Your smart TV comes packed with features meant to give you the best possible viewing experience. But not all of those “helpful” features actually help, at least not all the time. Motion smoothing is a perfect example. It tries to boost your frame rate and make everything look smoother, which sounds great, but it can actually end up making your shows and movies look worse.
I recently disabled it on my TV and the difference was night and day. Movies looked like movies again, and gaming felt better than before.
Motion smoothing is promising, but it can make things worse
It’s not ideal for shows and movies
Most TVs on the market come with a 60Hz display, with some high-end models going all the way up to 240Hz. But the thing is, TV shows and movies are typically shot at 24fps. That’s been the standard for almost a century, and that frame rate is what gives movies a familiar feel. Changing it now would mean fixing something that isn’t broken. So yes, it’s less a technical limitation and more of a stylistic choice.
But that 24fps also means there’s a gap between how many frames your TV has versus what it can actually show. Motion smoothing is a feature that tries to fill that gap. This feature analyzes two consecutive frames and tries to guess what should appear in between. It then creates a frame and inserts it between the real ones to make up for those missing frames.
All of this obviously happens really fast. And sure, motion smoothing does make everything look smooth, but there are some downsides. With motion smoothing on, most TV shows and movies actually look worse.
Your TV does a decent job creating new frames, but those are still fake. So when you watch a movie or a TV show, you get that soap opera effect, where everything looks like it was shot on a daytime set with cheap cameras instead of proper cinema equipment. There are more frames per second, sure, but everything within those frames ends up looking less sharp and strangely artificial.
You might have even noticed this without realizing what was causing it, where skin looks waxy or backgrounds look flat and artificial. The whole thing simply loses that texture that makes it look real, which is why filmmakers, in particular, hate this feature. It’s understandable too, because the final result looks different than what it’s supposed to be. So no, it’s not like motion smoothing is a matter of taste.
It’s not just about movies and TV shows either. Motion smoothing can also mess up how games look. Since the feature works by generating and inserting extra frames, it adds a processing step which is not something every TV can handle well. And that’s what ends up causing input lag.
Disabling motion smoothing is easy enough
Yes, it’s on by default
The good thing about motion smoothing is that you can turn it off. In fact, you may have already done so if you use proper modes for different types of content. If you watch movies and TV shows in Movie or Cinema mode, there’s a good chance that your TV automatically disables motion smoothing in this mode.
This isn’t true for every TV, though, so it’s worth disabling motion smoothing manually. TV brands love giving the same feature with different names, so you’ll need to know what your TV model calls it. LG TVs name it TruMotion, Samsung calls it Auto Motion Plus, while Sony labels it MotionFlow. On TCL, it’s Action Smoothing, Hisense names it Motion Enhancement, and Vizio calls it Motion Control.
You simply have to open the display or picture settings on your TV and turn off this option. Some TVs even give you the option to tweak the effect by adjusting blur and judder, in case you don’t want to disable it entirely. Personally, I’d still recommend disabling the feature.
There’s a good reason TVs have this feature
It still has its place
Motion smoothing isn’t ideal for shows and movies, but it’s not completely useless. Sports broadcasts are where you’ll find this feature genuinely useful. Those are typically shot at 60fps, so things like a fast moving ball, a fighter’s punches, or a car taking a tight corner already look pretty smooth.
Motion smoothing can make those same movements look even smoother. It’s not always flawless, especially on cheaper TVs, which can still throw up some smearing around quick movements. But since sports footage doesn’t carry the same intentional filmic quality as movies, there’s less to “ruin” here.
Again, you might not even need to turn it back on manually. Some TVs automatically enable motion smoothing during Sports mode, but it’s still best to double-check.