Why do pictures taken of tv screens look so bad?

Every once in a while I'll be playing a game on Xbox and it bugs out leaving a hilarious image on my screen, but every time I try to take a picture of my tv screen the quality is terrible. My friends can do the same thing with the same phone (iPhone) and I have a normal flat screen HDTV, but they're pictures look great, sometimes even amazing with a little patience of eliminating any jiggle when taking the picture. Why is this? Maybe my tv (LCD) needs to be updated to an led?

Digital cameras work in a similar way to a tv set. If you are taking pictures with a digital camera or phone then you are getting poor images because the refresh rate of the tv set is "beating" with the refresh rate of your camera.

Your friend's cameras are not beating with their tv sets. This is a matter of the relative refresh rates of the images. It does not mean that your tv is bad, it's just an incompatibility of your equipment.

Changing from LCD to LED or Plasma won't make any difference because the problem is caused by the refresh rate not by the picture generating technology. If you buy a new telly then make sure it has a different refresh rate to your current one. It would be cheaper to buy a new camera.

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