[mythtv-users] Stupid Fire Stick Match Frame Rate feature

[Peter Bennett]

On 3/27/21 3:21 PM, Paul Gardiner wrote:
> This is not really a mythtv question, but it is related. I've been 
> using Leanfront a lot lately. It's just awesome now. It seems to play 
> perfectly anything I throw at it. Possibly, if I hadn't already 
> recently acquired a NUC-based front end, I might now not bother.
>
> Still, that said, what ruins it is how useless is the Fire Stick 4K's 
> match frame rate feature. I'm wondering if others are seeing the flaw 
> I see. Every time I power cycle it, or power cycle my AV receiver, or 
> even switch the AV received away from the Fire Stick, it seems to 
> forget my TVs modes. The setting pertains: the fire stick still shows 
> display mode on automatic and the match-frame-rate feature enabled, 
> but neither leanfront or Prime video will switch. Leanfront explicitly 
> reports that the mode it wants isn't present.
>
> I can make it work by temporarily switching the fire stick to 1080p60 
> and then back to automatic plus reenabling the match feature. Works 
> perfectly, but I have to do that every time I turn it on.
>
> I find it sort of pathetic. The fire stick is produced by a company 
> with huge resources and with one purpose - to play video. How can they 
> be content with such a flaw.
>
> And Netflix?! Another company with huge resources and exist only to 
> supply video, yet their app doesn't even support frame rate switching.
>
> I guess, mitigating this for many is the smoothing feature that many 
> modern TVs have, which make motion a little unnatural, but can hide 
> frame rate mismatch. Seems a terrible solution to me.
>
I have never seen this problem. I have fire stick 4k's on several TV's 
and they switch frame rate without a problem. I have the fire stick 
plugged directly into the TV. I suspect your AV receiver is confusing 
things somehow. Does "match original frame rate" in the fire stick 
settings get disabled?

Does this happen if you plug the fire stick directly into the TV?

Frame rate switching in leanfront also works on nvidia shield. If you 
have a shield you could try it there to narrow down whether it is a 
problem specific to the fire stick.

I plug the fire stick directly into the TV, then take optical output 
from the TV to the audio system. This successfully carries dolby digital 
to the audio system without having the audio system in between the TV 
and the fire stick. Another option may be to use a splitter to pass the 
hdmi to the tv and the audio system.

Peter