Get a true 4K HDR picture, with the right frame rate

The four settings that decide how your picture looks, and the one that removes judder from films.

2 min readUpdated 20 Sep 2026

mtivi plays what your service sends and passes it to the TV as cleanly as the device allows. These settings decide the rest.

Quality preference, per connection

Settings, then Playback. Wi-Fi and Ethernet have separate caps, so a box on cable can run at full quality while the same app on wifi stays a step down. Auto is right for most people.

Frame-rate matching

Films are 24 frames a second. Most TVs sit at 60. Playing one inside the other produces the small repeated stutter people call judder. Turn on Match frame rate and the TV switches to the rate of what you are watching.

If a channel goes black or the TV says no signal right after a switch, your panel probably refuses one of the rates. mtivi prefers whole rates like 60 over 59.94 for exactly this reason, but a few TVs still refuse. Turn frame-rate matching off on those.

HDR, Dolby Vision and HLG

These are detected from the stream and passed through to the TV. There is nothing to switch on. What you see depends on what your TV supports and on the stream actually carrying it, so a channel labeled 4K HDR in its name is not proof of anything.

Smooth motion

A separate toggle in Playback. It helps some panels and does nothing on others. Leave it off unless you can see a difference.

Washed out or wrong colors

That is almost always the TV’s own picture mode fighting HDR, not the stream. Check the TV’s HDMI input is set to the full or enhanced format, and compare the same channel with frame-rate matching off.

Related reading: settings for a true 4K picture.

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