There is some doubt as to the exact position of the ball when captured on camera. It's only accurate to the nearest 2mm or so. While that's very accurate, once it's used to create a model, it can be dangerous. As a result there is a margin for error. Then there can be difficulty determining exactly where the ball hits the pad, especially where it brushes the front pad on the way to the second. This means that there is some doubt as to what the actual position of the ball is.
To overcome this, the ICC have ruled that more than half of the ball needs to hit the centre of the wicket. This is a user friendly option at first glance. The boundary is really clear, and the batsman needs to be clearly out in order to be given out. But near the boundaries there are occasionally situations where the ball is clearly going to hit, but instead the hawkeye system calls the ball "umpires call."
This is particularly ridiculous when the ball has hit the batsman on the back foot. In a situation where the ball has only an extra 40cm to travel, if the middle of the ball is just outside the middle of the stump then for the ball to miss the stumps, then the model would have to be out by 5.5 cm. On a distance of travel of 40cm that's allowing way too much margin for error (realistically there would be a significantly less than 1% chance of the ball missing the stumps).
A solution would be to look at a cone that was using a realistic model for the uncertainty. That would be more sensible for the commentators, fans and players to understand, and would actually provide a more sensible answer to the question "would the ball hit the stumps?"
I've put together a short video to demonstrate what I mean as well.
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