Quote Originally Posted by Sir Terrence the Terrible
240hz is by no means a gimmick. My Sony LED based XBRpro has the ability to operate at 60hz, 120hz, and 240hz. It can also take that 240hz refresh rate and utilize a quick flash LED scanning backlight to create psuedo 480hz performance. The difference between 60hz and 120hz is dramatic. Click up to 240hz, and the difference is much more subtle, but very noticeable. It really depends on how it is done. Some manufacturers fake it by using the 120hz refresh rate and a scanning backlight flashing 120 times a second. This causes a reduction in panel brightness. Only Sony and Samsung do it correctly, and you can tell by how film like and how truely smooth the picture looks.
And there's the rub. Sony and Samsung are the only manufacturers doing the 240 Hz refresh correctly. Everybody else is using 240 Hz simply as a marketing gimmick, and promoting a feature that actually negates LCD's most clearcut advantage by reducing the maximum light output. I read that 240 Hz refresh currently requires two separate video processors to implement correctly (basically two chips alternating at 120 Hz each), and that incurs extra expense. I would expect that this would be corrected by next year, but for now it's buyer beware.