I have one of the newer Now TV boxes, with (nominally) 1080p output. I only really use it for watching live football on Sky, and the picture is absolutely fine apart from one slight irritation. The football has that 'filmic' effect, so beloved of BBC producers. After a while you don't notice it as much, but it's still irritating.

Would I be right in saying that if it were possible to tweak the output to 1080i, the annoying effect would disappear? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

The problem is that the NOW TV boxes (the new black one as well as the old white one) are basically just rebadged Roku boxes originally designed for the North American market. Therefore they output a picture at 60Hz as per the television standard on the other side of the Atlantic.

Meanwhile in the UK and the rest of Europe we have a television picture standard that runs at 50Hz (or 25 frames per second). So the original source video for NOW TV content, including Sky Sports, is at 50Hz but the box is outputting it at 60Hz, via a conversion process known as 3:2 pulldown, which results in the motion judder you see.

The Chromecast device used to only output at 60Hz too, but it seems there's now an option for it to output at 50Hz - see this TV Forum thread - so this should remove the motion judder when watching 50Hz source material. However I think that if you're using the Chromecast for other services then for the best results you might need to switch it back and forth.

(Technical corrections and clarifications from others more than welcome!)

Very much doubt it would have any effect at all. If the "film effect" is applied at the production stage then nothing you can do will remove it. Short of going up to Sky HQ and hitting the video editor with a very big stick and telling him to leave it out

I would be surprised if changing from p to i output would make that much difference.

There is no 'film effect' applied in production - on Sky Sports itself the pic is fine - the filmic effect I refer to is a product of the box. I just wondered if I could perhaps sideload something that might alleviate it.

This is spot on.

There is nothing that the user can do to solve the 'filmic'/juddery picture on a Roku or NowTV box, but now as Google have found a solution for the Chromecast hopefully Roku/NowTV will be able to come up with something too.

Really the only way to 'smooth out' this issue is to have one of the newer generation Samsung or Sony TV which have a smoothing effect (adding frames) - Samsung call this feature 'Auto Motion Plus' and on the older Samsung TV's that had it the picture would be smoother on material of the same frame rate but the latest generation sets also covers the 50/60hz problem and makes anything look super smooth.

LG use Trumotion.

The live punditry from the ground on the current England cricket tour in South Africa has the film effect. Never seen that before on Sky Sports.

Hi,
I have had this problem,Solved by using the NOW TV app on an Apple Tv box,no juddering as you can configure the output to 50hz....excellent quality.

Cheers....Phil.

Does anyone know who well it works on the EE TV box, is that 50 or 60hz output for sky sports on NowTV?