harshness- has technology in broadcast caught up to h265 compression in real time yet? h265 has considerable improvement in compression artifacts but I know it takes much longer to render even on my rather heavy duty computer.
Cord Cutting - which box? Some comparisons
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ATSC 3.0 (aka Next Gen TV) will be h.265 (at least initially) but what is available to us today, DTV, is mostly MPEG2 with a few AVC stations. AVC isn't that popular perhaps because it was added as an option some years after the DTV transition. Most TVs and tuners built much prior to 2010 probably don't support AVC compression.
My point was that once you've added some subchannels, the quality starts a not-so-gentle decline.
Because digital television multiplexes everything in real time, there's no way to compress the content in advance. It is possible to do some processing magic to make it survive the trip better but lossy is lossy and the thinner you spread your bandwidth out, the more the quality suffers.
I did some careful examination of picture quality on the Fubo TV channels and the quality is lower than my Dish VIP722K on FoxNews, CNN, and CNBC. The image is noticeably softer on a 105" screen. Plus the video has a tiny judder on right to left text crawl such as the stock ticker on CNBC. The features are great including commercial skip and better than I expected, but disappointed in the quality. The DVR image is the same as the live TV so it has to do with their transmission compression.
My Fubo TV resides on the Apple TV 4K hardware that was set to output 4K 30p. I may experiment next with 1080 60p to see if that helps the judder. I have Showtime, Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime and those all look great with the 4K settings. Note- Disney+ still has to have HDR off to see some of the movies. I observe they are fixing them slowly as some that I could not see with HDR are now coming through.
The Tivo Edge, on local channels all looks better than Dish OTA channels. I don't have the Dish satellite locals as they were soft image like the FuboTV. Several years ago I called Dish and they allowed me to drop the Locals since I didn't need them.
My Fubo TV resides on the Apple TV 4K hardware that was set to output 4K 30p. I may experiment next with 1080 60p to see if that helps the judder. I have Showtime, Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime and those all look great with the 4K settings. Note- Disney+ still has to have HDR off to see some of the movies. I observe they are fixing them slowly as some that I could not see with HDR are now coming through.
The Tivo Edge, on local channels all looks better than Dish OTA channels. I don't have the Dish satellite locals as they were soft image like the FuboTV. Several years ago I called Dish and they allowed me to drop the Locals since I didn't need them.
- Nov 29, 2003
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Try You Tube TV, it was the best looking of all the live TV Services when I had it ( and I tried them all), DVR is 9 months if you do not get to a show quick enough and if I remember corrected everything is in 1080P/60.
Without knowing what channels you want, try Philo, only $20, the only downside is no news or sports if you want that.
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I DVR just about everything to watch on my time, however, as soon as I watch I delete it. The Dish DVR only had 55 hours of HD so I only dvr'd 2 episodes of the financial channels and 5 episodes of the History channel programs. I'm used to that practice. If a CNBC program is older than 2 days it is not important anyway.
I looked at quite a few but I don't recall YouTube TV having DVR capability commercials were mandated. Is that correct? It was just Live TV. For some reason I read the specs and moved on. I do use regular You Tube and have my own channel mostly for specialty travel videos and 3D VR3D and 2D productions. I don't monetize any of it because if you don't you have more freedom of content.
I looked at quite a few but I don't recall YouTube TV having DVR capability commercials were mandated. Is that correct? It was just Live TV. For some reason I read the specs and moved on. I do use regular You Tube and have my own channel mostly for specialty travel videos and 3D VR3D and 2D productions. I don't monetize any of it because if you don't you have more freedom of content.
That is incorrect. YoutubeTV has an unlimited DVR and keeps everything for 9 months then the oldest files fall off. Previously, CBS, CW and Pop were locked to VOD. Once VOD expired then dvr files were opened, but that was recently changed and you can dvr all channels available.
No History Channel. But a lot of YTTV subs add Philo for History, A&E, Comedy Central, etc. On the other hand, YouTube TV carries the full suite of ABC/Disney/ESPN channels, which of course Fubo does not.
Considering the programming packages alone, Fubo would be my choice. It offers some of the more obscure sports channels that I really enjoy -- MAV TV, World Fishing Network and beIN Sports (soccer and motorcycle road racing). PAC12 is kind of expensive but there aren't many services that offer NBC Sports NW (Portland Trailblazers stranglehold) outside of Comca$t.
History, while certainly not what it once was, should be part of any comprehensive package. I suspect that subscribing to a Disney bundle (possibly through another service) for their suites may be the long-term preference.
I think the key to finding the best service(s) for a household is to use one of the package assembly websites and build a must-see list. Examples I like are:
Compare Channels, Shows, & Sports on Top Live TV Streaming Services
The most powerful tool to find the Best Live TV Streaming Service for you. Tell us the channels, shows, and teams you to watch. The Matchmaker will tell you if AT&T TV, fuboTV, Hulu Live TV, Philo, Sling TV, and YouTube TV is the best live streaming service for you. Find your perfect service and...
thestreamable.com
Suppose... you could design your perfect TV service
Suppose lets you select your favorite TV channels, searches billions of combinations of cable, satellite and streaming TV services, and finds the best for you.
www.suppose.tv
Of course as I hinted earlier, the channels carried aren't necessarily equal to the channels carried well. If the quality is poor, the service doesn't support automatic commercial skipping or the DVR stinks, those must be factored into the "needs".
Each time I do a needs list, the list gets shorter.
I don't care what it once was. I care if it offers something I enjoy now so I want to have access to it with DVR and commercial skip features. This is about cord cutting so the bare minimum if to find what equals my expensive Dish Network for less monthly cost.
