It could seem that some Roku TVs at the moment are self-sabotaging their homeowners. And by that, I imply they’re enabling movement smoothing with none technique to flip it off.
Between this complaint on the Roku subreddit, this thread on Roku’s customer forums, and reports from staffers of The Verge, this problem seems to be greater than a one-off, even when it is not essentially widespread. The issue is going on on TCL TVs operating Roku OS 13: Reportedly, these TVs began utilizing movement smoothing out of nowhere, with no discover, nor any choice to disable the function. Customers each commonplace settings or image settings can not discover a “movement smoothing” choice to show off the function.
This bug is not going unaddressed: Within the boards criticism, a Roku group mod confirmed the corporate is investigating the problem, and included the usual directions for disabling movement smoothing.
What’s movement smoothing, and why is it dangerous?
Motion smoothing (or “Motion Smoothing,” as Roku calls it) is a function on HD and 4K TVs that primarily provides new frames to no matter content material you are watching. Video is made up of particular person footage, or frames, and most exhibits and films run at 24 or 30 frames per second. With movement smoothing, your TV analyzes the content material and creates further frames on the fly to easy out the movement of the picture. Some content material, like stay sports activities and video video games, are made higher by extra frames, since it could possibly assist hold observe of fast-moving motion. Nevertheless, nearly at all times, artificially including the frames makes the picture look worse, not higher.
It is notably dangerous when watching exhibits and films: Doubling the body price and making the movement smoother is what provides this content material the “cleaning soap opera” impact. Cleaning soap operas are filmed in a better body price than most different exhibits and films, so if you double the body price of 24 or 30 fps content material, it seems to be like daytime tv. That is not a praise.
Tips on how to disable Motion Smoothing on Roku TVs
Whereas some customers experiencing this movement smoothing bug will not see the choice to disable Motion Smoothing presently, different Roku TV customers can management the setting.
First, press the Star button in your Roku TV distant whereas watching one thing, then scroll down and select Superior Image Settings. Right here, you need to be capable of management the Motion Smoothing settings. Roku says that if you cannot see this setting, your TV would not assist the function. That is possible not comforting to customers watching the brand new season of Home of the Dragon as Sport of Thrones’ first cleaning soap opera.