When I was visiting family over the Thanksgiving holiday we were watching movies on a high definition flat screen display, however I was surprised to see that even though the picture was very detailed, the overall appearance of the picture quality looked as if it was shot an a cheap video camera, including even when we were watching cinema movies like “The Godfather”! I just chalked it up to the movies somehow being rushed to be remastered in order to be compatible with those TVs, also thinking that perhaps it was some sort of a ploy to get people to purchase “re – remastered” videos sometime in the future.
.. So I just remembered today to check online about that to see if anyone else has noticed it, and it turns out that it is a known phenomena which is aptly named “The Soap Opera Effect”— Which I think is a perfect way to describe it! Apparently for some crazy reason that effect is activated by default on such TVs and it can be shut off in the settings! Why such TVs would have such a setting in the first place is beyond me— it totally destroys the picture quality, but even more crazy is that the setting is activated by default! Why?!
If you do a search engine search for “high definition soap opera effect” you will find numerous articles explaining it and how to shut it off.
UPDATE— After looking into the topic a bit more I see that the feature is known as “motion smoothing,” which tries to “fill in” missing information between frames, which is fine for watching sports but it destroys the appearance of cinema movies. Modern high-def TVs use a frame rate of 60 or even 120 frames per second, but cinema film is shot at 24 fps, so if a modern TV attempts to artificially “compensate” for that it makes the picture look as if it was shot on a video camera, which is 30 fps. Supposedly TV manufacturers have that feature activated by default because they think that it makes the picture look “snappier” to potential consumers in the showroom (but what happens when those consumers try to preview a movie in the showroom with that setting activated though?)