Watching European 50Hz TV on 60Hz Laptop Screen

I have two laptops which both have 60Hz only screens
- HP Envy x360 Laptop 13 with Samsung OLED Screen
- Lenovo ThinkPad P16s with IPS Screen
Whenever I watch European TV through my provider's app (Swisscom, Sunrise), there is considerable jitter (obviously, as a 50Hz signal is being forced to 60Hz).
I am wondering whether the relatively powerful graphics hardware in todays laptops can be forced to smoothly convert the 50Hz stream to 60Hz.
Playing through HDMI to a 50Hz capable monitor works, but I would like to be able to watch on the laptop standalone.

Win 11 22H2 build 22621.1992 on both machines

Try changing your Laptop monitor resolution to 50Hz.
Open Settings, then go to System > Display > Advanced display.
You should see Choose a refresh rate option in there.
Click the drop-down list to see if there is a 50Hz available.

Bizarre said:

Try changing your Laptop monitor resolution to 50Hz.

Click to expand...

Thanks, unfortunately there is no 50Hz option available. The app 12noon Display Changer only lists 60Hz as available rates for the screen. Laptop screens with changeable display rates are few and far between. That's why I am looking for the graphics adapter to do the conversion from 50Hz to 60Hz.

How do you watch the channels? Are you using some tuner? Are you watching from your browser? Your browser should be able to seamlessly convert any refresh rate (or fps) to 60Hz for smooth video. Try a different browser. What graphics card do you have? If there is no 50Hz mode available maybe you can add it as a custom resolution. First check if there is already a 50Hz mode, go to Settings, System, Display, Advanced display options. Check the monitor tab. If there is a box checked "Hide modes not supported by my display" uncheck it to get access to all modes. Then go back to the first tab and click "List all Modes" See if your resolution (for example 1280x720) as a 50Hz entry in the list. If it does, select it to switch to the same resolution at 50Hz. Test your channels. If there is no 50Hz option, you must go to Intel Graphics Properties or nVidia Control Panel or Catalyst Control Center (depending on your graphics adapter) and go to screen (monitor) section, custom resolutions. You must add your resolution (such as 1280x720) with 50Hz as the refresh rate. If you successfully add it, switch to it.

jacobacci said:

Thanks, unfortunately there is no 50Hz option available. The app 12noon Display Changer only lists 60Hz as available rates for the screen. Laptop screens with changeable display rates are few and far between. That's why I am looking for the graphics adapter to do the conversion from 50Hz to 60Hz.

Click to expand...

"Conversion" usually consists of the graphics card inserting dummy or duplicate frames into the output. The maximum visible flicker rate is said to be about 30 Hz, therefore the insertion of frames should be invisible to the user. If that is the case, then maybe there is another reason for your screen flicker?

Just in case this is due to hardware acceleration (your card doesn't work properly with acceleration on), try switching off hardware acceleration from your browser settings. Again this should not happen. Try another browser. Most videos on YouTube or elsewhere are either 30Hz or 60Hz. If conversion was an issue all here in Europe would not be able to watch any video properly! So this is not the case. It must be something else. If you can select quality from settings, try a different video quality. If you set quality too high and you don't have a fast internet connection, video can pause or stutter (flicker). Try a lower quality setting.

Or try switching Anti-aliasing off via the graphics driver software.

thanks everyone. My display adapter is AMD, but the utility does not offer any other refresh rates than 60Hz. I tried setting up a custom resolution with CRU. It allowed me to create a 50Hz profile. But choosing the profile resulted in a black screen. So my screen really seems to be limited to 60Hz.
What did do the job, was the suggestion to use a browser and not the Sunrise Windows app. Firefox does the adaptation very smoothly and I really can't complain about the result. Thanks @spapakons for pointing me in that direction.

I have this problem. Are you sure it is a 50/60Hz issue? Here in the UK, all standard TV is PAL 25fps. Our AC power supply in the UK is 50Hz.

I enjoy cab view train journeys which is very prone to judder but I think it is more down to frame rates than Hz. If the recording was made at 60fps the video is as smooth as silk on my PC Monitor. but if the frame rate is 25 or 30fps, it is judders badly.

However, if I play the same 25fps or 30fps video through my home Panasonic TV (file sharing), the TV copes with the video very well and I don't see any judder. Obviously a proper TV has circuitry to adjust the video image where a PC monitor doesn't.

