Can it occur? I understand why it happens on a CRT based screen when the screen is being sent frames at a rate faster than it can display but how can this happen with flat panel tvs? CRTs paint each frame row by row but don't FPs paint the entire frame at once?

Also, I have heard many people talk about tearing with the FP and the PS3 or Xbox360. If these sets were specifically designed for a 60Hz refresh rate how can they exhibit tearing?

Can it occur? I understand why it happens on a CRT based screen when the screen is being sent frames at a rate faster than it can display but how can this happen with flat panel tvs? CRTs paint each frame row by row but don't FPs paint the entire frame at once?

Also, I have heard many people talk about tearing with the FP and the PS3 or Xbox360. If these sets were specifically designed for a 60Hz refresh rate how can they exhibit tearing?Yes it will happen on Flat Panel televisions. Most flat panels use line-by-line sampling to not only fill the display buffer but also to address the pixels. Yes some displays like Plasma do turn on all pixels at once but they in fact address the pixels line by line. It is called address-then-display.

I'm no expert on tearing but a few years back I did read up on it. From what I remember tearing is caused by the mismatched timing between the video card frame buffer and the displays frame buffer.

For there to be no tearing the video card frame buffer (source) must fully update a complete frame one line at a time and then send it to the display. And the display must not only have the exact same refresh rate but must also syncronize with the video card such that it only updates the display buffer when the video card buffer has finished and sent a new full frame.

So to me tearing would occur when :
1 - the display and video card refresh rates are identical but not syncronized
2 - the display and video card refresh rates are not the same

I can confirm it happens in the 360 with 50%+ of all games, even in the dashboard itself. that's inexcusible.

PS3 people complain about it as well. It's one area of which Sony and MS fans can get together and agree both their systems suck.