Turn off Motion Smoothing, says the maker

Ahead of the release of “Stranger Things 5,” which dropped on Netflix on Wednesday at 8 p.m. EST, series creator Ross Duffer posted a PSA on Instagram, walking viewers through their television settings to ensure everything was set up for a good viewing experience.

With the camera pointed at his TV, Duffer says, “A little PSA before you watch tonight. I want to make sure your TVs are set up properly.” While he acknowledges that different TVs have different displays, he navigates viewers to settings, then picture mode settings, then expert controls before encouraging people to turn off all expert controls. On Duffer’s TV, this included dynamic contrast, super resolution, edge enhancement and color filter, all of which he considered “garbage.”

Duffer then goes back to the picture options, where he shows that noise reduction should be turned off, as well as “the worst offender of all, truemotion or smoothmotion,” which creates “the dreaded soap opera effect.”

Duffer goes on to say that on most TVs, turning on expert vision (in his case, Dolby Vision-Movie Dark mode) will solve most problems, but not all. So he encourages viewers to double-check, warning that “whatever you do, don’t set anything to ‘vivid’ as this will turn on all the worst offenders. It will destroy the color and that is not the filmmaker’s intention.”

Duffer would understand that intention, as he and his brother Matt directed three of the four episodes of “Stranger Things 5: Volume 1.” The only standout, episode 3, was directed by Frank Darabont. Part 2 will release the next three episodes of “Stranger Things 5” on Christmas Day, then the finale will hit theaters and Netflix on New Year’s Eve.