The AppleTV does not have a hardware deinterlacer. Apple expects the content to have been pre-deinterlaced for the native player. Third party player engines can use software to deinterlace but its quite cpu intensive. The current SoC in the AppleTV is not quite up to the task for 1080i frame doubling using motion adaptive/compensated deinterlacers.
Some streaming providers will post process 1080i to 1080p60 before streaming it to you—thus the AppleTV can display a smooth sports viewing experience.
There is a script someone shared here on the forums to have PMS use yadif send_field
yadif
Deinterlace the input video ("yadif" means "yet another deinterlacing filter").
It accepts the following parameters:
'mode'
The interlacing mode to adopt. It accepts one of the following values:
'0, send_frame'
Output one frame for each frame.
'1, send_field'
Output one frame for each field.
'2, send_frame_nospatial'
Like send_frame, but it skips the spatial interlacing check.
'3, send_field_nospatial'
Like send_field, but it skips the spatial interlacing check.
The default value is send_frame.
'parity'
@Achilles - Is there a link to more information on yadif? This seems like it would be a great topic for a Knowledge Base Article (or something similar).
My PMS uses Intel-based HW accelerated transcode, btw.
I can confirm that a Roku Stream Stick+ (3810X) can display 1080i at 60fps. The media server doesn’t do any transcoding and the Roku stick de-interlaces it just the way you’d hope.
