100hz v 50hz

[colinB]

Went to buy a Sony32"ex403 from richer last night , sale price £300 but , as usual RC are sold out " but we have the LG one sir" spiel. Er, no thanks.
RC are on my doorstep and to get the sony at the same price i have to do south of the river to Best Buy and struggle home on the train with the thing.
I also have a Argos on my street and they have the 100hz 503 model for £100, money i dont really want to spend but, with new models on the way and VAT i dont want to hang around.

The question on my mind is is it worth spending the extra £100 for the faster rate if i dont watch sport, or is it more complicated than that?
I saw no difference comparing the two in store but that was watching wild life on one, not the best example of fast motion tv.

[Stratmangler]

Did you see a Cheetah running down its prey on the wildlife programme, or was it more sedate ?
Do you like and watch action movies ?

I personally would err towards the higher hertz, but the difference between 50 and 100 Hz is not all that great.

Ultimately the best thing to do is take DVD or BlueRay discs with you and be very critical of what you see.

[Reid Malenfant]

I'd go along with what Chris says What you often tend to find is that TVs with higher refresh rates have faster LCD panels, if they didn't you'd get the same kind of smearing as seen on a 50Hz panel when a camera pans or something moves accross the frame quickly on the 100Hz setting.

You aren't so much paying for the bit of extra processing as a better spec of panel at the end of the day.

[colinB]

Thanks guys. I dont watch action movies really but i think i see what you are saying. I have to decide if im happy paying more for a slightly better tv.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

get them to show you scrolling credits ... that will show you the difference

id buy the 503 ... i think i have said that before though

[colinB]

Cheers Hamish. You have said that before, im just being a cheap skate. Its the scotsman in me.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

26 years of not knowing there was a bit of scot in me allowed me to crush those tight fisted scrounging scot tenancies ... now a year and I bit later I am still crap with my money ... and now I can take the piss out of the Scottish legitimately ... its win win for me really ... well ... that is until I spend all my cash I suppose?!

[MartinT]

If they were CRT sets you'd really see the flicker of the 50Hz set compared with the 100Hz one, but LCDs don't really refresh a scanning beam so the refresh means how often the frame buffer is updated, a slightly different thing.

If you don't see the difference then there's no need for 100Hz as even 50Hz LCDs have a pretty stable picture compared with CRT.

[colinB]

Surely there was a clue in your christian name

[Reid Malenfant]

If they were CRT sets you'd really see the flicker of the 50Hz set compared with the 100Hz one, but LCDs don't really refresh a scanning beam so the refresh means how often the frame buffer is updated, a slightly different thing.

Phosphor persistence is the problem with CRTs, similar to fluorescent tubes which might explain why they tend to have gone high frequency.