Those who watch Netflix movies or series on Android or Google TV can now enjoy their favorite shows with a much better frame rate refresh, which includes an important caveat.
In the past, I’ve also experienced that Google TV can provide the best Android TV experience with the help of affordable native hardware like Chromecast, not to mention TVs that already have such software or a custom Android TV UI by default during production.
Content Frame Rate Matching (Content Frame Rate Matching) enables matching of frame refresh rates
Switching, which became available last fall with Android 12 (Google TV) STTE.220621.019. – An update on devices capable of this, and Netflix became the first streaming service provider to support this feature in their app, allowing for much better streaming speeds.
This was first introduced by FlatPanelsHD discoverer, with Google TV Netflix v10.0.4 update in the app. This effectively means that Netflix movies or series that support higher frame rates can now be played in the same lossless format on Google TV or Android TV, the only requirement is that you’re running Android TV version 12 or higher.
Devices like the 4K Chromecast got official support for frame rate matching last year.
Of course, A FlatPanelsHD – 9to5Google also tested the feature by playing The Witcher, which supports 24,000 frames per second. However, the Arnold documentary series, for example, actually uses 23,976 frames per second, which is an older standard developed by filmmakers to get rid of 24 frames per second.
Content like the very current Tour de France: at the heart of the peloton are up to 50-60fps, which can also be viewed in the video below.
Of course, it’s worth noting that not everyone will notice this change right away, but viewers who care more about the quality of videos will definitely appreciate it, which, depending on Netflix’s massive software library, can be a serious lesson for competitors. It is worth improving the quality with similar improvements as well to force maximum service to priority viewers.
The question arises whether set-top boxes based on Android (not Google TV), such as Telekom, Yetel TV or Vodafone TV, are also being updated with such functionality. Once I get an answer, I will update the article.