TNT SPORTS Terrible Picture Quality | May 2024

[rbz5416]

@Sim1988 

Just out of curiosity, is your TV connected to WiFi or ethernet?

Given we're obviously not going to get any help from either Samsung or Discovery, some experimentation may be worthwhile.

[Sim1988]

I’m connected through wifi. It’s definitely not a hardware issue though, as it was working fine until May, so it’s something technical/software that’s changed. P

[rbz5416]

Mine's on WiFi too so I may try ethernet for tomorrow's game.

We know that the stream is OK because it works on other devices. So it seems that somehow the bandwidth available to the TV app is being restricted or the app can't make use of what's available. The way it fails over time would be fairly typical of a memory leak, where temporary usage isn't released & so runs out. So rather than running out of bandwidth maybe it's actually running out of buffer memory.

I might also see if I can persuade Samsung to roll the software back to 1310 & see if that solves it.

[Sim1988]

Interesting insight! I’d say it’s most likely the app not making full use of what’s available. If you check trustpilot there are tonnes of reviews and a lot reference the app on LG televisions which leads me to think the Samsung software isn’t the culprit. Another interesting thing I’ve found is during Olympics I could live stream every sport for several hours without any decline in picture quality, however streaming the football led to the same issues we’re having here. I have no idea why a live football stream should behave any differently to another other live sport streams.

[jaykay2]

I'm using an Nvidia shield pro to feed the LG TV, speedway coverage is perfect, but the football is dire buffering all the time, I sometimes quickly switch it over to YouTube and select a 4K HDR video and there's no problem, back to the football and buffering again, we shall see tomorrow lunchtime when the premier league starts 

[rbz5416]

Just watched an hour of Moto GP practice followed by an hour of test cricket, both live on TNT. Not so much as a hiccup of either. So again points to something unique to football, the most obvious being UHD/HDR.

[rbz5416]

Response from Discovery after I prompted  them about the case I raised in May:

After checking with the provided information and with all my resources, I would like to inform you that our team is still working on this issue. I request you to please allow us some time to fix this issue and please be assured we will get back to you via email with an update once the issue gets resolved.

🙄

[jaykay2]

So, will they drop the monthly payment until it is fixed? Very much doubt it 

[gomezz]

The other obvious check is to try using an ethernet connection instead of wi-fi when you are seeing this issue. Could be some gadget or appliance in use only at certain times causing degradation of the wi-fi signal.

[rbz5416]

@gomezz 

As per my earlier post, I'm going to try that today, but can only do it from a mesh node rather than direct to the router. So won't eliminate WiFi in general but will eliminate an issue with the TV's WiFi.

But a general WiFi issue is extremely unlikely given that only the Discovery+ app is affected, only on the TV & apparently, only with live football. Also Discovery seem to acknowledge there's an issue but can't/won't fix it.