Going back to our stick figure analogy, that means drawing four times as many stick figures by using four times as many pages, and flicking through those pages at the same speed. This fact, however, is where some 200Hz TVs succeed - or fail miserably!
Imagine you've drawn a stick figure on fifty pages, and can flick through those fifty pages in one second, without missing a page, and at a constant speed. Now double those pages, and you will find it harder to flick through the whole hundred pages without missing a few - let alone the same speed throughout. So your stick figure may seem to move smoothly, then judder, then smoothly again. Now, imagine trying to do that with two hundred pages. It's a struggle, and you are sure to miss a number of pages along the way. To put it one way - some people will do a better job than others.
This also rings very true for TVs. There are some processors out there which do a much better job than others do. There are some 200Hz processors which don't quite cut the mustard, and you can see odd frames skipping, lots of inaccurate and seemingly unnatural movement. So beware - not all 200Hz processors are created equal!
A lot of Plasma screens seem to highlight 600Hz - they must be at least three times faster, right?
Well in short - not exactly! What 600Hz Sub-Field Driving does, with a 50Hz source like how our Australian TV is broadcast, is split each frame into 12 separate frames or "sub-fields", and then show them individually on the screen. What it does not do is create NEW frames. That means 12 sub-fields per frame in 50Hz (frames per second) creates 600 frames per second (50x12=600). The more sub-fields you have per frame, the more accurate the colour reproduction and less picture noise.
So technically, 600Hz sub-field drive is not solely linked to, nor is its primary purpose, eliminating motion judder.
So, what is best? 100Hz, 200Hz or 600Hz?
In summary, for fast paced natural movement, Plasma screens are still superior. They do not need to create extra frames to eliminate motion judder, so the resulting image seen is not fake or unnatural. There are pros and cons for both Plasma and LCD technology, and opinion will always be divided one way or another, but if you prefer a smooth, natural picture - even though LCD and LED technology has improved immensely - a Plasma screen is still the way to go.
Refresh Rate Explained
Trying to choose a TV today can be difficult. One of the most widely debated features of flat panel TVs is the ever confusing Refresh Rate. There are quite a number of different refresh rates being featured on today's Digital TVs. 50Hz, 100Hz, 200Hz, and 600Hz. These Refresh Rates can easily divide opinion
What is Refresh Rate, and why is it important?
Every video we watch is made up of thousands of "frames". The refresh rate, or "Hertz" (Hz) is a measure of the number of frames shown on your TV screen each second. Remember in your younger years, when you were bored in school and used to draw a stick figure in the top corner of every page in your book, and then flick through it quickly to make it look like it was moving? This is basically what your TV is doing to produce motion on the screen.
It is refreshing (i.e. flicking) through frames (i.e. pages) to produce motion. Now the quicker you can flick through pages in your book - the faster and smoother the stick figures motion seems to be. Secondly, the more stages of movement you draw the stick figure in on each page - the more natural it will seem to move.
So let's go back to our TV - if the same principal is applied, then the TV is able to show you a smoother motion if it can flick through its frames quicker. And by adding extra frames in between other frames - this causes the TV to produce a smoother transition from one frame to the other. So, the more times the screen can be "refreshed" every second, the smoother the image's motion will seem to be.
The standard broadcast signal we receive in Australia is 50Hz. That means that the image on your Digital TV is refreshed 50 times each second. 50Hz is a fairly slow rate, and it is possible to see blurring or judder in the picture when watching fast moving sporting events or action movies, or any scenes where the camera pans across very fast. So the way the TV fixes this issue is to create intermediate frames and then insert them between the original frames. This is referred to as interpolation, or 100Hz Technology.
So if 100Hz gets rid of judder, why do I need 200Hz?
Interpolation at 100Hz is good, but again, with a lot of Full HD, high resolution content like Blu-Ray, Gaming and more recently 3D Technology, now available to every home, and 46" - 65" LED screens surging in popularity due to plummeting prices - there's more benefit to be had from your TV doubling its refresh efforts. While 100Hz will certainly remove a lot of motion judder from LED TVs and LCD TVs, the bigger the screen, the more apparent the remaining artefacts and judder become. So 200Hz was born...
By inserting 3 additional frames between each existing frame, instead of one as 100hZ does, 200Hz processors improve motion smoothness further and succeed in making objects look more "solid". The aim of 200Hz is to keep objects such as Soccer Balls, or any small objects moving very fast across the screen, from losing their shape, blurring or breaking up when being propelled across the screen. However, it's not as simple as just adding an extra three frames - that's not quite the extent of the technology. A processor inside the TV looks at two sequential frames and then actually creates three NEW additional frames in between them.