Hitachi Stomps Judders

June 2007 By Grant Clauser

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One of the new features in select 2007 Hitachi TVs is a technology the company calls REEL60. It’s aimed at fixing what Hitachi calls a “50-year problem,” that being the errors caused when 24fps film material gets converted to the 60fps scan rate of televisions. The resulting error, commonly called judder, can be seen as panning images seem to studder across the screen. In the 3:2 pulldown technique, which has become ubiquitous on DVD players and HDTVs, film frames are repeated every 1/8 second. Hitachi’s REEL60 method interpolates frames based on the original film images, which looked convincingly smooth in the demonstration presented at the June 26th New York press conference.

The new feature will be available on the 50-inch P50V701, the 50-inch P50X901 and the 60-inch (the company’s first 60-inch plasma) P60X901.

In addition to REEL60, Hitachi has begun referring to the panel structure technology in it’s plasma TVs as ClearWindow, which had previously been called ALiS. ClearWindow (available in 1280 X 1080 and 1920 X 1080 resolutions) is meant to separate the resolution from scan rate, which most other manufacturers combine. All Hitachi plasma TVs use an interlaced technique to address the pixels, rather than a progressive technique. The company claims that its method more perfectly matches the 1080i video signal that most HDTV broadcasters use and offer a higher pixel density than their competitors. The company’s LCD TVs use a 1080p panel structure.

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