The following article is the first of several articles that I will be publishing in the next two weeks covering the 2009 CEDIA show. These articles will just hit the highlights in several areas including: Internet TV, integrated HD services, whole house automation, 3D HDTV, and more. If there are any topics you would like to know more about, please let me know.

- Richard

Motion flow processing has played a huge role in the marketing of LCD product, turning what used to be negative into an unnecessary marketing positive. At first it was 120 Hz processing and now the big hype is 240 Hz processing; bigger numbers infer better. The common misperception is that motion flow processing is all about compensating for LCD pixel speed when actually the main purpose is to remove the potentially objectionable strobe effect of 30 and 24 frame content that appears most strongly with high contrast displays, like an LCD. All displays suffer from this artifact to some degree with contrast ratio playing the greatest role. For a deeper understanding please read Waveform 09A Motion Blur and 120 Hz LCD Frame Rate Processing.

At the show, highly renowned Digital Projection was showing their new Motion Processing, similar to any other demo showing the difference between the raw frame rate followed by the same scene with motion flow adapted frames. They are not alone and other manufacturers are getting in on this marketing band wagon such as Panasonic and their LCD front projection line.

From what my eyes could see everybody at the show with LCD products had motion flow processing engaged creating artificial images from natural sources, making all content appear computer generated. The advancements in motion processing did create a more appealing image with less processing artifacts from previous attempts. I’ll be the first to admit this eye candy will be appealing for the masses. Nonetheless, if you are looking for hi-fidelity this feature of marketing sales hype remains best left turned off, as well as ignored on your list of desirable features.