Why Do Dachshunds Prefer HDTV?

Watching TV by flickrer Neil Gavigan

Humans can't wait to get their hands on the latest television technology, and now it appears that dogs like it too, at least as far as High Definition Television is concerned.  Discover magazine has an Inner Life of Dogs article in their July/August issue and mention dogs and HDTV:

Most dogs show little interest in the average television set because of their visual abilities.  In its simplest form, a motion seen on the TV screen is just a changing pattern of flight across the retina in our eye.  The average person cannot see any flickering above 55 cycles per second (55Hz).  But beagles see flicker rates up to 75 Hz - about 50 percent faster than human rates - suggesting dogs perceive motion better than people do.  Television images flicker at about 60 Hz.  Since that is above a human's flicker resolution ability of 55 Hz, the image appears continuous to us and blends smoothly together.  Since dogs can resolve flickers at 75 Hz, images on a TV screen probably appear less real and less worthy of attention.  However, since high-resolution digital screens are refreshed at a much higher rate, reports are increasingly surfacing of pooches who become very interested in newer technology HDTVs when a nature show contains images of animals moving.