watch Nature or Documentary and it is proving to not be good for that either. I just got Baraka from Netflix and I will try it out again. I guess we will see soon enough how football looks with it turned on. I can see how the manufacturers are really pushing this. Good for selling Tvs. Haven't really found anything that it noticeably improves. Thanks again for an informative reply

Turn ALL those artificial digital smoothing gadgets off for a significant improvement. It will appear more filmic and not so processed.