This afternoon I solved this problem. It is an issue with Apple TV 4k, not Fubo TV.
Setting the Apple TV 4k to 1080 60p first for all original television channels that do 1080 i or p was a good move. It seems ATV 4K does not do well with it's upconversion of HD to UHD. But setting ATV 4K to 1080 60p and then letting my Sony Projector do the upconversion to 4K first solved the judder problem. In the projector, I can set motion flow to Impulse or High Frame Rate Smoothing and also Reality Creation, which is what Sony calls it's HD to 4K upconverter. These features are far superior to any Low end TV or device upconverter that usually just adds pixel duplicates rather than interpolates new pixels based on surrounding pixels. That also adds the number of colors and eliminates any color banding. But these features were only available in the medium priced projectors and higher. You do get what you pay for!
Anyway, the picture quality of Fubo TV on Fox News and CNBC recordings are now better looking than what I had on the Dish Network VIP722K which I was always pleased with. The key difference is Dish VIP 722K still suffered from a bit of chroma noise, while the ATV4K is noise free or undetectable in the most saturated colors.
The down side of this is I'm not sure how to make the change in ATV4K settings automatic. So for now I have to reset the settings manually depending on the show I recorded.
At least this is not a quality issue with Fubo TV. It was in my settings.
Everyone of course has different viewing priorities, but at this time there is no "Disney bundle" you could subscribe to that will give you everything on the linear ABC, Disney, and ESPN channels, especially the later. ESPN+ does not give you access to content on the linear ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU channels -- so no college football bowl games this week or other marquee matchups in various pro and college sports during the course of the year.
Don. Some channels on Fubo tv are still 30fps. Here’s a list that are currently 60fps.
What Channels on fuboTV are in 60 FPS?
Not every service offers every channel in 60 FPS. We show you which channels and on which devices you can stream at the higher frame rate on fuboTV.
thestreamable.com
It seems likely that this is coming and that's why I prefaced it with "long-term". They're perhaps half way there now with their Disney+ - Hulu - ESPN+ bundle.
They can't be happy about Fubo eating a good portion of their lunch.
- Nov 29, 2003
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Please
, the last reported numbers for FuboTV was 250,000 subscribers, not enough to even come close to Disney caring about it.
FuboTV Says Platform Usage Was Up 200% in Q2
While it didn’t offer an update on its paid subscriber count, which it said reached 250,000 in the third quarter of last year, virtual pay TV provider FuboTV said its overall engagement is way up.
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- Nov 29, 2003
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Well since Fubo is a Live TV service, you would have to compare it to YTTV, Hulu live, etc all of which carries ESPN, plus all the Traditional Providers, hence why I doubt Disney cares if Fubo carries them or not.
If you are comparing it to ESPN+, last reported numbers was 2 million subscribers.
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The biggest advantage AppleTV has is it's integration into the entire Apple infrastructure. Other than that I don't know if Nvidia Shield has similar features. My daughter has had ATV for several years and claims it is much better than Roku. Prior to buying the Apple TV I just used the apps on my Blu ray Player.
FWIW- I love my nvidia graphics card and have made some nice profits this year in their stock, but that goes for AMD as well.
I'm not really a brand guy. If it works as claimed then I feel I did OK.
For me the biggest problem with Apple is that they are a closed system and in my opinion, expensive. But they do have Sunday Ticket that I am not sure is available at all on Android. Fortunately, I have a friend that brings his Apple Box if needed. Plugs right into the AVR's front HDMI port.
Nvidia stock. Always buy their graphics cards for the PC's I've built but I their think stock has been a little week compared to Amazon, Netflix, and others.
I have Roku with three or four boxes in the drawers. Do have a 4k stick plugged into my AVR but don't like it much.
What I most like about the Shield is that if it is advertised with Atmos and/or Vision the AVR and TV will verify it's playing.
So for those in the Android ecosystem, the Shield Pro 2019 is pretty solid, expandable, and capable.
Question? I have the Apple TV app on a Cube and th e Roku stick. Can one subscribe to Sunday Ticket through that?
I suspect Fubo will be the next live TV streaming service to go under. Their low numbers and lack of growth isn't any more sustainable than PS Vue's proved to be.
Speaking of eating someone's lunch, YouTube TV outbid all others for PS Vue's customer data (est. 500,000 accounts), and the final emails from PS Vue to all remaining customers about the impending shutdown recommended they switch to YouTube TV.
The Disney-Hulu-ESPN bundle is a great offering, but I don't think we'll see all the content on ESPN's linear channels available in a standalone streaming service for anything resembling a reasonable price anytime soon, not as long as cable TV still exists in its present form. Such an offering would represent a massive sea-change in the OTT landscape that would likely accompany death-knell of traditional pay TV as we know it. Not to mention, there are probably a lot of long-term contracts in place with the various sports leagues and cable operators that prevent that from happening. Heck, there isn't even a standalone RedZone yet due to prior contractual obligations.
I've found that the live content on Fubo is mostly film-look -- it lacks contrast and the motion is not well handled. Live programming doesn't look like live TV.
I did an A-B comparison between the Roku setup and a Hopper w/Sling using an Onkyo AVR to do the switching. The Hopper is much better with live content and navigation is much quicker.
Test bed: Roku 3 with a 14 year old 61" JVC LCoS RPTV.
The Fubo demand content is very good and some of it has had the commercials removed.
I hope to do an A-B comparison on a Fire TV 4K today that seems to a better job with poorly compressed content.
I think you can agree that ESPN probably wants badly to go direct as soon as their carriage agreements start falling away.
