ANY way to receive 120hz content over HDMI?

I think you'd have to get a 120Hz capable monitor that can accept dual DVI.
They're probably talking about interpolating it to 120Hz. Passing just 60Hz through a HDMI cable won't get you the original 120Hz from the PC.
Most likely. Check the manual to see what video signals etc. it accepts though. But it's a limitation of the current HDMI I think.
Edited by Joe Bloggs - 2/19/13 at 8:27am

I'm pretty sure 120Hz can be done over HDMI, but you will not find a television that accepts a 120Hz input, only monitors and possibly some DLP projectors that support Nvidia 3DVision.

Depending upon which graphics card and TV you're using it should be possible to send and display 720p120 over HDMI, just not 1080p120. Super Stardust HD can output 720p120 from a PS3 for 60Hz each eye. Hence, 120Hz over HDMI is currently limited to 720p.

You have to have a "3D" TV to allow for 720p120 input via HDMI. 120Hz LCDs don't won't accept a 720p120. The ET5 and above should support 720p120, but not the E50.

120Hz is the commercial name given to motion interpolation technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation

They most certainly are 120Hz TV's they just do not accept 120Hz input at the moment. Having a TV that supports 120Hz input today would be nearly usesless, aside for PC monitor purposes, because no content is shot in anything remotely close to 120fps or 120Hz, I'll use fps and Hz here as one in the same.

In reference to the "cinema motion" you can turn that frame interpolation scheme off and if you choose to do that, rather than your TV "creating" frames between frames, it'll just repeat the frames. Like aa,bb,cc, etc. for 120Hz and aaaa,bbbb,cccc for 240Hz.

120 Hz is not even imagined for delivery, because it would imply a large increase in bit rate for a small benefit, and the industry will not do that because bandwidth is expensive. In fact, what I see is the industry moving to 24P and allowing the TV itself to interpolate the other 36-96 frames, even up to interpolating to 960 frames locally. Once the installed universe of TVs is capable of this, which is only a few years away, program suppliers can switch to 24p and use the saved bandwidth for other, better purposes. Think of it as the grocery store selling you a 24-slice loaf of bread that automatically turns into a 120-slice loaf of bread once you place it in your magic breadbox at home.

There is actually a form of this sort of efficiency built into ATSC called film mode. Any original signal that was at one time 24p and later converted to 30i or 60p before broadcast, is stripped of the extra frames. IOW, only the original 24 fps second are delivered, and whatever the secondary format was is reconstituted inside your 1080p non-120 Hz-capable TV and displayed as 30i or 60p. That means that for film content from a 720p source, only 40% of what is displayed is ever delivered; the other 60% of what you actually are presented with is recreated locally, and perfectly accurately, directly inside the MPEG decoder. 120/240/480/960 is just an extension of the same technology, except that in that case the extra frames are each unique, rather than repeats of the original frames.

So 120 Hz is honestly just a display technology; a signal is transported in 24p, 30i, or 60p only, and the 120 only comes about during interpolation or cinema smoothing.

It is also still just ones and zeroes, so cabling that supports it is really just supporting higher bit rates; there is a metadata flag that tells the destination device what sort of pixel map and frame rate the transported signal will be parsed into, but other than that the signal is exactly the same, only possibly at a higher bit rate.

If the HDMI spec is elevated to handle "120 Hz", that is mostly a misdirect. It is conceivable that if you have a display with a 120 Hz light engine that also has a HDMI out that can be routed to a second display, that it might be able to be routed out as true 120 Hz, but it is doubtful that displays will ever really need to be capable of accepting a true 120 Hz signal. If they were capable of that, they would likely be capable of generating their own 120 Hz product locally, which precludes any possible need to be able to do that.
Edited by TomCat - 2/19/13 at 3:48pm

Why would NHK be making super hivision cameras that record at 120Hz and the ITU approving standards which include 120Hz delivery if they were just going to get people's TVs to invent 960 fake looking frames instead?
I call approving a 120 fps UHDTV standard more than imagining.

Increasing the frame rate won't necessarily need a large increase in bitrate with compressed video. The Mpeg-type compressors already do motion-prediction/motion compensation.

