Sky Sports UHD (NOW) vs TNT Sports Ultimate

[naylor2006]

Explain that first bit again?

[Kodikid]

The bias bit or the fact most if not all European broadcasters don't offer UHD.

The Europeans wouldn't dream of paying £30 to watch their local team play European football 

[naylor2006]

The bias bit and on another similar discussion some chap posted all the images form European channels showing UHD feeds when TNT wasn’t. I can’t locate it now but I still don’t get the bias point?

[Kodikid]

"Favouring the UK based team"

Having a favourite implies a bias 

I know Sky operate in Italy and I'm pretty sure most European nations have a tv subscription model,  but as a rule European football is shown on terrestrial tv in Europe

Which like our ITV dosnt broadcast in 4K

[zulu17]

I think the Host Broadcaster is required to provide  an HD stream to a certain standard that is available to the other right holders , if they provide a 4K stream that is normally for their local market but if another rights holder reaches an agreement they could use that stream.  Certainly some  matches in Europe have been in 4K ion TNT Ultimate nthe past -- It would be  an extra cost to produce and to transfer the higher bit rate internationally. Even the finals these days are not always in 4K.

[naylor2006]

Yeah you didn’t get my point, I’m not talking about bias like that.

TNT Sports Ultimate shows Premier League teams when in Europe when they are playing at home. Someone pointed this out to me when I moaned before.

Tonight for example all the Premier League teams were playing away hence no game on Ultimate.

Forest tomorrow are on Ultimate, they are at home.

So that’s the point, we have 3 giant clubs playing in the CL tonight in huge fixtures and not one was on the UHD channel, that is objectively poor.

My point about favouring the UK team was in the context of that there should always be a game on Ultimate if it is there in another TNT Sports HD channel showing it, but it would clearly need to show the UK based team, or one of them and not an French vs Germany tie etc…

Even the final wasn’t in UHD one year because no Prem team was in it, that’s bonkers.

[Popeye13_Official]

HD quality has declined even more, while the UHD quality is as awful as it was at the beginning of the season.

I spent months trying to raise this with D+ Support and they tried everything to send me round in circles before they simply stopped answering me. Its staggering how a company the size of WBD seemingly is incapable of delivering a decent standard of quality, beit HD or UHD, which both now are shocking examples for a premium subscription service!

Contrast that to Prime, or Netflix; where their HD streams for live-events are crisp, clear and look superb to the point where UHD wouldn't matter. It really isn't hard!! 

[garybs29]

@Kodikid interesting as it's in the contract uhd has to be supplied, no idea why you constantly spout rubbish on here tbh

[Kodikid]

I know

Amazed I haven't been barred yet

But until they catch up with me expect more from the font of all knowledge 

[lukef99]

Reading through this thread out of interest and thought I'd chip in as modern broadcast picture quality is somewhat of a gripe of mine. When it was BT Sport their "top tier" host broadcasts scheduled for Ultimate were produced in native 4K HDR. That's why it used to look good. A couple of seasons ago when TNT/WBD took over they stopped natively producing 4K and their main feeds were produced to 1080p HDR instead. I assume they either then upscale to 4K for playout to TNT Ultimate or just playout the 1080p and set top boxes will upscale assuming the output is set to 2160p - either way, no longer true 4K and as such lower quality. However, if you have ever seen a true native uncompressed feed, even at 1080i, you will know that it's a far cry from what you eventually see at home because everything is compressed to an inch of its life to save bandwidth and save money. (Makes you wonder why broadcasters pay stupid money for high quality production only for most of that quality to be binned by compression!) So in terms of native uncompressed quality, to a human eye 1080p vs 4K doesn't have that much difference without sitting with your nose to the screen or on a giant screen. From this perspective, the production choice to go to 1080p from 4K makes a bit more sense.

The difference however gets insanely exaggerated when you introduce compression, and the rate of which it is compressed to. That's when you would really see the difference at home between true 4K and 1080p / i in terms of picture quality, as a highly compressed 4K stream will look significantly better than its 1080p / i counterpart. I don't have any hard facts on this element but I can only assume as time has gone on, the rate of compression in various parts of the chain including final playout has increased, to either squeeze more output for the same money (or just cost cut), at the expense of picture quality - which most home viewers wouldn't even notice (apart from people like me).

I am also of the opinion that the codecs involved in internet streaming channels like BT/EE and Sky Stream are harsher and make odd/inconsistant choices, leading to what should be a solid reliable TV channel sometimes feeling like a rip off stream on the internet.  It's an ironic vicious circle because the quality of decent consumer TV's like OLEDs are going up, but the quality of the material they are being fed is going down, which is getting highlighted more by the quality of the TVs. It's a real shame but that's the world we live in now. I do feel though that these choices made by broadcasters have gone beyond a point and more people are starting to notice the drops in quality. Hopefully if enough people make noise about it things may change but I'm certainly not holding my breath.