Premium TV - Video Quality

[ACraigo]

Re Phase 2, HEVC/h.265 will break all my clients so I'm not excited for that 'improvement'. Much prefer staying with h.264

That little detail is something some folks aren't too worried about, and other folks are going to be worried about - after the firestorm strikes.

HEVC will break plenty of clients in my world too - and I expect a whole lot of others.

I guess we'll all be blowing up that bridge when we come to it.

[tpm]

What we're at right now is the best we're going to be able to do in phase 1 because we're hitting the limits of the quality of source we receive. Phase 2 gives us a much higher quality source, and that alone will make a huge difference even if nothing else is changed.

Good news is no one in the family complains about PTV, at all! Working perfect with SageTV. 2 x duals and a new Quattro for 8 tuners. Maybe a couple hours to setup including figuring out OpenDCT.


Re Phase 2, HEVC/h.265 will break all my clients so I'm not excited for that 'improvement'. Much prefer staying with h.264

It doesn't sound like stage 1 is being removed when stage 2 goes live. So it won't hurt you, and will help others.

[nickk]

We are testing h264 options for stage 2 as well.

[Cayars]

We are testing h264 options for stage 2 as well.

Are you thinking of dual lineups where you can choose for each channel which to use?

[CHASUT]

I am currently watching a game on ESPN and it looks awful. The picture is not sharp at all, motion is "jerky", and the grass is just a mush of muddled green blocks. The thing is, i was watching a different football game (NFL) earlier in the week and the picture was very good. It was sharp, the grass/turf was clear, and other than some motion artifacts was a good enough for casual viewing.

Curious if others are seeing the same.

Very much looking forward to phase II.

Thanks

[editingfx]

Watching various channels on Premium, and find encoding quality will go from very good quality (no stutter, no buffering, no artifacts) to horrible (a couple seconds of severe macroblocking, freeze, no audio, etc).

Watching via a Fire stick running the HDHR app.

[rocky4546]

I am running TVHeadEnd on a Intel NUC which gives me a ton of configurations for DVR. I initially was recording OTA channels with matroska (mp4) and that was working great. I turned on Premium TV and found the quality was more like 480 and it showed flickering/studdering. I found that using pass-through allowed the 720p stream quality to come through, so any re-encoding should be avoided. This stored the file as a *.ts file, instead of *.mp4. Currently, I am still getting 1-2 pixelations per hour on Premium TV with 0 on the OTA channels. This pixelation is captured by the TVHeadEnd metadata for the recording. I have 3 TVHeadEnd devices and tried them all. They all give the same results.

I have Spectrum 100Mbps and my Asus router does not have any QOS enabled. My total usage download rates rarely use 20% of my bandwidth. I have tried running on WiFi-N 300Mbps and WiFi-AC at 800Mbps to the NUC. Both show the same results. Premium TV Bit data rates are 1700-1800 kbps which is OK, but higher data rates would provide a better picture during video motion. I recommend 3000 kbps or higher. My OTA bit data rates are 24,000 kbps and HDHomeRun keeps up with that just fine.

I am very excited about the Stage 2 upgrade. Many have asked for more FPS or 1080, but reality is I would like to just not down-scale and have better bit rates. If SD gets 60 FPS for sports, it would be nice to send it on to the consumer. Most channels should be 1080 with 24FPS, so 24FPS with 1080 should be provided with a decent bit rate.

[nickk]

Premium TV Bit data rates are 1700-1800 kbps which is OK, but higher data rates would provide a better picture during video motion.

The video encoding is set to maintain constant quality (rate factor) with a limit of 4Mbps. There is no target bitrate - the encoder is free to sit at 4Mbps if it would be beneficial.

When you see 1.7-1.8Mbps it means that there is nothing to be gained by adding more bits.

Where you see lower quality during high motion it is primarily due to the source we are getting rather than our encoding. The big change we are working on (Stage 2) is to encode directly from the network feed to improve picture quality under high motion.

