[oo.viper.oo]

Sony's motion handling is only relevant for the HDMI inputs.

Why do you think so? Let me give two examples of my observation.

Input: HDMI
When I play a movie (24p) converted to 60i by legacy external player, it plays nicely, without judder on this Sony TV while it did judder on my old Samsung TV. To me it means that whatever telecine conversion the player does to get 60i out of 24p, the Sony detects it and does inverse-telecine to get back the 24p. Then it does some motion upgrade on top of this, because what I see on screen is definitely not 24p, it's much more fluent.

Input: Kodi via built-in Android
When I play a movie (24p), SoC apparently telecines it to 60p, because as discussed earlier in this thread (if I understood it properly), 60p is what Kodi runs at and there's no way how to change that. But again, I don't see any judder, which I would have to see if the content was processed by TV as 60p content. My observation is that it probably works the same way as the HDMI input, that is the TV detects telecine conversion on the SoC output, it inverts it and then it performs motion upgrade on top of that. Because if it did motion upgrade on top of telecined 60p, the result would have to judder.

[CiNcH]

Input: HDMI

Yes. Sony's are quite good at that, i.e. restoring 24p from a 60i or 60p input signal.

Input: Kodi via built-in Android
When I play a movie (24p), SoC apparently telecines it to 60p, because as discussed earlier in this thread (if I understood it properly), 60p is what Kodi runs at and there's no way how to change that.

Video decoder on the SoC outputs 24p. It is then Kodi's responsibility to render those at 60Hz. And it does quite a good job at that...

[oo.viper.oo]

Video decoder on the SoC outputs 24p. It is then Kodi's responsibility to render those at 60Hz. And it does quite a good job at that...

SoC or Kodi, it doesn't matter. From what fritsch stated earlier about time-stamping frames, it means that you have to get judder unless there's some further measure employed later in the chain to defeat judder. You have to get judder simply because 24 and 60 does not share common denominator and so some frames are repeated more times than the others with the method explained earlier by fritsch. I am highly sensitive to judder and there's no judder when I play movies via Kodi running directly in TV. This leads me to believe that there's the same logic applied for internal inputs (from Android surfaces) as there is for HDMI inputs, i.e. frames are analysed for duplicates, type of FRC used is identified and reversed and proper cadence established.

[CiNcH]

I did some tests on my notebook running at 60Hz with madVR with both, FRC enabled and disabled and the difference is not very obvious to me. I think renderers have become better over time, evenly distributing the skipping of refresh cycles over time so that it is less obvious. I can only really see the difference with dedicated samples with gradually panning objects as can be found here.

[CiNcH]

Hahaha, retested... now everything from from 60p over 50p to 24p is buttery smooth again. This TV is playing tricks on me.

[CiNcH]

OK, MotionFlow was set to Smooth this time. I need to do another controlled test with different settings. The behavior is still not always the same, depending on what was running before the test (off, Live TV, HDMI)...

What is your MotionFlow setting?

[fritsch]

Video decoder on the SoC outputs 24p. It is then Kodi's responsibility to render those at 60Hz. And it does quite a good job at that...

SoC or Kodi, it doesn't matter. From what fritsch stated earlier about time-stamping frames, it means that you have to get judder unless there's some further measure employed later in the chain to defeat judder. You have to get judder simply because 24 and 60 does not share common denominator and so some frames are repeated more times than the others with the method explained earlier by fritsch. I am highly sensitive to judder and there's no judder when I play movies via Kodi running directly in TV. This leads me to believe that there's the same logic applied for internal inputs (from Android surfaces) as there is for HDMI inputs, i.e. frames are analysed for duplicates, type of FRC used is identified and reversed and proper cadence established.

You should reread what I said and check what "Sync Playback to Display" does.

[FuN_KeY]

I tested with the refresh rate samples over here. Everything is played at 60Hz without prior frame rate conversion. Refresh rate/display mode APIs are not supported. I really lost my sensitivity for micro judder when playing 50fps @ 60Hz for example. But as I know now, it can be trained. Don't know whether this was a good idea though. If you like what you see, you should be happy .

Technologies like Sony’s ClearMotion are completely useless in this case as they don’t operate on the source video but the Android/OpenGL rendered output which is already wrong for 24/25fps @ 60Hz. A hardware FRC built into the SoC converting video to the display's refresh rate before rendering would probably be a good solution.

I just played around a bit with my Android TV Lollipop (5.1.1) based Sony TV with respect to refresh rate handling and smooth media playback...

Even with 'Adjust display refresh rate' being disabled ('Off'), 24p and 25i/50p look pretty smooth to my eyes. I assume that the hardware performs some frame rate conversion?

After enabling 'Adjust display refresh rate', no change in refresh rate seems to take place when I play different media. I also can't find any evidence inside the log that a change happens. 'System Information' always says that it is at 60Hz. At least PAL content should not play smoothly at 60Hz!?

I should be happy that everything plays smoothly. It would be interesting to know how this is achieved though. Or did I completely lose my sensitivity?

Since the TV has been updated to 6.0.1, the refresh rate API should now be supported - right?

[CiNcH]

They did not support the old refresh rate API. Marshmallow adds an API for display mode changing, but it is unknown whether Sony actually implements the API. Probably not...

[wrxtasy]

There are now numerous, modern 4K LED TV's out on the market that are using Motion Estimation and Compensation (MEMC) algorithms, with all sorts of different tech names. That are able to smooth out or eliminate completely 3:2 pulldown judder and playback varied fps video to the average consumer in a smooth manner without too much of the usual "Soap Opera" aka "Hobbit Vision" effect visible

You don't even appear to need refresh switching when these modern TV MEMC algorithms are in use.

Adding to that you now get TV backlight technologies: blinking and scanning, which also contribute to smoother fast action images.

As an example I can playback 23.976fps Netflix and 25/50fps Sports Action via the Android Live Channels TV App - which are all output at a hard selected 1080p60Hz - and I see smooth video playback when using a Xiaomi Mi Box and a 2015 4K HiSense TV that uses MEMC and blinking and scanning tech. Same smooth results with Android Marshmallow Firmware on a WeTek Hub as well.

I'm very judder and video frame rate upset - sensitive. I can spot anything amiss easily.

Video playback results with this modern, cheap, MEMC capable TV Hardware I'm using have definitely surprised me.

[CiNcH]

Seems like I totally missed this new era. First thing I always do is disabling those motion interpolators. Does not seem to be the right thing anymore. In order to get perfectly smooth 24p and 25/50 i/p, I have to set MotionFlow Smoothness to at least 4 and Film mode to either Medium or High. There is hardly any soap opera effect and I also could not detect any artifacts so far.

[FuN_KeY]

I did compare the smoothness between Kodi 17 on Android TV (Bravia 2015) & Kodi 17 on HTPC (libreelec).

On the Android TV, with high MotionFlow & Smoothness the travelings are smooth most of the time, but there are sometime hiccups like if the video needs to catch up.
On the Android TV, with lower settings the travellings have judder but no big hiccups
On the HTPC with 24p the travelling are perfect.

I tried with SW the force awakens: 25 minutes 20 seconds.