I immediately change settings on my TVs. I also change settings on friends TVs before movie night and I’m always met with hurt and a bit of anger when I’m changing the look of their expensive toy. I think since Hi Def TVs are defaulted to Soap Opera mode, people believe that is simply the way their Hi Def TV is supposed to look - “well it is Hi Def so it is better” (even though it is bad different).
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both look the same/fine to me. Does this make some kind of monster?
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I believe that is the blood of children in a kale smoothie.
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It looks more like an SNL skit than a regular soap opera.
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The examples are focused in on the motion issues, but in a broader sense what it does is make the entire scene bright by increasing the light in the shadows. The scene becomes “flat” and looks like your home movies from the 80s.
I have been looking for better side by side comparisons but can’t find any.
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Yes, part of the aversion to higher framerates is like a preference for vinyl (it sounds ‘warmer’). By the way, I have a preference for vinyl myself, but I have no problem admitting that’s it’s just nostalgia 
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In the case of the hobbit movies it didn’t help that the movies themselves were bad, even if the framerate was better than usual. Why Oh why did they stretch it to 3 movies. They should just have create 1 movie. It’s only ~300 pages compared to the ~1200 for the complete lotr.
What doesn’t help though is that the motion interpolation (*) in most TVs is extremely sucky and leads to weird artefacts like ‘wobbly’ shapes.
But the 24fps framerate of movies should die. Or at least it shouldn’t be the default. It should be like black&white. Which still gets used as an artistic effect. 24fps is just not enough to get smooth video.
(*) Which is a mathematically much harder problem than you’d maybe expect, much harder than spatial interpolation.
edit: fixed brain-fart
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Compared to shows shot on film, the effect screamed “cheap and slipshod” to me even as a child.
With rare exception (e.g. Norman Lear sitcoms) it tracked with the content. If I see this effect I know there’s a good chance that at some point the producers will just substitute in another actor to play a lead character without acknowledging it to the audience.
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With all the problems in the world, including our raging dumpster-fire disaster gubmint here in the USA, THIS is what Tom Cruise is concerned about?
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Would you rather hear what Tom Cruise has to say about politics? 
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That’s nothing a couple of drinks won’t fix.
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There is always a relevant XKCD, even if it is only in the alt-text.
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That’s called “spackle”.
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Enkwife and Enkling the Younger and I visited Enkling the Elder at college this thxgv. In the hotel room one night she said, let’s watch a movie. Indiana Jones and… the one with Sean Connery was playing. After only a few seconds i asked “what the hell is wrong with this movie?!” It looked like a weird soap opera or something, reminded me of the Hobbit HFR 3D film I watched (like sticking your head in a virtual box that had the film playing inside a video game that was inside the box as well). Nowadays kids expect 60 to 144 Hz displays and frankly I love my HFR iPad Pro for the rock solid 120 Hz frame rate.
In some ways it reminded me a lot of the stop motion imagery from the Welcome to Marwen trailer. Just a bit too deep in the uncanny valley.
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Holy Bat Farts! It took me 30 minutes to locate that on my TV, and then turn it off.
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Yes, the thing that is literally his profession is the thing he’s concerned about.
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It is his profession and it is possible to be concerned about multiple things.
I worked in television production and special effects so this shit bothers me and at the same time I’m really concerned about global warming and Trump. Hell, I’m really concerned with white supremacists invading my subculture.
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For a lot of people they need to get started on how to adjust aspect ratios!
Too many times I see people squeezed or elongated on fancy TV screens and no one else seems to care …
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The first time I saw this Soap Opera Effect was a few years ago when my brother proudly demonstrated his fancy new TV by playing a Star Trek Blu-ray disc for me. I did not enjoy it. It made Classic Star Trek look like Classic Dr. Who.
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I actually liked it. The visuals, the movie not so much.
The other popular name for this feature – apart from “soap opera mode” – is “parents mode”, because most people’s experience of it is when they find their retired parents watching a giant new TV with every evidence of not noticing how terrible everything looks on it.
I wouldn’t dream of asking your age, but it has occurred to me before now that this might be a physiological thing related to age, like how older people can’t hear CRTs.
