HDTV Frame Rates

When you read specifications on either HDTV televisions, SDTVs or digital televisions in general you will probably stumble upon the subject of frame rates. Frame rates are calculated in a per second basis imagine if you took 60 photos per second with a digital camera that was programmed for this task for 4 seconds. You would end up with 240 photos. Now assume that someone was walking in a side walk and was captured in those snapshots. If you were to print those photos and arrange them in order like a book, bend them sightly while holding it with one of your fingers so that you could see the photos one by one periodically you would most likely see the person in the sidewalk moving some how resembling really old black and white films but of course even jerkier.

Basically animation is not only limited to cartoons but everything recorded or broadcast is made of still images appearing one after another on a back to back basis. The amount of these still images that appear per second is what is called frame rate. Scientist believe the human brain is capable of processing around 30 frames per second. That means that according to Science we see at 30 frames per second. Ever waved your hand before your eyes only to see your hand leaving some sort of tracers or repeated images appearing behind your hand as if there were many hands following yours closely. You can try switching off the lights and leaving only your computer monitor on wave your hand in front of your monitor and you will see.

Then why are there 60 frame per second television formats if I only see around 30?

While we basically see around 30 frames per second, events happen in constant movement not on a frame per second basis. By doubling the amount of frames per second to 60 technology tries to fool the human brain to think that movement is constant like those appearing in the real world and fill the gap in movement that happens when we see movement at equal or lower frame rates that we are able to process. Animation at 60 frames per second looks smoother and more real than lower values. As a general rule: the higher the frame rate the smoother the animation.

Currently Dtvs sets both standard definition and high definition depending on model support three different frame rates 24, 30 and 60 frames per second.