No way to set HDMI framerate to 50Hz causes judder

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What steps will reproduce the problem?
1.Playing any 25/50FPS footage which is normal in Europe.
2.
3.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
Dropping frames causing video stuttering, audio is OK.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Latest Chromecast image.

Please provide any additional information below.
The same stuttering can be observed when the HDMI input MythTV is connected to 
is set to 60Hz. But MythTV is a Linux app and the framerate can be set to 50Hz 
which eliminates the problem. 

Original issue reported on code.google.com by per...@gmail.com on 9 Sep 2014 at 12:35

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We are continuing to investigate this issue and are looking into ways to 
resolve this based on user feedback.

Original comment by jonathan...@google.com on 2 May 2015 at 12:38

• Changed state: Acknowledged

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That was unexpected but good news none the less.

Original comment by ianjorda...@gmail.com on 2 May 2015 at 12:42

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Finally found an explanation for what I was seeing. Was blaming Blinkbox for 
their streaming then realised its only a judder problem when casting. I bought 
2 of these chrome casts in the UK. If no fix comes soon I'll get Amazonf Fire 
stick or Roku instead, and no longer recommend Chromecast to friends and family.

Original comment by jjkbosw...@yahoo.com on 2 May 2015 at 10:23

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One thought on this, if my TV auto detects the 60Hz from the chromecast, why 
are there frame rate issues? Is the problem actually with the source stream? 

Original comment by jjkbosw...@yahoo.com on 3 May 2015 at 12:00

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The problem with streams comes from the way the video is produced today. Some 
of it with 24 fps (most movies and modern shows), some with 25p/50 (European 
PAL region) and some in 30 fps (US live TV for example). Modern TVs can handle 
all three modes, usually. The bottleneck is here the Cromecast, which attempts 
to change 25p/50 and 24p signals to 30 fps and output the at fixed 60hz. There 
is no way to decode the original 25 or 24 fps signal from this. It is a nice 
fail-safe to display everything at 60hz, as this is the most compatible mode 
(at least for US TVs), but it should be allowed for users to override this if 
they chose so. It is important to note that anyone used to watch with motion 
interpolation ON would be most probably fine with 60hz, as any judder is washed 
away by this, at the expense of "film look". These motion interpolation 
algorithms are important marketing feature for TV vendors, which might be the 
reason behind them saying that Chromecast outputting fixed 60hz is just fine 
(as reported by Google in the first closure of this topic as "wont fix").

Original comment by ondrejpe...@gmail.com on 3 May 2015 at 1:18

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Dear Google,
You should contact Jeff from SageTV (the company) that you bought a couple 
years ago. SageTV's setop box could do auto switch 24/60/50!
You might all ready own code to fix the problem!

Original comment by tork...@gmail.com on 3 May 2015 at 2:57

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I bought a Amazon Fire TV Stick - GREAT! You can switch frame rates. No judder.
Just forget the chromcast - they will never fix it.

Original comment by jochen.f...@gmail.com on 4 May 2015 at 7:04

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Hard to believe that Google is this ignorant with the entire european market. 
Chromecast = alpha product :)

Original comment by pilehave@gmail.com on 26 May 2015 at 1:20

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Not only the european market, they are ignoring all content that isn't 30fps.
24fps content looks like crap at 60Hz on my TV which is what you get when 
played using chromecast.
(some people might be used to that, and some TVs might be able to smooth it out 
a bit but I am not used to it and my TV shows the raw HDMI feed as-is, which 
looks great with other real video players (everything but chromecast))

For a device that is marketed as a video playing device this is absolutely 
horrible and shockingly incompetent.

How hard can it be to provide an API call to set the refresh rate?
There is no guessing needed, the video playing application knows the frame rate 
of the video.

Original comment by gand...@mjufs.se on 27 May 2015 at 9:56

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I am also having the same issue on my Chromecast. Some 24p and 25p videos are 
almost unwatchable. I really think Google should fix this bug without users 
having to complain for so many months! I mean for a company that is trying to 
be a leader in innovation and development a simple problem like this should be 
a no-brainer. Come on Google, I think your loyal European customers deserve 
that you take them serious and fix this problem as soon as possible.

Original comment by miran.me...@gmail.com on 4 Jun 2015 at 9:32

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Watching Band of Brothers, or anything that involves a certain amount of 
panning and movement is a real pain with all this studder! I have two 
Chromecasts myself, and have told several others to get one, but I'll demand 
money back for mine, and suggest my friends do the same, should this silly 
problem persist.
Fix. It. Google. 
Love, Europe.

Original comment by vetlem...@gmail.com on 5 Jun 2015 at 9:53

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Android dongles, you can change the settings manually, such as the 24Hz same as 
on bluray movies

Original comment by anders.l...@gmail.com on 5 Jun 2015 at 11:22

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Issue 608 has been merged into this issue.

Original comment by jonathan...@google.com on 6 Jul 2015 at 9:19

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So Fix the issue. How hard can it be? 

Original comment by sgad...@gmail.com on 7 Jul 2015 at 4:08

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This really should be fixed. Even an option to set the hdmi mode manually would 
be much better than the current situation, if Google can't develop some 
automatic detection. But this is absolutely useless. 

Original comment by dickt...@gmail.com on 10 Jul 2015 at 5:52

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Waiting for fix before buying Chromecast..

Original comment by harri.ra...@gmail.com on 14 Aug 2015 at 11:54

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Waiting for fix to get more chromecasts :) Was ready to throw the one I had in 
the bin before this got Acknowledged.

Original comment by stian.i....@gmail.com on 19 Aug 2015 at 9:16

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Definitely waiting for a fix... how I never read about this in reviews is 
beyond me! 

Original comment by vosje...@gmail.com on 2 Sep 2015 at 5:41