Skysports UHD channels on my TV today

[naylor2006]

@Brucemeister5 said

@naylor2006 The only thing that I know for sure is that when we discussed the amazing PQ on that Porto V Arsenal match at the beginning of March, the speeds that you were quoting were way beyond anything that our FTTC connection was capable of delivering. Yet it’s still the best I’ve ever seen on any match to this day.

If anyone deserves to be fast tracked onto that trial, it’s you! The downside being that you’d then be subject to a NDA.

So although the size of my numbers have been somewhat unexplainable, during that game the TNT HDR channel was a whole 10Mbps higher than normal which was clearly translated into what I perceived was a nicer image quality. On that evening it was 70Mbps when usually I see 60Mbps.

There is a correlation between HD FULL HD and UHD….just seems my numbers start so much higher 🤔

[Midnight_Voice]

@naylor2006 

HD is Full HD - maybe you meant HD Ready?

[naylor2006]

@stereohaven said:

@naylor2006wrote:

I have accurately monitored for my own curiosity.

Yes, justfound the thread, you are getting "Sky Sports HD at 40Mbps" according to your research, which even Sky doesn't deliver to it's own hardware via it's own network.

I appreciate you think you are correct, I just don't believe you are and that there must be a flaw in your monitoring or something has changed as you suggest for those on a FTTP connection.

The question you have to ask is why would BT/EE deliver a multicast stream of a channel at 4 x the bandwidth of anywhere else? The picture isn't getting any better than source! 

Multicast at the point of delivery (unless MAUD is already active), is fixed bandwidth around 10Mbps for HD and 35 for UHD HDR. If anything, that number is going to drop as they improve encoding.

——————————————

Didnt have a chance to actually look at the thread you were linking earlier, I should have looked as it wasnt the post I was talking about, those numbers I think I was writing from memory, it was on another occasion I actually looked at a few channels in isolation and the numbers were from (Solved: TNT Sports “Ultimate” - BT Community)

This was a post by a user continuingly claiming TNT Sports Ultimate was "1080p at best" and the HDR was rubbish....

Anyway, the numbers in an isolated test were: (Back in April 2024)

BBCHD 18.3Mbps
ITVHD 14.7Mbps
Channel4HD 14.7Mbps
TNT Sports 1 HD 18.3Mbps
Sky Sports Main Event HD 21.3Mbps
TNT Sports Ultimate HDR 57.6Mbps

Now, yes I know these are all up for debate and are way too high by what the industry is saying, but none the less a correlation is seen between the channels staged in the quality, also noting that ITV and C4 were exactly the same along with BBCHD and TNT Sports 1 HD, then Sky Sports Main Event HD (Boost) and TNT Sports are at the high end. With such specific numbers which were the same across different tests I became to 'believe' they were correct, ITVHD wasnt 14.5 one day then 14.7 the next, in fact I do still think they are correct from a staging point of view, its just they are maybe a consistent percentage too high. The numbers might be more 'believable' of it wasnt for TNT Ultimate being so crazy high, but then its the only UHD channel with HDR of those posted. What will be interesting is to see what throughput is there for the new Sky Sports UHD channel when I can test it on the box.

Just wanted to make sure that you have the correct incorrect information.

@Midnight_Voice Us brits love to split hairs dont we..... HD Ready really is an odd term used to describe a resolution and I dont use it, yes I know what it means but when I say HD and Full HD im am referring to the difference between say ITVHD and NowTV Boost.

[NigelB72]

@naylor2006 IIRC HD Ready was marketing term used at the beginning of HD TV and flat screens to confuse people into buying Flat Screen TV's with a low resolution and refresh rate for a stupidly high amount of cash. It only took a few months for people to realise they'd been duped and HD Ready didn't actually mean it was full HD (1080p) and also didn't actually come with HDMI ports. Most of these "HD Ready" TV's were pushed out by the budget brands such as Bush, Pacific etc and the quality of them was pretty appalling. 

My friends friend had a LCD Pacific 32" HD Ready tv and the quality was so bad that even watching a DVD was nigh on impossible due to the low refresh refresh rate and 720i resolution... 

She thought it was the dogs gonads though 🤣

[naylor2006]

@NigelB72 oh yeah, dont get me wrong, I remember what that term was used for, dont let my username fool you, im nearly 40, infact I am in November. As much as I never bought a HD Ready TV I did end up buying a Sony 4K TV pre HDR, not long after 4K tv's started hitting the market. I felt stupid with HDR came out and was actually the next big thing...being left with a 4K TV with really next to no content or market....and some very grey looking 4K blurays 🙂

I think @Midnight_Voice was indeed pointing out that I should have written HD Ready, HD, UHD, but I do not recognise HD Ready as a resolution, it was just a term used in the method you state which ended up being used to describe 720....nowa days I just tend to refer to the 720 and 1080i as HD, 1080p as FHD etc....but really none of that matters anymore as often we are just talking about SD, HD or UHD....and also QHD as I have a 1440p gaming monitor. I only really wrote it the way I did to try and convey an increasing quality.

[stereohaven]

Look, I don’t want to get bogged down in this @naylor2006 , I just want to be clear, unless someone from BT/EE tells me differently (because they have said this many times before):

1. A HD channel delivered via Multicast to a Pro Box is a fixed 10 Mbps
2. A UHD channel delivered via Multicast to a Pro Box is a fixed 35 Mbps (or 30, I can’t remember exactly)

There is no adaptive streaming for Multicast channels, which is why you either get it or not. This isn’t an “industry” thing, it is just how this kit works currently.

Unless something changes, this is how the Sky Sports channels work now and when UHD is added, we just don’t know the fixed bitrate yet. Those on the trial might, but they have an NDA.

Only a few of us even care what the bitrate is, but whatever you think your kit is telling you, it is incorrect.

[naylor2006]

@stereohaven you have completely missed the point of my follow up post.

With that said now, I won’t post about it again because I’m beginning to look stupid.

[NigelB72]

Being HD or UHD has absolutely nothing to do with bandwidth. HD and UHD are just colloquial terms for resolution. 

You can broadcast/distribute HD and UHD on quite efficient bandwidths but quality will suffer regardless of compression quality. A good example of this is he Blu-ray.  1080p Blu-ray will pull data at around 40mpbs and UHD Blu-ray will pull data at around 140mbps. The difference between UHD Blu-ray and digital distribution is ridiculous in the difference. 

[naylor2006]

I know that, but was just using the terms to illustrate image quality in my original post but it’s all got lost in translation.

Like I said, it’s best I don’t take this further down the same thread, it’s not helping anyone.

[NigelB72]

@naylor2006 sorry I was aiming my rebuttal at the other chap. I get what you were on about 👌🏻