How to Turn Off Motion Smoothing on Your TV

blog

Have you ever noticed that the picture on your TV almost feels too smooth? You start watching something and somehow everything seems off; the camera panning can almost feel disorienting, and the actor's movement feels a little strange.

Most of the time, this is caused by motion smoothing. That's a technology that can be found in most modern TVs designed to make the content you are watching smoother. But sometimes, it can be more of a hindrance than a help.

What Is Motion Smoothing?

If you own a modern TV, the chances are it has a feature called motion smoothing. However, you might find that on your TV it has a different name. No matter what it is called, the technology more or less works in the same way, with a few minor differences based on settings per each TV brand.

Motion smoothing is designed to improve the frames of the content you are watching, so instead of displaying content at 24 frames per second (the movie standard), it would beef them up to 60 frames per second, or even higher, such as 120 frames per second, if your TV supports higher frame rates.

Essentially, your TV is filling the gaps by digitally adding new frames, to offer a much smoother viewing experience. While having a higher FPS does sound better, sometimes it can make the content look worse, as the content itself wasn't designed to support so many frames per second.

Not all content will look unnatural, but when it does, it's widely known as the soap opera effect, this is due to the quality looking comparable to a soap opera. You might also notice motion smoothing looks worse with much older movies, as many of these were shot with around 16 to 18 frames per second, meaning even more frames need to be digitally added.

How to Disable Motion Smoothing on Your LG TV

On LG TVs, motion smoothing is called TruMotion, and is very straightforward to turn off. But LG also offers some other options too, including adjusting the TruMotion mode or even setting up your own custom motion smoothing settings.

  • Press and hold the Gear button on your remote.
  • Select Picture Settings then press Advanced Settings.
  • Select Clarity.
  • Select TruMotion.

From here, you can either turn TruMotion off completely or adjust the settings until you're happy that your content looks natural, and no longer has that soap opera effect.

How to Disable Motion Smoothing on Your Samsung TV

On Samsung TVs, motion smoothing is known as Auto Motion Plus. Just like LG TVs, it also has its own preset settings, as well as a custom mode, if you would prefer to tweak the settings, rather than disabling it altogether.

  • Press the Settings button on your Samsung remote.
  • Navigate to Picture and select Expert Settings.
  • Click Auto Motion Plus Settings.

With Samsung's custom setting, you can adjust blur reduction and judder reduction, as well as letting you enable or disable LED Clear Motion. This setting is designed to help you adjust the brightness, while also helping to sharpen fast-moving images.

Which Other TV Brands Have Motion Smoothing?

Not all TVs come with motion smoothing, and the ones that do often have their own names for them. Here are some of the other brands that use motion smoothing, along with their own names for the feature:

  • Sony (MotionFlow)
  • Roku TV, TLC (Action Smoothing)
  • Vizo (Clear Action)

One thing these brands have in common is the placement of the motion smoothing settings. On most modern TVs you can find the motion smoothing settings in the picture menu and then advanced or expert settings.

Of course, knowing what your TV manufacturer calls their motion smoothing setting can make finding it much easier.

And if you're still looking for the perfect TV that won't break the bank, take a look at the best TVs under $500.

Disabling Motion Smoothing on Your TV Is Straightforward

There are a number of reasons why you'd want to turn motion smoothing off, but thankfully the process is easily done on most modern TVs.

You might also find that motion smoothing helps some movies and shows, while it makes others look worse. With it being such a quick setting to adjust, you can always swap it on the fly, ensuring you always have the perfect settings applied for the content you are watching.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7rq3KnqysnZ%2Bbe6S7zGifqK9dqbxuwNSrpWanlpt6rrvToqanZaOivLDAx6KloGWfo3q6u9SrZK2uXw%3D%3D