70684907 A description a preferred embodiment of the invention is now described when incorporated into a television system with reference to fig4 this embodiment is used to increase the fame rate of high definition hd motion video sequences using motion compensated interpolation high definition sequences have increased vertical and horizontal resolution which requires larger vector limits for describing the motion between frames than for standard definition sd material fig4 shows a television system 10 an antenna 20 or other video input such as a dvd player supplies a tuner which in turn provides a video signal to the processor 30 a processed video signal is then supplied to a motion estimator unit 40 the motion estimator estimates the direction and degree of motion between frames and preferably provides this data in terms of vectors the temporal frame rate of the video signal is then increased by feeding a motion compensated interpolator 60 with vectors supplied from the motion estimator in order to construct intermediate frames the enhanced video signal is then displayed on a display device 60 the motion estimation unit 40 which incorporates the invention is described in detail below with reference to fig5 the function of the motion estimation unit 40 is to determine the motion between consecutive frames this motion is described.