: "Warmth" is probably as close to describing it as I could get as
: well. Maybe it's because that's what I grew up with, but for some reason,
: the more "real" looking it gets, the more my mind screams at me
: that it's fake.

Softness is the word that you're going for, I think. And I can see where you're coming from. I still have some VHS films (Tron, Independence Day, and Nightmare Before Xmas come to mind), and a lot of their rereleases bother me. At the same time, watching a film like Cloverfield in Blu-Ray quality makes zero sense to me, and kills any immersion. I'd rather have that on VHS.

However, I have Se7en on Blu-Ray, and it's amazing, but that's probably because the conversion to Blu-Ray quality was nigh-flawless, which is rare. They opted to keep in all of the grain and imperfections, and the film is better for it. ALL of the small details, from individual raindrops to the pores on people's faces resonate well with me...

A lot of the issue is the settings on HDTVs: input lag, refresh rate, jiggahertz and all that, which can be fixed and tweaked, but for the most part isn't a problem outside of gaming. I definitely hate the "soap opera effect", but sometimes, you adapt to it (like when you go to a 30FPS game from a 60; jarring at first, but you slowly ease into it).

I definitely don't get why someone would want to watch a movie at 48fps, though, which exacerbates the problem tenfold. 48fps is stupid, and only a tool would support that crap...