Projector Reviews

If the Motionflow features are both turned Off and the display receives a progressive source at 60Hz, Sony's processing frame doubles that 120Hz; it does not remove 3/2 pulldown for film-based, 60Hz sources. If you feed the display a 24Hz source with Motionflow off, however, the processing quadruples that to 96Hz, not 120Hz. In both cases the added frames are simply repeated from the original source frame.

Film Projection mode performs either black or dark frame insertion. For 60Hz material, Mode1 drops a black frame between each active frame when upconverting to 120Hz. Modes2 and 3 operate differently. The original frame is made much brighter, and the added frame is a darker version of the original, rather than pure black. In Mode3, which Sony recommends and I preferred, the sum of these two frames is nearly as bright as the original; in Mode2 the combination is darker, but not as dark as Mode1. For 24Hz material, where the frame rate is quadrupled to 96kHz, the process is much the same, only this time the frame sequence for each original frame is ABAB, where A=the brightened original frame and B=the darker original frame. That, by the way, is why 24Hz is converted to 96Hz and not 120Hz—an even number of frame multiplications is required for this process.

With Film Projection Off and Motion Enhancer on and a 60Hz source, the added frame needed to increase the frame rate to 120Hz is interpolated from the prior and following frames. According to Sony, Motion Enhancer does not operate on 24p material, though this is contrary to my experience; I clearly saw its effects when I tried it with 24Hz Blu-ray and HD DVD discs.

Select a combination of Film Projection and Motion Enhancer and the result is a complex mixture of the two processes, except for Film Projection Mode 1. According to Sony, that mode turns off the Motion Enhancer since the interpolation would involve a combination of original and full black frames.

Sony also states that an SXRD display actually refresh at twice the frame rate. That means that when the panel receives a source that has been converted to 120Hz, the image is refreshed 240Hz. For 96Hz, it's 192Hz.