For more than a month now, Roku TV users have been making it known that they have been subject to having their devices’ motion smoothing turned on without consenting. The culprit seems to be the Roku OS version version 13.0.0 update, which added what the company calls Roku Smart Picture, a feature that “automatically improves picture quality dynamically as users stream.” While motion smoothing is not mentioned by name, major publications as well as user-run communities such as Reddit are reporting the same phenomena: motion smoothing on everything they watch, with no option to turn it off.
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Ars Technica reported on the outcry from users as far back as June 12, going so far as to reach out to Roku for a response, which they have not received. The publication notes that most reported incidents of stuck-on motion smoothing originate from TCL HDTVs running Roku OS software.
“On June 6th, my TCL TV’s Roku OS was updated to version 13.0.0. Ever since, on everything I watch, there is motion smoothing — a TV and film purists’ deepest nightmare,” writes William Joel for The Verge. “There is no way to turn it off.”
Joel’s report echoes countless others: that the settings that would typically be present to switch such a feature on or off are completely absent. Joel even mentions that his TV didn’t even support motion smoothing prior to the update. He mentions that a similar issue happened with a different batch of TCL TVs back in 2020, and internet sleuthing determined that a fix was never released. Countless TCL TV owners who find motion smoothing offensive to the eyes fear that their devices may be subjected to the same fate.
