Have you ever heard of Motion Smoothing? I haven’t either. Apparently the new HDTVs come with it already defaulted on, and Tom Cruise wants you to turn it off, dammit, when you sit down to watch movies at home.
He even took time out from filming the Top Gun sequel to tell everyone how to resolve this, and that he really wants you to do it. Like now. Don’t make this man have to jump out of a high altitude plane with a broken foot to fix it for you.
Here’s the amusing article we found about how serious Ethan Hunt/Maverick/Charlie Babbitt/Lestat de Lioncourt/Jack Reacher and Jerry Maguire are about putting this travesty to an end.
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Take a look at this earnest and short video:
Motion Smoothing is also known as The Soap Opera Effect, for reasons I’m not very clear about. If I sound flip, it’s intentional. I have no idea what soap operas look like, and I’d like to see a side-by-side depiction of normal film viewing and motion smoothed viewing. I’m going to leave that video comparison up to someone else to create, and feel free to share your findings here. I’m just reporting the news. [pullquote]If Tom Cruise says this is the only way to have a proper at-home movie experience, we’d be smart to listen.[/pullquote]
Note: I decided to be less lazy about this. Here’s another article discussing the sins of motion smoothing, saying, “These problems are created because the TV is essentially predicting, at an exceptionally fast rate, what each next ‘real’ frame will be, and inventing a frame that’s half way there.”
And here’s an actual side by side comparison. See? I knew someone would make it so.
I’m on my way to see what the settings are on my TV. I had no idea my television was trying to pull a fast one on me. Amazing the things we can learn from the internet! 😉
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Co-Creator of RunPee, Chief of Operations, Content Director, and Managing Editor. RunPee Jilly likes galaxy-spanning sci fi, superhero sagas, fantasy films, YA dystopians, action thrillers, chick flicks, and zany comedies, in that order…and possesses an inspiringly small bladder. In fact, that little bladder sparked the creation of RunPee. (Good thing she’s learned to hold it.)