Buying a new LCD/LED HDTV?

Are you in the market to buy a new LCD/LED HDTV?

If so, beware of misleading video performance terms like:

Sony Motionflow XR 240, 480 or 960
Vizio SPS (Scenes Per Second)
Samsung CMR (Clear Motion Rate) 120, 240, 480, 840 or 960
Sharp AquoMotion
LG TruMotion

These are NOT the same as real screen refresh rates. Typically these numbers are exact multiples of the standard 60 Hz refresh rate, so they are designed to deceive the customer and make you think you are getting a higher refresh rate.

Why should you care? Because refresh rate, the number of times a second the screen is refreshed, directly determines how clear and smooth your screen action appears. The more rapid the action being displayed, such as sports, auto racing, video games, etc., the more blurry the action will be at a standard 60 Hz refresh rate, and the more you will want to have a higher refresh rate, such as 120 Hz or even 240 Hz.

The problem is, the higher refresh rate is more expensive to manufacture, so the HDTV will cost more. HDTV manufacturers have come up with these phony numbers to make you think you are getting better performance at a lower price. If you cannot find out the true refresh rate, make sure you can return the HDTV if you are not satisfied with the screen image.

Some HDTV manufacturer websites will tell you the real screen refresh rate, and it may be available at BestBuy or on BestBuy.com.

By the way this is only a problem with LED/LCD HDTV, not with plasma HDTV, which typically runs at a screen refresh rate of 480 Hz.

Beware Of Phony LCD HDTV Refresh Rates; posted March 26th, 2012