I am awake most of the night and sometimes I am channel surfing tv shows. The other night I came across an episode of ‘House’ - the picture was really stretched out across the screen, and it was very sharp and clear. Not on film as usual, but looked like it was shot on videotape. I just have a plain old flatscreen tv about 5 years old. Soap operas are seen as on videotape, films are…well, films. A tv show that suddenly looks like it was on videotape? Is that what high definition tv is supposed to be like? and why just that one show?
Sounds like soap opera effect. It can be turned off.
Then it’s likely an HDTV. If it’s smaller, probably just 720p, but that’s what HD cable is. But yes - it likely has your smoothing setting turned on, activating soap opera effect.
Briny_Deep and Munch are in all likelihood correct. It’s usually called motion smoothing, whatever the name it’s essentially converting 30fps footage to 60fps by interpolating frames. Between frames 1 and 2, it’s creating an extra frame by taking alternative rows of pixels from both frames. (Roughly) Since there’s no actual new information in this newly created frame, it just smooths the transition between frames with a visual trick. It looks ghastly, and it’s mostly a “because we can” trick that is the first thing I turn off on any new screens.
Courtesy of this link: How to Turn off Motion Smoothing and Why You Should - Variety
It has different names depending on a who produced the TV.
LG: TrueMotion
Roku: Action Smoothing
Samsung: Auto Motion Plus
Sony: Motion Flow
Vizio: Smooth Motion Effect
Panasonic Viera: Intelligent Motion Creation
Do note that the exact name might have changed, or might even be different depending on which specific TV you have, but that should give you a hand in finding the correct setting to turn off.
The OP’s description doesn’t sound so much like the soap opera effect to me. They mention the image being stretched but really sharp. That suggests to me that this was an upconverted SD broadcast that wasn’t handled properly.
And if there is any motion smoothing but it’s just this particular show, they could have also tried to upconvert the framerate at the source.
Except House M. D. was filmed in high def and originally broadcast at 720 P on Fox. It’s possible the channel he was watching it on was in 480 SD, though.
Yeah, either the OP doesn’t have HD service at all (if any service providers still offer an SD only plan), was watching an SD channel that happened to be showing an HD program, or is hooked up to the TV via coax instead of HDMI.
I don’t MIND it but I was just surprised, and it was just on that one cable channel. I will leave it alone, I’m not technical and if I mess it up, no one to fix it.
I like motion smoothing. Or rather, I like higher frame rates. I do not accept it’s the “soap opera effect”, that’s just associating it with something cheap, rather than taking it at face value, which is it makes things seem more real, like it’s happening right in front of you.
I argue this a lot, and have never changed anyone’s mind, which is fine, but I wish it wasn’t automatically dismissed as bad by using negative associations, and instead just as a legitimate option that you can choose to implement if it floats your boat.
And stop turning it off on other folk’s TV without their permission, you rude buggers.