According to the BBC, "A high frame-rate video signal will contain less frame-to-frame variation and temporal aliasing than a conventional signal, which will facilitate higher compression ratios for the same perceptual quality".
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP169.pdf
Edited by Joe Bloggs - 2/19/13 at 11:33pm

120Hz is a refresh rate not the commercial name of motion interpolation. The commercial names for the interpolation are things like "motion plus" (or auto motion plus) or "100Hz/120Hz motion plus" (Samsung's) or truemotion/motion flow.
Edited by Joe Bloggs - 2/19/13 at 11:46pm

When the Motion Interpolation option is turned off there is only 60Hz (refresh rate) on a 120Hz LCd so correctly the Motion Interpolation option name should include 120Hz etc... (commercial name) otherwise you are misleading the public.

beware of phony LCd refresh rates
http://hdguru.com/beware-of-phony-lcd-hdtv-refresh-rates/7726/

There is nothing "phony" about these numbers. It's far less misleading than the "600Hz subfield drive" number they used as an example for Plasma TVs, because the Plasma TV is still only displaying an image at 60Hz, whereas those "240Hz SPS" displays are displaying 120 images and black frame insertion.

In fact Panasonic is now advertising 2500Hz and 3000Hz which are completely fabricated numbers based on the time it takes for a refresh to complete, rather than the refresh rate, or panel update rate. (3000Hz doesn't mean 50 subfields, the way that 600Hz meant 10 subfields)
There have been 120Hz monitors on sale for years now, and it makes a very noticeable difference with PC use and gaming.

To be fair Panasonic throws those numbers on the box like every LCD manufacturer or brand. Of course the 3500 focus field drive or 960 CMR has nothing to do with actual refresh rate but it's all of the brands poor attempt to show that their FP's can handle temporal resolution more adequately than the next. I don't think anyone on here buys the "600Hz Subfield Drive" as an accurate measure of refresh rate, but rather an attempt, albeit poorly done, to translate refresh rate and/or motion handling to the average consumer.

No, but surely you can see the problem in their logic if they are trying to claim that those LCD numbers are "phony" when the panel is actually displaying more than 60Hz, and then saying that Plasma numbers are somehow less "phony" when they are making wilder claims (600Hz vs 240Hz) and they're only displaying a 60Hz image.

I agree that PDP manufacturer claims of 600Hz are "phony." I also agree however that LCD manufacturers/brands also list very "phony" numbers as well. I understand that some LCD's display an image at higher than 60Hz, but these numbers can also be extremely over exaggerated.

Lets chalk this one up as a draw.

It's really not though - 120fps on the panel, with 120 black frames inserted, is still 240Hz - the image is updated 240 times a second, and black frame insertion (or backlight scanning) has proven benefits to motion handling by reducing the duty cycle.

600Hz from Plasma is a meaningless number as it's still only displaying a 60Hz image, but builds it up over 10 subframes as a function of how the technology works. It's not doing anything new, it's 100% marketing.

I'm a little confused here, what I was referring to are the brand-coined terms like Clear Motion Rate for Samsung, TruMotion for LG, Aquomotion for Sharp, MotionFlow for Sony, etc. that tout a backlight scan/black frame insertion scheme as the "true" refresh rate of the TV, which is inaccurate. Panasonic comes right out and says on their box "360 Backlight Scan" or etc. Most others fail to clarify which can be very confusing for consumers.

And again, I've agreed with you about PDP refresh rate claims of 600Hz being inaccurate.

Edit: Misleading, rather than inaccurate. Thanks Ian
Edited by hoozthatat - 2/20/13 at 4:33pm

I believe misleading is a better word, since you are comparing apples to oranges. However, despite the confusion, I can not recall a manufacturer ever referring to it as a refresh rate.



Ian

Some HDTV's can be 'overclocked' with native 120 Hz HTPC signal.

For example, the Vizio e3d420vx HDTV can successfully display native 120 Hz PC signal through the refesh rate overclock method. You need to use an EDID override INF file (like those found on 3D Vision Blog, google "EDID Override"), or use PowerStrip to force 120 Hz. Unfortunately, PowerStrip stopped working on some newer graphics cards, so we need to use the EDID override method. There's a post covering some experience overclocking 120Hz.

