Football season is in full swing, and as a certified TV calibrator, I’m here to help you make sure the games look as good as possible. It’s as easy as changing one simple setting.
Television enthusiasts typically rail against the motion-smoothing feature included in many TVs. I know because I’m one of them. I tell people to turn off the feature whenever possible. However, there is an important exception: streaming NFL games and other live sports.
Turn motion smoothing on for sporting events. Seriously, it’s one of the few cases where motion smoothing looks good. For instructions on how to do that, skip to 1:04 in the video below, which we created before the Olympics last summer as a reminder to enable the setting. What Is Motion Smoothing?
Motion smoothing is a video-processing feature found in most TVs. It works by injecting new frames between the frames in a video signal to make the image motion look less jerky. These frames are interpolated, calculating halfway points and processing the picture to keep the video even and consistent (often in conjunction with patterns of backlight flickering to further enhance the effect).
