Heads Up UK folks, refurb Apple TV 2 in stock.

[peterjcat]

Yeah I found another TV that (1) does 50Hz and 60Hz and (2) displays what it's doing, and I can't for the life of me get it to do 50Hz. Tried factory resets, various firmwares, different iTunes accounts etc.

 

[gazpilot]

Just tried playing the descent 2 on both tv's. Downstairs 720p 50hz, upstairs 720p 60 hz. No discernible difference in PQ. FYi downstairs a sony upstairs a samsung.

 

[peterjcat]

Yeah the problem can be pretty subtle... it's a bit annoying that this is out of our control, though. I thought the other day that my Panasonic might be doing 50Hz as I was getting stutter with 24fps stuff -- my Samsung is definitely doing 60Hz and can't be budged.

I think the ability to choose 50/60Hz only came to the ATV1 in a later firmware so hopefully it'll be added to the ATV2 too (ideally, along with the ability to choose 1080p/24 output if the chip is capable of it).

 

[PilotWoo]

I've been doing a lot of reading around this issue, in particular similar issues with other devices.

The conclusion I have come too is that my Samsung LE40R87BD is capable of displaying PAL60. So it looks like the AppleTV is sensing the maximum refresh rate possible by my TV and defaulting to that. Until Apple make the mode selectable like the old AppleTV, then the only option seems to be switching off PAL60 in the TV settings. The only problem with this is you can't! However I have found the hidden service menu which has lots of additional options, and I am going to wade through to see if I can find anything relevant. I will post anything I find.

Thanks everyone for posting their experiences.