Nick

[ycavan]

Currently watching the Iowa/Maryland game on ESPN2 & the picture is really sharp & not seeing much jerkiness at all during high activity moments. North Liberty, Ia. Mediacom.

[pixelstuff]

Premium TV Bit data rates are 1700-1800 kbps which is OK, but higher data rates would provide a better picture during video motion.

The video encoding is set to maintain constant quality (rate factor) with a limit of 4Mbps. There is no target bitrate - the encoder is free to sit at 4Mbps if it would be beneficial.

When you see 1.7-1.8Mbps it means that there is nothing to be gained by adding more bits.

Where you see lower quality during high motion it is primarily due to the source we are getting rather than our encoding. The big change we are working on (Stage 2) is to encode directly from the network feed to improve picture quality under high motion.

Nick

How do you have a bad source? Can you not just tell the provider to clean up their end the exact way you plan to clean it up in Phase 2? Or is the provider just not interested in improving things?

[clarkss12]

Been awhile since anyone commented on this thread about the video quality, so thought I would make a comment. I am guessing that SiliconDust will start distributing their Premium Channels soon, in HEVC format, since it has been a great while since they first announced it. To prepare for it, with no ** I gotchas **, I converted one of my broadcast PBS shows to HEVC to make sure it works on my media players.

I used MCEBuddy to convert from the MPEG-2 TS streams to 1080 HEVC streams and then tested my boxes. I also, converted to a very low resolution to see how it looked and played on my devices.

All my Android boxes played OK with the HEVC format, but my Windows 10 microPC's seem to be jerky. I did make a YouTube video showing my test, if anyone is interested in my findings.

[pixelstuff]

I was looking at the Hallmark Channel this weekend and noticed some deinterlacing artifacts quite a few times. That little comb pattern when someone moves left or right. I don't know if that could be fixed with a different technique or if the upstream source has it screwed up.

I know when I play OTA 1080i or 480i shows through VLC's built in deinterlacer it doesn't have obvious artifacts and if I recompress the same shows in Handbrake with a deinterlacer I also don't see artifacts.

[spencer777]

Went back to Vue for a month because it is half off. Hate to say it, but Vue's quality blows Premium tv away. Hopefully Stage 2 arrives soon.

[Zorg]

Went back to Vue for a month because it is half off. Hate to say it, but Vue's quality blows Premium tv away. Hopefully Stage 2 arrives soon.

+1. I really hope we start seeing real progress on this soon. The 2.0 thread mentions “1.5” changes engaged on CNBC with other channels in the coming week. We’re halfway through that week with zero updates. Posts of complaints of jittering and audio issues seem to be increasing lately too. Then this issue with some channels unexpectedly changing from Pacific to Eastern due to the upstream provider SNAFU yesterday. Stuff happens, I totally understand that. I work for a team that does 7-figure, multi-year software implementations all over the country; there are always hurdles to overcome. But I’ve also not observed any meaningful PQ improvements since the end of August. Just a lot of “soon”.

The deadline for me is December 6th, when the new season of Top Chef on Bravo starts. One of the few ‘cable’ shows my wife cares about, I will not take away from her enjoyment with this sub-par PQ. If PQ hasn’t improved by then, after 3 months of hope, I’m out. Life’s too short for “ok” PQ.

I love the HDHR tuners. I love the local control. I love the local OTA integration. HDP’s channel selection is the best of any OTT for my family. The support here is incredible. It’s a fantastic ecosystem. I know good people at SD are trying hard to make it better. But I need to see the PQ competitive with the other OTT’s. It’s time.

[ej_424]

Where does all this stand? I just got a Connect Quatro with Premium TV and feel the quality is horrible when comparing it to Youtube TV and even DirectvNOW.

Dark scenes are the worse, super pixelated almost embarrassing to have others watch tv at my house. I really want this to work though. I have ubiquiti network gear with full hardwired gigabit, so my network is not the issue.