Help Key: Why 120Hz looks “weird”

Cinematographers and video experts have had techniques for hiding “telecine” video artifacts for years, but the increase in interpolation frames (from 30 to 60 to 120 or more) has reduced the need for such techniques. Instead, the increased framerate minimizes the video glitches at the cost of looking a bit weird. There are a lot of complaints out there over how 120Hz looks “too smooth” or unrealistic. This is probably mostly due to people just not being used to it and wanting to home films to look like the cinema they are used to. The rub here is simple: HD content looks incredible, on the aggregate, but these interpolation problems pull us out of the uncanny valley and into a strange new way of seeing motion. It isn’t quite what we expect and it upsets us.