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ATV 2, bought in Germany(!), can't play PAL with 25 fps ?

I still can't believe it, but when i search the forums, it seems that the black ATV is not able to play my PAL recordings smoothly.
Actually my new little black box is switching my Samsung Plasma to 720p@60Hz.

But with this setting it's impossible to watch a 25fps movie!

I am not an engineer but i think those at Apple who are developing should know about the differences between PAL and NTSC.

I still have a little hope that this it's me who does not know how to read the manuals and setup his home cinema correctly. But the more i read about this issue the more i'm afraid that Apple failed!

What do you folks think, is there hope to get an update that will give switch the screen to ...@50hz when playing PAL content?

AppleTV 2, iOS 4

Posted on Mar 12, 2011 11:34 AM

30 replies

pummelfee Author

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Mar 14, 2011 12:10 AM in response to Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill wrote:

pummelfee wrote:

jupasa wrote:
I am puzzled though as some claim that it would depend on the tv itself. Although I think ATV 2 outputs at 50 hz if the tv does not take 60 hz. It the tv accepts both 50 hz and 60 hz, ATV 2 outputs at 60.

Yes, i it seems that is the only logical conclusion. And Apple should know that there are MANY TVs on the market that cannot be set manually or like mine, prefers the 60hz signals.

That's not correct, if you read my posts, prior to 4.2 my Apple tv output at 60 Hz after 4.2, it outputs at 50 Hz, so clearly my TV can accept both. I'm not at all clear why it now outputs at 50 Hz, but it obviously isn't because my TV only accepts 50 Hz.

Hey Winston, i'm really glad for you that YOUR setup always works 100%. But my Samsung plasma generally accepts 50 as well as 60hz (depending of what comes in) and it is still a fact that my ATV2 is the only mediaplayer i know that forces my TV automatically to 60hz though i play PAL movies. So, i'm sorry, but even if you post a 100 times more that your atv2 plays at 50hz with your 5 tvs doesn't help those people much, who are experience those juttering!

Mar 14, 2011 9:41 AM in response to pummelfee

I've noticed an issue for me after the 4.2 update. It's somehow connected to frame rates whereas before it was perfect. I'm on a panasonic plasma, never had any issues before with other media players.

I will do some tests to see what the atv is switching the plasma too.

A movie at 23.98 fps played smoothly, now it's stuttering every second or so.

A TV show at 25fps played smoothly before, but now we're stuttering as well.

It's odd.

cheers
paul

Mar 14, 2011 12:06 PM in response to pummelfee

pummelfee wrote:
......So, i'm sorry, but even if you post a 100 times more that your atv2 plays at 50hz with your 5 tvs doesn't help those people much, who are experience those juttering!

No it might not help, there isn't anyway to manually set the output from the Apple TV and you can't do anything about your TV, but it does let others who are reading this thread have a proper understanding of what is happening, because your explanation is misleading.

Mar 15, 2011 3:42 AM in response to paulinventome

I've just bought an ATV 2 here in Australia (should be the same unit as the European unit sold, if not, very similar) and I can confirm what you are saying after a few basic tests.

On both a plasma TV and through a computer monitor the Apple TV2 is outputting 720p 60Hz. From most of the talk you see, the ATV 2 will only output 60Hz whereas the ATV 1 will output 720p 50Hz as well.

I'll bring mine to work and test it in our lab but as an uneducated guess, without testing it first, the issue is the output of the ATV2 and not your TV or settings.
Bear in mind that content from itunes will have been converted to 60Hz or downloaded files that are 60Hz they will appear with no issue but if you are watching your own content and other content that is native 50Hz you will get the jitters.

I'll endeavor to put our findings on here if we discover anything interesting but so far it looks as though you should try to find yourself an ATV1

Mar 15, 2011 8:06 AM in response to Whale Oil Beef Hooked

Hello @all,

i´m living in Germany and have the same problem, always 60hz on my Philips LCD.I can
not Play my Video´s (50hz) without jitter.
For all other thinks, i like the ATV2.
greetings

pummelfee Author

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Mar 15, 2011 12:16 PM in response to rvaneeden

Everyone who is also experiencing those stutterings should tell this to the Apple support. With some luck, we may get an update that will fix this...

Mar 16, 2011 4:38 AM in response to pummelfee

ihave already done that for about 8 weeks.

greetings

Mar 16, 2011 6:07 AM in response to pummelfee

I tested my ATV2 today in our lab with the following TV brands - all relatively new models from within the past 4 years, I picked a few models from each:

Sharp
Samsung
Panasonic
Sony
Soniq

Each TV had the same issue and none of them allowed you to fix the system to PAL. This is a bit frustrating but also proves a point that if the ATV2 prioritizes 60Hz over 50Hz when the TV automatically selects between the two, this is an issue that will not have a solution unless Apple resolves it in the player through an upgrade.

