It appears that Roku TV has been caught by motion smoothing in a recent update.

First noted by The Verge, which highlighted various posts across Reddit and Roku community forums, the motion smoothing issue is largely contained in the Roku OS 13 software running on some of the best TCL TVs.

This update invites one important feature that may be the cause of the problem, "Roku Smart Picture." This is a new optimization tool that improves the picture quality of the content you are watching and may be causing some bugs in the motion smoothing parameters of the TV.

Not everyone with the Roku OS 13 update is affected, however, as some users who already have access to the "expert" picture settings have the ability to enable or disable the motion smoothing feature. This issue seems to be common with Roku devices, and some Reddit users have noted that similar problems have been occurring for years.

You may be wondering what exactly motion smoothing is. It is essentially a TV upscaling procedure that improves the performance, specifically frames per second (fps), of a particular show or movie to match the TV's set refresh rate. content such as "House of Dragons," which was shot at 24 fps, can be smoothed to 60 fps, or even 120 fps, and, as the name implies, it delivers smoother motion.

Roku TV users, mostly running Roku OS 13 on TCL TVs, have noted problems with this feature in community forums and Reddit threads over the past day after the new update. In Roku, motion smoothing is called action smoothing and can generally be found in the advanced picture settings of TVs and best streaming devices.

Some users have claimed that upon the new update, it is the first time that TVs will allow access to Roku's motion smoothing feature. This is even more confusing for these users because there is no option within the settings to actually enable it or turn it off by any means.

Sifting through the notes for Roku OS 13, the new "Roku Smart Picture" option, which is auto-enabled and always on, may be the culprit of the motion smoothing issue. This feature, according to Roku, dynamically adjusts picture quality across various content types for improved optimization, regardless of the type of TV or picture you may be watching.

One Roku forum moderator noted that this may be corrected by long pressing the star button on the Roku remote control. Go to Advanced Image Settings, click on Action Smoothing, and you should be able to disable the feature.

Roku administrators are looking into a fix, but for now the best option is to try turning the setting off manually if possible, or to change to Filmmaker mode if your TV supports it, to disable motion smoothing. These are certainly not the best and most fluid ways to address this issue, but you will have to wait for Roku to address this issue in another software update.