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

[Paul Gardiner]

On 27/03/2021 19:46, James Abernathy wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 27, 2021 at 3:23 PM Paul Gardiner <lists at glidos.net 
> <mailto:lists at glidos.net>> 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.
> 
> 
> Since all my use of Mythtv is in the USA, matching framerate is not an 
> issue since everything is already matched.

Yes, that would be true of anything you record, but movies played via 
mythvideo would likely be 24fps, if you ever do that. 24fps played into 
a TV running at 60fps makes the motion look sort of hard (not a good 
word for it. I find it difficult to describe but it's fairly obvious).

> However, I also use FireTV 4K stick and Nvidia Shield TV for Netflix and 
> Prime Video where a lot of the content is from countries with 50 or 25. 
> For me the FireTV 4K seems to not have a framerate issue on Netflix for 
> programs like The Crown which does have issues on the Shield TV.  Since 
> my primary TV is connected to the Shield and my wife's TV is using the 
> FireTV 4k, I have not tested a lot with the FireTV.

Interesting. Given that my experience shows that the problem is at least 
possible on the FireTV, and as far as I know always present with the 
Netflix app for programs like the Crown because their app doesn't 
support frame-rate switching, I wonder if the difference in your case is 
related to whether the TV can mitigate the incorrect frame rate, rather 
than related to the source... unless the TVs are the same model.

> Luckily my TV is a Samsung UHD and it's Netflix and Prime Video apps 
> have no issue with frame rates. So I just use the TV app.

I can quite believe that built in apps work better.