In saying this, years ago, on some PC monitors I remember you could tell the monitor which country you lived in and switch it to either 50Hz for UK or 60Hz. I haven't seen that available on anything in recent years but maybe with LED or OLED it doesn't apply any more. I seem to remember that if you set it to the wrong setting you got a slight flicker in the picture, not judder.

I wonder how a more expensive monitor with 240+ refresh rate would cope with 25fps. I wish there was an answer for us Brits.

thecaretaker said:

I wonder how a more expensive monitor with 240+ refresh rate would cope with 25fps. I wish there was an answer for us Brits.

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Not at all sure whether currently TV in the UK is 25Hz. 625 lines - Wikipedia 25i seems to have been used waaay back. Today I would guess that everywhere in Europe 50Hz is being used.
The issue is the monitor which can only display 60Hz. In that case some other part of the signal chain has to convert the native 50Hz signal to 60Hz. In my case Firefox is doing quite a good job at this.
If you want really smooth playback for all streaming signals, find a monitor that caters for 24, 50 and 60 Hz. See the specs for the monitor. The supported frame rates are usually listed there in detail. No need to go all the way to 240Hz.

It is not the hardware, it is the software. Obviously the media player you are using has some wrong settings and doesn't play these videos properly. See if you can adjust the settings to improve. In Media Player Classic, for example, you have many different video renderers. Choosing the wrong renderer or having incorrect settings can make the video stutter or look bad due to incorrect scaling. In worst case try a different media player. I already mentioned Media Player Classic (part of K-Lite codec pack but can also be downloaded separately). Another popular player is VLC, but I don't like the fact that there are no codecs you an use in other applications such as VirtualDub for video editing. Whereas if you install K-Lite codec pack you get MPC plus many codecs to work with.

spapakons said:

It is not the hardware, it is the software. Obviously the media player you are using has some wrong settings and doesn't play these videos properly. See if you can adjust the settings to improve. In Media Player Classic, for example, you have many different video renderers. Choosing the wrong renderer or having incorrect settings can make the video stutter or look bad due to incorrect scaling. In worst case try a different media player. I already mentioned Media Player Classic (part of K-Lite codec pack but can also be downloaded separately). Another popular player is VLC, but I don't like the fact that there are no codecs you an use in other applications such as VirtualDub for video editing. Whereas if you install K-Lite codec pack you get MPC plus many codecs to work with.

Click to expand...

Hi there
TV in Europe is now almost exclusively transmitted by digital - whether via satellite, cable or terrestial TV stations. Modern LCD screens don't have a problem any more with things like PAL, SECAM, NTSC.

VLC will just play almost any codec thrown at it. The only problem you might get is if the frequency setting in the monitor is not appropriate for the signal being received - but usually the setting is pretty automatic. If you have a monitor with a hardware setup menu (i.e from outside windows) simply select "auto resize" or just choose best options.

Not sure what software you are using - but I should think almost any media player will have things like mp4, m4a, flac, mkv, mp3 as standard.

Cheers
jimbo

You might enjoy Pot Player.



I've been using it for at least ten years.

jacobacci said:

Not at all sure whether currently TV in the UK is 25Hz. 625 lines - Wikipedia 25i seems to have been used waaay back. Today I would guess that everywhere in Europe 50Hz is being used.
The issue is the monitor which can only display 60Hz. In that case some other part of the signal chain has to convert the native 50Hz signal to 60Hz. In my case Firefox is doing quite a good job at this.
If you want really smooth playback for all streaming signals, find a monitor that caters for 24, 50 and 60 Hz. See the specs for the monitor. The supported frame rates are usually listed there in detail. No need to go all the way to 240Hz.

Click to expand...

25fps not 25Hz. I use JRiver Media Player and that uses MADVR which does help with low frame rates, but still nowhere as good as watching the same files on my main TV.

It is a known issue and a project is trying to make a software to counteract it. SmoothVideo Project

SVP says "SVP uses the same frame interpolation technique as available in high-end TVs and projectors (see “TrimensionDNM”, “Motion Plus”, “Motionflow” and others). Newest NVIDIA DLSS3 is another example of this technology. It increases the frame rate by generating intermediate frames between existing ones in order to produce very smooth, fluid and clear motion.

Something it wrong with your system. All these years (from Windows 95 up to 11) I never had any issue playing 25fps or30fps videos on my computers. The hardware doesn't have to do anything with what you describe. Apparently your media player doesn't display properly the video on your screen for some reason. Check all the video settings or try another player. Any video from 5fps up to 60fps and anything between should play fine on a PC, provided it has the required power to play 60fps or it will stutter.