Hdtv what is the difference between 60hz and 120hz

For instance, you might see claims of a Hz refresh rate on TVs. Or something called "clear motion index" or "clear motion rate" claiming , , or—mic drop— Hz, but make no mistake, every TV on the market in is either 60 Hz or Hz natively, though they might use " motion smoothing " settings to extrapolate those higher numbers. But still, you are left with a choice between 60 Hz and Hz.

What do they mean, and why would you need one over the other? Here's the scoop. Fortunately, the difference between 60 Hz and Hz is pretty simple.

In the case of television refresh rates, "Hz" just means "refresh cycles per second. So a refresh rate of 60 Hz means the screen re-samples or re-displays source information 60 times per second. And with Hz, it's twice as often. Pretty simple, right? Right now, TVs are only available in standard 60 Hz or Hz refresh rates. Most other listings are extrapolated. Just keep in mind that regardless of the TV's refresh rate, it can't create more information than the source is displaying.

This is a key detail in determining whether or not you need a Hz TV, or can settle for a 60 Hz option. If you just want the most high tech TV money can buy, a Hz option is never going to do a worse job than a 60 Hz option. Sure, it isn't twice as good just because it's twice as fast, but logically it won't ever miss any source information that a 60 Hz variant wouldn't. In the early 20th century, cinema experts decided that 24 frames per second—also called 24fps or 24p—was the minimum necessary amount of frames to convince human beings that they were seeing moving pictures.

Far from outdated, many of today's Blu-ray discs still default to 24 frames per second to preserve the filmic aesthetic you'll get at the movies.

To combat this, many modern 60 Hz TVs use a telecine technique called " pulldown," where frames are doubled in alternating sequences in order to "meet up" with the locked 60 Hz display speed.

Unfortunately, pulldown usually results in a motion artifact called "judder," where in-motion sequences during playback have a stuttering or skipping effect.

While many modern 60 Hz TVs do pulldown so successfully that you'll never notice the tiny amount of judder, you can save yourself the trouble by purchasing a Hz TV instead.

The bottom line? TCL's sets are all over the place. Some don't list any motion term -- those are 60Hz native. And some say Natural Motion , but they're 60Hz as well. For the most effective increase in motion resolution, and compatibility with next-gen gaming consoles' best video output modes, you need a native Hz refresh television.

That said, it is possible to have some improvement in motion resolution even with a 60Hz TV if it uses some other feature, like backlight scanning or black frame insertion, that improves motion resolution. Refresh rate is how often a TV changes the image also known as a "frame" onscreen.

With traditional televisions, this was 60 times each second, or "60Hz. Some modern TVs can refresh at double this rate, or Hz frames per second. That just depends on the electricity in your country. For the purposes of this article, 50 and 60 work the same, as do and For my own sanity, and ease of reading, I'm going to stick with 60 and , but feel free to read that as 50 and if you're in the UK, Australia or any place that has 50Hz electricity.

So are these higher refresh numbers just another "more is better! Not entirely. Interestingly, this blur is largely created by your brain. Basically, your brain notices the motion, and makes assumptions as to where that object or overall image is going to be in the next fraction of a second. The problem with LCD and current OLED TVs is that they hold that image there for the full 60th of a second, so your brain actually smears the motion, thinking it should be moving, when in fact it's just a series of still images.

It's actually quite fascinating, but the details are beyond the scope of this article. I recommend checking out BlurBuster's great article for more info.

The motion blur we're talking about here, despite coming from your brain, is caused by how the television works. This is separate from whatever blur the camera itself creates.

Some people aren't bothered by motion blur. Some don't even notice it. Others, like me, do notice it and are bothered by it.

Fortunately, it can be minimized. Refresh rate itself is really only part of the solution. Just doubling the same frames doesn't actually do much for reducing motion blur. Something else is needed. There are two main methods. Improvements beyond a Hz refresh rate are unnoticeable. Frame rate is how often a video source can deliver a frame of visual data to a screen for display. The frame rate is a property of the video source, not the display screen. Videos are often recorded at 24fps frames per second or 30 fps.

In the U. This is where refresh rate becomes important. Refresh rate is a property of a display, such as a TV screen or computer monitor. It is measured in hertz and determines how often a frame's visual information is displayed on a screen.

To make sluggish, if standard, frame rates seem smoother, screens "refresh" a frame more frequently by creating a duplicate of some images or creating a pseudo-transition with motion blur effects.

This gives the appearance of a higher frame rate when there actually isn't one. For example, if you have a 30fps video source, a 60Hz TV will display each frame two times a second. Thirty frames per second work nicely with 60Hz because 60 is divisible by Film can complicate matters, as it is typically shot at 24fps. This means that a TV with a 60Hz refresh rate cannot evenly distribute frames, and that film which goes to video broadcast at 30 frames per second will not look the same as it did in the cinema.

TVs can use an interlacing process known as pulldown to improve smoothness; however, this is an imperfect process, and more perceptive viewers may notice film judder, flickering, or "tearing" effects. In contrast , a TV with a refresh rate of Hz does not have to do anything special to display video or film, as is divisible by both 24 and This means that, in general, Hz will result in a smoother viewing experience.