TV ‘soap effect’ is secretly ruining how movies look on your telly – change two settings to upgrade picture instantly
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HOLLYWOOD movies might look absolutely rubbish on your TV because of a stray setting. The good news is that you can make those glossy films look beautiful again in just a few seconds. It's all linked to two possible settings, or technically one (it has two common names).
![[TV settings menu showing clarity options including MPEG noise reduction.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lg-smooth-001.png?strip=all&w=960)
They are: Motion Smoothing or Motion Interpolation. To make things more confusing, it might be called something else entirely depending on your TV model. Looking out for "motion" is usually the key. It might sound harmless, and potentially even good – but it'll sabotage films in an instant, and you might already have it turned on.
![[Person watching a TV displaying a woman in a pink dress in a red forest.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lg-filmmaker.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
So why is Motion Smoothing bad?. When your TV is playing a movie, it's just showing a series of still images very quickly – resulting in video. Your TV can only refresh the image on the screen so fast, and this is known as the "refresh rate". If a TV has a refresh rate of 60Hz (and it likely will) then it can update the image on screen 60 times every second.
![[TruMotion settings with Smooth Movement selected.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lg-smooth-002.png?strip=all&w=960)
Some pieces of content will be produced at 60 frames per second – and that'll give you a perfect match. But Hollywood films usually aren't produced at 60 frames per second. Instead, they tend to be delivered at 24 frames per second. That means they won't line up perfectly with the refresh rate of your TV.
