The Mandalorian 2.1 Review - 5 Ups And 2 Downs

by Ewan Paterson

1. Avoid Watching On The Disney+ TV App

Mandalorian Season 2 The Child
Lucasfilm / Disney+

Obviously this isn't an issue to do with The Mandalorian at all, but if you - like me - were watching the series on the Disney+ TV app and found yourself a little puzzled at how it all looked, well, there's a reason for that.

Turning on the episode this morning it was clear that - somehow - it was streaming with motion smoothing switched on. For those who don't know, motion smoothing (or sport's mode, or the 'soap opera effect', or whatever else it's called) is a setting in-built into most modern HD TVs whose sole purpose is to make movies and TV shows look like complete and total ASS.

It inserts new frames where there weren't any before, and it can end up making an $100 million movie - or in this case, an $120 million TV series - look frankly amateurish.

Now, this setting is turned off on my TV, but the Disney+ TV app seems to override that setting somehow. It was easy enough to change by switching to a laptop and hooking up a HDMI, but I dread to think how many people will be watching Mando without knowing why it all looks so... not very good.

Motion smoothing sucks, folks. Don't let it keep ruining your favourite shows and films.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.