Soap Opera Effected: Roku Users Stuck in Motion Smoothing Mode With No Way to Get Out!

For some users of Roku-powered TCL smart TVs, it’s a nightmare moment from, well, a soap opera.

With the recent upgrade to Roku OS version 13, some of these users are complaining on Reddit and in Roku’s community forum that the motion-smoothing feature on their sets, which Roku calls “Action Smoothing,” is stuck on, with no way to turn it off.

TCL has action smoothing out of the blue from r/Roku

Users complain that there’s now no way on their TCL sets to turn Action Smoothing off, either in general settings, or during the streaming of content with picture settings.

Roku has responded in the online forums that it's looking into the issue. And as The Verge noted, not all users of TCL Roku sets are affected. (Our 55-inch TCL was just upgraded to version 13 and Action Smoothing wasn't enabled.)

“Video interpolation,” aka “motion smoothing,” is a widely available feature in smart TVs intended to smooth out fast-unfolding, potentially blurry action sequences in sports and various other action-oriented programming by adding extra frames to the video.

Different TV brands call motion smoothing different things. LG, for instance, calls it TrueMotion, while Sony refers to as Motionflow.

Call it whatever you like, but many consumers absolutely detest motion smoothing because of the hyper-realistic “soap-opera effect” it creates for most video content.

It's enough of a societal issue that Tom Cruise even posted a PSA on it back in late 2018.