Getting rid of the soap-opera effect with LG OLED

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Bought a new television and you are trying to watch a movie and suddenly you realize it looks rather like a Brazilian soap-opera than 4k super high definition? Well, you just fell victim to the so-called soap-opera effect.

 

To give a bit of background: The manufacturers do mean well. A modern tv set has a much higher frame rate than the content was produced in. So the engineers came up with something called motion interpolation. The idea is to smooth out fast-moving action presented at lower frame rates. While this may be a good idea when you are watching sports it has a rather unpleasant effect when watching a movie. Even a high end production looks somehow two dimensional and cheap.

So, how do I turn it off?

It is fairly similar with most televisions. With some it is a little more difficult to find, but the general idea is alays the same.

Let’s look at the LG.

First go in to settings. That’s the little gear symbol. That opens the setting menu. There go to picture and then Picture Options. There are a number of settings that can be adjusted.

First and foremost there is “True Motion”. Select it and turn it off. Some recommend that you can leave it on and simply adjust the settings. For this select “user” and then edit an existing preset or create a custom one.

Important: De-Blur and De-Judder are the most likely culprits. De-Blur is the main offender when it comes to the soap-opera effect, so turn it down. If that isn’t enough do the same with De-Judder. That should do the trick.

I would also make sure MPEG Noise reduction is set to low.

Still seeing the issue when watching Netflix and Prime? Here is the trick