PROCESSING THE PICTURE FOR SPORTS VIEWING
TVs from most major brands do at least most picture processing competently. These involve things like scaling the resolution of the signal to match the panel resolution, mapping colours and brightness, converting it from interlaced to progressive format in the case of broadcast TV, and smoothing motion.
Australian sporting events are typically shot at 1080i/50, which is how they’re broadcast. That means that the actual picture resolution is 1920 by 1080 for the static parts of the picture, and 1920 by 540 for the moving parts. (The motion-adaptive picture processing is perhaps too complicated to get into here). But that reduced resolution for the moving parts is a trade-o for a higher eective frame rate of 50 frames per second. That speed makes it easier to follow the fast action on the field. COLOUR & BRIGHTNESS: So what picture settings should you use? First, for things like colour and brightness, just choose the ‘Standard’ or ‘Natural’ setting. Football games are plenty bright enough without the TV enhancing such things even more. And don’t be tricked by using the ‘Game’ picture setting. That’s for video games and is designed to reduce the response time of the TV, not improve picture quality. There may also be a ‘Sports’ picture setting. Check it out. MOTION SMOOTHING: But also check out the motion smoothing features of the TV. These take each pair of frames in the picture signal and interpolate one or more intermediate images between them. If the ball is flying through the air, jumping across say 30 centimetres of screen before the next frame, it will also flash up at 15 centimetres briefly. That can make it easier to keep track of fast moving things. It can also reduce judder — the little staccato jumps in the picture as the camera pans across the sporting field. Virtually all the big brands now implement such systems. But again experiment with it. They usually have several settings for dierent levels of processing. Too much motion smoothing can introduce a kind of swirly noise to the picture, and also make it look too glossy and artificial. Find the happy medium which keeps it real.