LG 55LS5700 artifacting

[Stahlsoldat]

Help!

I previously had a 46" LG TV with all the gravy- a nice Pioneer Receiver, LG BD550 BluRay player, HD Cox Cable and had no issues whatsoever. Just recently I upgraded my TV to the 55" LG 55LS5700 and I’m having issues with artifacting. It’s most noticeable from the cable box but that’s to be expected just because it’s a compressed signal. The biggest concern I have is that I’m having problems while watching BluRays.

The ripple/ blurr around foreground movement is driving me crazy and I can’t get answers anywhere - I’ve fiddled around with the TruMotion feature, updated the firmware on my TV and BluRay player with no definitive luck. I’ve heard that not having HDMI 1.4 cables can cause these problems, but that doesn’t explain why everything was fine with my last TV and I’m having problems with this one.

I’m very close to sending the TV back, which is not really what I want to do. If anyone has any information or suggestions I would appreciate the help.

Thanks

Alex

[Jeff_Lichtman]

Did you buy the TV in a brick-and-mortar store? If so, maybe you could try to duplicate the problem in the store, and then see if anyone there can solve it.

[voltaire]

Well, your current TV is an LED/LCD, but you don’t mention the model number of your previous TV. Is it possible it was a plasma? If so, that alone could probably explain the difference you’re seeing with motion blur.

They’re very different technologies, and each has its own strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. Could be you were just used to the plasma and now you’re having trouble adjusting to the LED/LCD TV’s quirks.

Ask someone that wasn’t used to your old TV, and who’s hopefully familiar with their own LED/LCD, if they notice anything. It could be that you’re obsessing about it too much to just get used to it.

[voltaire]

P.S. This pretty good wiki may help you better understand the technical details behind what you’re seeing.

Some LCD TVs supplement the standard 50/60 Hz signal by interpolating an extra frame between every pair of frames in the signal so the display runs at 100 Hz or 120 Hz depending on which country you live in. The effect of this technology is most noticeable when watching material that was originally shot at low frame rates, like movies, in which case the typical film judder can be reduced, at the cost of introducing small visual artifacts.

[Stahlsoldat]

My old TV was an LG LED LCD as well, I just don’t have it anymore so I can’t recall the model number.

Ok, so there’s nothing that can be done at this point? I bought the TV online. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t because I bought a low-grade cheap TV.

[voltaire]

@Stahlsoldat

My old TV was an LG LED LCD as well, I just don’t have it anymore so I can’t recall the model number.

Ok, so there’s nothing that can be done at this point? I bought the TV online. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t because I bought a low-grade cheap TV.

Yeah, pretty much, other than wait for OLED TVs to get cheap, or laser TVs to come out, you’ll just have to get used to it. Here’s another article that explains the cause a bit more.

LCDs with 120Hz refresh rates display twice as many images per second, but the content remains unchanged–and showing the same 60 images twice doesn’t address the underlying problem with fast motion. That’s why most LCD-TV vendors have introduced technologies that generate new frames of content based on interpolation of the source material. The programs use mathematical algorithms to analyze adjacent frames (or a group of adjacent frames) and figure out where moving objects might logically be in the fraction of a second that the source video doesn’t contain. Every vendor has its own way of making these calculations, and they appear under different names in marketing materials. Vizio, for example, calls its motion-smoothing technology MEMC (short for Motion Estimation, Motion Compensation)–but the ads simply refer to it as Smooth Motion. LG calls its motion interpolation technology TruMotion, Samsung has Auto Motion Plus, and so on.
How effective are these technologies? “Nobody’s got it perfectly right yet,” says Vizio’s Lowe. That’s because it’s difficult to develop a mathematical algorithm that will work for all types of scenes and content.

<snip>

Interpolation Introduces Artifacts
Do smoothing technologies and higher refresh rates work? At PCWorld, we leave motion smoothing technologies on their default settings when we test, and we’ve noticed a general improvement in images involving motion. But occasionally we run into strange artifacts that these technologies have introduced.For example, we recently tested a 40-inch Samsung LCD TV that looked terrific on most counts. But in a slow panning shot in the Blu-ray Disc version of The Dark Knight, we noticed that a window in an office building in the background appeared to switch floors–most probably because of an interpolation error in Samsung’s motion-smoothing technology.

[Blakeyrat]

@Stahlsoldat

My old TV was an LG LED LCD as well, I just don’t have it anymore so I can’t recall the model number.

Ok, so there’s nothing that can be done at this point? I bought the TV online. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t because I bought a low-grade cheap TV.

Can’t you just turn off the frame interpolation feature? Or am I crazy?

[Jeff_Lichtman]

I found the user manuals on line here. The user guide (not the owner’s manual) gives instructions on how to control the TruMotion feature, which is what they call their de-judder feature. It also tells how to control several other features that might cause artifacts, including resolution enhancement (i.e. de-blurring), edge enhancement and noise reduction.