A solution we thought of was to use one of our scalers (DVDO Edge) which can be fixed to 50Hz and hopefully show us that the ATV2 can output 50Hz, which I'm sure it can. The main issue is that you can buy 12 ATV2's for the price of a scaler so it is hardly practical but I'll test it tomorrow anyway to get the answer.

pummelfee Author

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Mar 16, 2011 7:49 AM in response to Whale Oil Beef Hooked

That's great!! Did you tell this the support? I think i will give the link to this thread to my support contact at Apple. He said he will tell our issue to the ATV development.

@all: I'm sorry if my thread was a bit overstated; of course you can actually watch a Pal Movie on a Plasma set to 60hz, but it is not the optimal value and i'm someone who knows about that and so i simply can't enjoy it!

m0gwaiz

Level 1

16 points

Apr 20, 2011 10:22 AM in response to pummelfee

I have the same issue but it's the exact opposite, my Apple TV2 is stuck at 50hz where I would like to have it running at 60hz since all my content is either NTSC or FILM (24hz).

It's clearly stated in the product description that the apple TV supports 50/60hz, I tried feeding it some NTSC material hoping it would change the refresh rate automaticaly but that didn't happened.

I usually don't expect anything more than what clearly advertised from apple products but this is a really a basic problem and I'm surprised that there isn't more complaints about it.

I don't want to be rude to anyone but for the people saying it's ok to watch PAL/NTSC at the same refresh rate you clearly don't have a clue about how video mastering works or you have extremly low quality standards 😝

I hope that apple will take the time to look at this, it should be an easy fix.

pummelfee Author

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Apr 21, 2011 6:39 AM in response to m0gwaiz

I googled around and i guess the point is, that Apple TV sets its refresh rate automatically to the highest possible value whilst handshaking, but that is not always the best one.

The experts in the Apple TV team should know that and i wonder when they make a solution for that.

m0gwaiz

Level 1

16 points

Apr 21, 2011 7:01 AM in response to pummelfee

Winston Churchill: You can have 500 hundreds TVs for all I care, content should be played at it's native refresh rate, the process of converting NTSC to Pal is extremly complex and is usually done by IVTC to restore the original FILM refresh rate of 24hz followed by PAL speed up but this is usually done by professional equipment

In the case of the Apple TV, the following happens:

Effectively, every 12th film frame is displayed for the duration of three PAL fields (60 milliseconds), whereas the other 11 frames are all displayed for the duration of two PAL fields (40 milliseconds). This causes a slight “hiccup” in the video about twice a second. Increasingly being referred to as Euro pulldown as it largely affects European territories. (Wikipedia)

There isn't any reason (or logic for that matter) as of why playing PAL on NTSC refresh rate or vice-versa would procduce better results.

Pummelfee: I can directly say this is NOT what is happening, since my apple TV is stuck in 50hz and is directly connected to a Lumagen Radiance video processor which supports every know consummer resolution/refresh rate, if that was the case then my Apple TV would run @60hz, there must be something else defining the default refresh rate maybe some regional settings, I'm not sure

Maybe I should send you my 50hz Apple TV and you send me your 60hz one, I'm sure it would solve the problem faster than waitting for support from Apple lol

May 12, 2011 6:36 AM in response to pummelfee

This might be naive of me, but maybe the output frequency depends on which country you've entered in the AppleTV settings.

There is also implicitly the country to which your iTunes account belong. I hope that doesn't matter, because the U.S. store is the only decent store around. It should be easy enough to test if these settings have any effect.

Aug 20, 2011 1:55 AM in response to pummelfee

Well, I have nothing to contribute to the solution but essentially I'm stuck with the same problem of not being able to set the frequency of the ATV-2.

I bought the ATV-2 for the living room, which has a large SONY Projection-TV. Unfortunately, the ATV-2 switches to 60Hz, which the TV does not handle properly: 2 of the 3 colours are in sync, the third is shown appr. 2 cm. to the right => headaches!

Now I'm "forced" to use the ATV-2 in the bedroom, where it does play "nice" with my Samsung LCD.

Still a pity that I'm not able to use this device as intended (by me).

Please Apple, give us a firmware update that will at least leave us the choice between 50Hz and 60Hz!

Aug 20, 2011 6:53 AM in response to Gerrit Jan Veltink

Please Apple, give us a firmware update that will at least leave us the choice between 50Hz and 60Hz!

Not just that but also 24Hz. In fact all Apple has to do is Make the refresh swap to whatever the content currently playing is. Done.

And don't get me started on 720p at 24Hz not being a "legal" resolution. Who cares. Most TV's these days can display that just fine.

ATV 2, bought in Germany(!), can't play PAL with 25 fps ?