The good news is, it’s easy to fix, and doing so can help you enjoy your favorite movies and TV shows as they were meant to be seen. What you’re seeing is called video interpolation, aka the Soap Opera Effect, and it’s something even Tom Cruise wants you to be aware of. Fitbit Versa 3Īctually, what you're probably looking at is a common feature that many LED-LCD TV manufacturers build into TVs and have been doing for some time.
Otherwise, consult your TV’s manual and support site.
Most of the time, the option to turn it off is hidden in the picture settings in the menu, but if you can’t find it, you can read our guides on how to disable the effect for Samsung, LG, Sony, Vizio, and Roku TVs. If you have a newer, name brand TV, motion smoothing might be enabled by default.
You’d probably notice if your TV had it enabled.
The controls feel sluggish and unresponsive, which is why most TVs offer a “Game Mode” that disable motion smoothing and other advanced picture effects.Īnd other kinds of content, like cable news or reality TV, can still look uncanny despite not being “cinema.” Do I Have It? How Do I Get Rid of It? For video games, the extra input lag required to add motion smoothing completely ruins being able to play the game effectively.This defect, which results in incorrect or glitch pictures, is called artifacting. For sports, things sometimes move so fast that the smoothing algorithm doesn’t know what to do, and ends up producing a strange, often blurry image instead of a clear “in between” frame.
Unfortunately, two other problems associated with motion smoothing break these two use cases as well. Live action sports and video games, for example, have fast-moving content that could use a bit more clarity.
Honestly, it often feels more like you’re watching a behind-the-scenes documentary about the movie than the movie itself.įor some things, motion smoothing makes sense. The insanely smooth motion makes the video almost seem real, which breaks the immersion of cinema completely. Viewing content filmed at 24 or 30fps looks especially weird on TVs that run at 120 Hz and above. 240 Hz must be better than 120 Hz and much better than 60 Hz, right? Well, sometimes it is, yes-especially when the content is designed for it.īut most consumers don’t enjoy the higher frame rates on most of the content they watch. TV manufacturers, on the other hand, are just trying to advertise bigger numbers to consumers. After all, we’ve spent years training our brains to enjoy movies and TV shows filmed at 24 or 30fps, and our brains have come to think of that as how a movie or TV show should look. Most people have trouble with motion smoothing. RELATED: Why Does My New HDTV’s Picture Look Sped Up and “Smooth”? Why Is It Such a Problem? Motion smoothing tries to fix this issue by taking a guess at the 30 frames missing from each second, usually by comparing a before and after shot and attempting to find the middle ground between the two of them. However, the standard most TVs and monitors are capable of is 60 Hz and some more expensive displays clock in at 120 Hz and even 240 Hz.īut, movies and TV shows are still 30fps, which presents a problem: what’s the point of 60hz displays if the content you watch only updates at half of that? The refresh rate of film isn’t changing anytime soon, so this is where “Motion Smoothing” comes in.
Most TV shows, movies, and broadcasts are filmed at 24 or 30 frames per second (fps, also called “hertz” or “Hz”), which is fast enough for the eye to perceive them as smooth video and not a choppy slideshow. And that’s motion smoothing. It’s also known as the “soap opera effect” because low-budget soap operas used to have cheap video cameras that produced a higher frame rate, smoother-looking video. Action Smoothing, TruMotion, Motionflow-these are all names for the same function: making your TV’s picture feel smoother. What is Motion Smoothing, and How Does it Work?Įvery TV manufacturer calls their specific tech by a different name, for marketing reasons of course. You’re not imagining things: Your TV might be suffering from Motion Smoothing. If you’ve just bought a new TV, you might be wondering why everything you watch feels eerily sped up and smooth, like you’re watching a live broadcast all the time.