soap opera effect

An informal term for "motion smoothing" or "motion interpolation," a process by which one's TV artificially increases the frame rate of video in order to remove motion blur. As a result, some movies and TV shows have an exaggeratedly realistic visual quality more typical of videotape (the traditional filming medium for soap operas) than film. A: "Why does everything look so weird on my new TV?" B: "It's the soap opera effect. Let's see if we can turn that off."