Home Theater Geeks 442 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks I talk about the latest Roku OS update and what it does to TCL TVs. So stay tuned. Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWIT. Hey there, scott Wilkinson. Here, the home theater geek.
00:34
In this episode I talk about an article I saw in the Verge not too long ago entitled Dear Roku, you Ruined my TV. It was written by William Joel and he has a Roku TV from TCL. And this is Roku. Of course is the OS or the user interface, the smart interface that TCL uses in many of its TVs, and he recently updated the app to version 13.0.0. According to the release notes, it quote, automatically improves picture quality dynamically as users stream. What the notes don't say is that apparently it enables frame interpolation, or what Roku calls action smoothing, and doesn't let users turn it off. Holy smokes.
01:44
Now, if you don't know what frame interpolation is, let me explain. It's a process whereby objects in motion in a video stream are sharpened. So, as you probably know, video or film consists of a series of still images that they're shown quickly, one after the other, and it simulates the appearance of motion, but when things are in motion they often appear kind of blurry, and so many TVs actually synthesize or create new frames in between the frames in the video signal to sharpen that motion. They interpolate where an object in motion will be between the actual frames in the image. So here's an example. Here's a graphic that shows you what I'm talking about. In this graphic, on the left we have the original image and at the top left is one frame where there's a car and it's at the right side of the frame but it's moving to the left. The next frame down is the next frame in the image, in the video signal, and the car's already in the right side of the frame, left side of the frame, sorry. So between those two frames the car has moved quite a bit and it looks blurry. If you just show those original frames, well, the TV will, or the whatever is showing you. The video can synthesize a frame in between those two frames in the original image and put the car where it thinks it should be. If there was an actual frame in between those two original frames, as you can see here there's an intermediate image and what you end up seeing on the screen is the car moving from right to left and the synthesized frame is stuck in the middle of them and you see the car moving and it looks sharper and you know. That's the point. That's why we want, why they developed, frame interpolation.
04:16
The problem is it introduces an artifact that's typically called the soap opera effect, and it's called that because it makes the image look like it was shot on video, like a soap opera. Now the graphic that we just showed you shows the original image at 60 frames per second and the final image at 120 frames per second. So it's basically frame doubling, and the soap opera effect isn't so bad in this case, because it's only doubling the number of frames that you're seeing. It gets really egregious when you do this to film, to movies that were shot at 24 frames per second. When you convert that to 120 frames per second, which many modern TVs do. Per second, which many modern TVs do, each frame of the image, of the original image, has to be. You have to fill in between those original frames four additional frames. So 80% of what you're seeing on the screen is synthesized. It's created by the TV or Roku in this case to create that 120 frame per second image and the soap opera effect gets much worse, much worse.
05:52
Now, filmmakers and movie purists really hate this. They really really hate frame interpolation. Filmologists really hate this. They really really hate frame interpolation and they advocate that you turn it off. In fact, the industry developed something called filmmaker mode, which is now available on many TVs that automatically turn off frame interpolation and a bunch of other so-called enhancements that usually do more harm than good. So if you have filmmaker mode in your TV, most people would recommend that you turn it off. Now, this is a matter of taste to some degree. Maybe you like the sharper looking objects in motion, and if so, great. I'm not going to tell you to turn it off just because If you don't like that image the soap opera effect then by all means turn off frame interpolation if you can.
06:51
That's the problem with this update to Roku TVs, in particular from TCL although the Verge article talks implies that it may be Hisense as well which apparently you can't turn it off. Now, according to the Verge article, soon after the upgrade rolled out, tv owners of the TCLs and maybe some Hisenses began posting about the problem on the Roku community forum and on Reddit, and the Verge apparently reached out to Roku for comment but hadn't heard back as of this show. Now on the Roku community forum. The complaints were met with a stock response and here we can see it here. It looks pretty complicated. It says Roku is aware of the issue and is investigating and asking users who are experiencing the problem to send the company information about their Roku model, serial number, device ID, os version and other information. They even invite you to send a video clip. Not sure what good that would do, but that's part of this stock response.
08:14
Now I checked on my Roku Ultra, which is not a Roku TV. It's a little streamer box 4K streamer box and it is on OS 13.0.0. Now, according to several articles on the subject that I looked at, you can access action smoothing and turn it off or on in the advanced picture settings, which you access by pressing the star button while content is playing, which I thought was kind of interesting. Now I tried this on the Roku Ultra and the only two items that I could see in that menu were volume mode and language and accessibility, neither of which has anything to do with action smoothing or frame interpolation. Now there is an advanced display settings menu in the settings available in the home screen. It's several layers deep but it only has two items on my Roku Ultra auto adjust refresh rate-off and HDR subsampling a very technical thing which only gives you the choice between 420 and 422. I won't go into what that means, but it has nothing to do with frame interpolation. The auto-adjust refresh rate might have something to do with it, but I'm not sure. The description reads auto adjust display refresh rate to the content's native format as needed.
09:53
Well, that's not very helpful. I tried it both ways and I didn't see any difference in the TV material that I watched. I didn't see any difference in the TV material that I watched. I haven't been using Roku lately, to tell you the truth. I've been using my Apple TV 4K more these days, so I didn't really have a chance to try it on movie content. I will, and if I come up with anything, I'll let you know.
10:20
In any event, all of this demonstrates that the software for Roku devices is inconsistent. It's not the same between a streamer and a TV, and I find this annoying. It's really unfortunate and they should really consistentize it. But here we are. So it could be that the inability to turn off action smoothing affects only TCL TVs. Maybe Hisense Roku TVs as well, but I don't really know.
10:56
I do know that it's a very bad idea to enable action smoothing or frame interpolation without the ability to turn it off, because there are plenty of people who are home theater geeks especially, who do not want that particular feature turned on. So I hope Roku got the message and is going to send out another update with that control enabled the message and is going to send out another update with that control enabled. So that's the answer, such as it is, to that. Now, if you have a question for me, please send it along to htg at twittv. I love answering user questions on the air listener questions, that is, on the air and we'll answer as many as I can. And, as always, we thank you for your support of the TWIT Network with your membership in Club TWIT. With that membership, you can access all the shows that TWIT produces without commercials and you can see the video of all the shows and you can come into the club discord and watch us make the show live. So I hope you will do that. Until next time, geek out.
