Harrison
10th February 2021, 01:18
I recently bought a new 43" 4K Samsung TV. Great image quality, especially the UHD content from Disney+, Netflix and Prime. But I noticed something. When a scene is panning across and through a scene I get this stutter or juddering every second or so. Like a single frame pause. I noticed this the most in scifi space scenes, first in Start Trek Discover, and this week in The Expanse, where it seems to happen more.. not just panning space scenes, but also ship interiors when the camera is moving though the ship.
I did some digging in Google and it seems a fairly common issue with newer 4K TVs made since 2018. There are advanced image processing filters, on Samsung TVs called Auto Motion Plus, but on mine it's called Picture Clarity Settings. So they might have recently renamed it. Probably called something else for other makes.
In these settings are picture enhancement filters. The First is called Judder Reduction. Mine has a slidder to set it between 0 and 10, with 0 being off. By default this was set to 3. I tested this set to 1, and then 0. It reduced the juddering but not completely, even when set to 0.
The next setting is blur reduction. On mine this is now called Noise reduction. This was set to auto by default. I set it to off and it completely cured the problem. No stuttering or juddering at all.
The third option is called LED Clear Motion, which was off by default. It's meant to use the LCD backlight to sharpen fast motion, but this alters brightness levels and makes objects artificially brighter. O tested this on to see what the difference was and it makes the overall image much darker.
So at least I fixed the issue. Bit mad that to fix the juddering and stuttering I had to turn off Judder Reduction and Noise reduction. Apparently these filters do reduce Judder and flicker well for more predictable staight line Motion, but don't handle unpredictable movement or erratic motion. So best to turn them off.
Apparently with these settings people have nicknamed it the soap opera effect as it creates a smoothed out over sharpened image that makes everything look a bit too clean and sharp and soap opera set like. And I would agree. With the settings off films look much better. Far more like film. I'd been wondering why things I'd been watching looked a bit wrong, but couldn't put my finger on it.
Strangely my older 65" Philips 4K TV never suffered from this issue. I also think the Philips has a better image than the Samsung, but it might just be the larger size of the panel and I think it has better brightness and backlighting too. But both have really nice images.
I did some digging in Google and it seems a fairly common issue with newer 4K TVs made since 2018. There are advanced image processing filters, on Samsung TVs called Auto Motion Plus, but on mine it's called Picture Clarity Settings. So they might have recently renamed it. Probably called something else for other makes.
In these settings are picture enhancement filters. The First is called Judder Reduction. Mine has a slidder to set it between 0 and 10, with 0 being off. By default this was set to 3. I tested this set to 1, and then 0. It reduced the juddering but not completely, even when set to 0.
The next setting is blur reduction. On mine this is now called Noise reduction. This was set to auto by default. I set it to off and it completely cured the problem. No stuttering or juddering at all.
The third option is called LED Clear Motion, which was off by default. It's meant to use the LCD backlight to sharpen fast motion, but this alters brightness levels and makes objects artificially brighter. O tested this on to see what the difference was and it makes the overall image much darker.
So at least I fixed the issue. Bit mad that to fix the juddering and stuttering I had to turn off Judder Reduction and Noise reduction. Apparently these filters do reduce Judder and flicker well for more predictable staight line Motion, but don't handle unpredictable movement or erratic motion. So best to turn them off.
Apparently with these settings people have nicknamed it the soap opera effect as it creates a smoothed out over sharpened image that makes everything look a bit too clean and sharp and soap opera set like. And I would agree. With the settings off films look much better. Far more like film. I'd been wondering why things I'd been watching looked a bit wrong, but couldn't put my finger on it.
Strangely my older 65" Philips 4K TV never suffered from this issue. I also think the Philips has a better image than the Samsung, but it might just be the larger size of the panel and I think it has better brightness and backlighting too. But both have really nice images.