Microsoft may have scored a win with the Xbox One by beating the PS4 to market in this country, but the console appears to be clashing with a major UK and European TV standard.
Users in this country have reported experiencing technical troubles when watching TV footage through the Xbox One. The console allows you to feed an external TV box from the likes of Sky and BT through it, but there’s a problem.
As reported by CVG and HDTVtest, feeding your TV signal through the Xbox One in this way can cause a juddering picture on TV sets. This is down to the UK broadcast standard differing from its US equivalent.
While the Xbox One defaults to a 60hz refresh rate, in keeping with its American origins, UK TV signals output at 50hz. This means that any UK or European TV signal pushed through the Xbox One will cause some frames to be skipped via the frame rate conversion (FRC) process.
The result is a picture that’s viewable, but with the odd dose of juddering.
There is a workaround solution, but it’s hardly elegant. There’s no in-built control to force your Xbox One to operate at 50hz, so you have to trick it to do so.
Go to the Xbox One display settings menu and make the console auto-detect your HDMI connection. Now change the 1080p resolution to 720p. When it asks you if the screen is displaying correctly, click ‘No.’ The signal should revert to 1080p, but this time with a 50hz refresh rate.
Hopefully Microsoft will come up with a quick way to set this option permanently in a future update.
Next, read our Xbox One vs PS4 comparison.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