Try it out on your HDTV. It probably won't work, probably less than 25% of HDTV's will function with native 120 Hz through the refresh rate overclock method. Some HDTV's inadvertently support the dotclocks necessary because active shutter 3D @ 60Hz can have the same dotclock frequencies as 2D @ 120 Hz.

Instructions: How to Overclock an HDTV to 120 Hz Native From a HTPC
(50% less videogame motion blur)

NOTE: You must have a HDTV that already has internal electronics for 120 Hz for a different purpose (e.g. motion interpolation, 3D shutter glasses) but otherwise has an EDID that tells you it only supports 60 Hz. Even so, there is no guarantee the electronics can be "coaxed" to accept native 120 Hz. It only sometimes works with some models of HDTV's.

1. Get a high-end Radeon or Geforce product. I recommend Geforce GTX 680
   ...As a side effect, the nVidia Geforce cards are also compatible with LightBoost strobe backlights (found in zero motion blur monitors like ASUS VG248QE and BENQ XL2411T) which brings CRT-quality better-than-plasma motion to high-end desktop video gaming (LightBoost HOWTO). Consequently, nVidia Geforce products are currently preferred (at this time of writing) over AMD Radeon product.
   .
2. Connect your computer to the HDTV first.
   ...Turn off mirror mode, make your HDTV your primary display. Otherwise, it won't work properly.
   .
3. Install an EDID override file. These are sometimes difficult to install.
   ....If you need to get familiar with how EDID overrides are installed (e.g. 3D Vision Blog Instructions (different purpose), Microsoft technical info).
   (a) Download one of the 1080p@120Hz files (1080p@120Hz EDID Overrides in this thread). Your HDTV will 'masquerade' as a 120 Hz computer monitor, allowing your graphic card to 'force' 120 Hz to be sent into your HDTV. Then you can see if the display successfully syncs to it!
   (b) To install an EDID Override, download the file, then right-click this INF file in File Explorer and select “Install”. Next, go to Device Manager and right-click your monitor, select “Update Driver Software”, then “Browser my computer…”, then “Let me pick…”, then disable “Show compatible hardware”, then select the “EDID Override” from manufacturer ASUS (even if you don’t have ASUS), and then reboot.
   (c) IMPORTANT! (Windows 8 specific): If you’re installing under Windows 8, follow these instructions to disable driver signature enforcement before installing this INF file. The INF file is installed via right-clicking the monitor in Control Panel -> Device Manager, and updating its driver.
   .
4. Test the 120 Hz refresh rate
   ...If it fails, try other refresh rates such as 75Hz and others.
   .
5. Test all connections. VGA, DVI, HDMI
   ...Sometimes, a HDTV successfully overclocks to 120 Hz on one connection only.
   ...Remember to use sufficient cables (Dual-Link DVI cable, HDMI 1.4 compliant cable)
   .
6. Try testing 720p @ 120 Hz instead of 1080p @ 120 Hz
   ...This more commonly works in an overclock attempt since it's the same dotclock as shutter 3D 720p @ 60 Hz per eye (which is actually officially supported)
   .
7. If all else fails but you want to buy a HDTV that works with native 120 Hz, you need to do testing
   ...Currently, refresh rate overclocking is bleeding edge territory currently being trailblazed by sites such as 120hz.net and others. This is a new technique that is only slowly gaining use by power users. Thus, you have to test with a 120 Hz PC until you find one that works with native 120 Hz. Within a few months, there might be an official list of overclockable HDTV's. If you have a new model to add, email me at mark[at]blurbusters.com
   ...This is currently time consuming because you need to reinstall the EDID override file every single time.
   .
8. Or wait for the Geforce Titan.
   ...I've heard that it has an easy display overclock feature, eliminating the need for pesky EDID override files!
   .
9. Will it damage my HDTV?
   ...Not likely. Fortunately, no display has shown adverse behavior because they are already designed to be 120 Hz for other purposes (3D shutter glasses, frame interpolation, etc). The chief problem is simply the firmware of the HDTV wasn't programmed to make it easy to accept 120 Hz native from an external source. Occasionally, this is possible to override, as is has been successfully accomplished with an EDID override with certain models (e.g. Vizio e3d420vx) and a number of other models.

Edited by Mark Rejhon - 2/20/13 at 6:36pm