Xbox One Causing UK Gamers Television Woes

One of the Xbox One's touted features is the ability to watch live TV while playing a game via connectivity to one's cable provider and a small video box in the bottom of the gameplay screen. For gamers in the UK, this is proving to be a buggy feature, with users reporting that streaming television through the consoles results in "juddering" pictures, something caused by refresh rate differences between the US and UK.

Under the feature, a UK gamer could, for example, connect their Sky TV through their Xbox One and watch streaming TV broadcasts. The television signal refresh rate in the UK, however, sit at 50hz, which clashes with the Xbox One's 60Hz refresh rate, the same as television in the United States. This doesn't prevent one from watching UK television on the console, hence the reason gamers can do so, but does present its own problems.

When using a 50Hz signal on the 60Hz Xbox One, some frames end up skipped through FRC — frame rate conversion — and the result is a picture that is noticeably unwell, such as jittering and other visually unpleasant things. The problem was tested by the folks at HDTV Test, and later confirmed by retailer CVG.

The obvious solution, then, would be to make the Xbox One run in a 50Hz mode, but unfortunately Microsoft didn't make any simple way to do this. Right now, users have identified a temporary solution that involves heading into the Display settings and having the Xbox auto-detect the HDMI connection. From there, the resolution has to be changed to 720p, and an answer of "no" has to be given on the confirmation page. When the Xbox goes back to 1080p, it will be in 50Hz instead of 60Hz.

SOURCE: Computer and Video Games