TV shopping

[firstfrost]

So, after many decades of faithful service (albeit somewhat tilted-screen, purple-blotched service), tirinian's TV finally gave up the ghost. So harrock (having the most interest in a Spiffier TV) and I trundled off to shop for one. The walls full of TVs are interesting in ways that I hadn't realized before.

Yes, this one is brighter, that one is more red, and so on. But there were also the TVs that were implementing some sort of unsharp mask, and the ones that weren't. harrock liked the sharpened pictures better, because they were (obviously) clearer. I liked the un-sharpened ones better because the sharpened ones were Cheating.

An odd irrationality there. I don't consider it cheating for the TV to actually be displaying static images changing very very fast, in an attempt to convince me that it's motion. I don't consider it cheating for them to use those little red, green, and blue dots instead of dots of every color. So why is sharpening cheating? (On the other hand, maybe they were all doing the same thing and the ones I thought were cheating had overshot. Then at least I'd be consistent. :) )

Comments

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I think that it's that a good unsharp mask (as opposed to one that does nothing, or one that produces annoying haloes) is dependent on the resolution. Film is high enough resolution to not bother, while when broadcasting, you have one signal fits many TV sizes and resolutions. So I *think* you'd want to do it on the screen end, rather than on the signal end. But yeah, I wonder whether there's options to tweak it if it turns out to be set too high, or interpreting something that doesn't need it.