I watch hockey on TSN and SN via Shaw Direct and it’s crystal clear HD .
so I would assume it’s your provider.
so I would assume it’s your provider.
TSN and Sportsnet HD video quality
Hi all,
I feel like I'm the one kid who "can see dead people" when I watch any programming on either TSN or Sportsnet, and I can't stand the low quality of the "HD". All of the people near me who subscribe to those channels seem satisfied with how it looks. The best answer I can get from them is "sit further away from your TV, you're just too close".
So I have decided to ask on here: What is your video quality like on those two networks, and how do they compare to the rest of your available HD programming? Are other TV providers having better luck keeping picture quality closer to original by the time it arrives at your box? Is there any pattern as to providers such as Rogers keeping the nicest quality for their own customers and exporting a crappy version for all the other providers use? Does TSN look best on Bell TV? I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what's happening... I'm starting to actually believe that this is "garbage in-garbage out" at the distribution-level, and that my local provider can't do anything to make it look better.
Backstory: I live in Brandon MB, and am a Westman Communications Group customer. We have the Tivo equipment ecosystem with an Arris main 6-tuner HDPVR master mob, and three "mini" slave boxes. Feed to the house is legacy hybrid fiber-coax network that's fiber to the node, and coax down the street to my house. Video quality is identical on all the TV's regardless of the box master or slave.
The main complaints I have about the video are centered around artifacts and evidence of excessive recompression (concatenation), but it's very channel-selective. Many of the channels look ... fine, but all of the TSN and Sportsnet channels are noticeably degraded. It's impossible to read any fine-print on the screen. The channel logos at the top corner of the screen have haze and blocks all around the edges. Banners and static score displays usually have hazy in-fill coloring, plus blocky artifacts along all sharp-edges. In the video-processing world, the catch-all term that describes most of what I'm seeing is "Mosquito-noise"in this Wikipedia article . It makes hockey players' faces look like lego, renders their arm numbers illegible, soccer field grass becomes a watercolor brushed mess in al but the tight shots of the field, and it makes talking-head sportball-panelists' complexion similarly watercolored.
I have one actual Smart-TV in my home, so I decided to install the official apps for TSN and Sportsnet, go through the authentication/login rigamaroll, in order to evaluate that as an option as has been suggested by those near me in the past. I can say that the Sportsnet app video quality looks significantly improved over what comes over the cable! The TSN app... not so much. It's about the same as over the cable. It's almost worthwhile for me to prefer streaming the Sportsnet content, except that the smart TV isn't the one I usually watch and is in a room that's usually in use by my kids for the video game, plus it doesn't solve my TSN quality issue at all. For the record, I have 20MBPS internet, which works really well, and everything including the Tivo boxes are wired to ethernet except for our portable devices. Youtube will stream in full HD to all of my family members easily, even when casting to the Tivo Slave boxes!
In order to eliminate variables, I eliminated my entire house and neighborhood by going directly to the showroom of WCG. In their showroom, they have a Tivo master box same as mine on one TV set, and a tiny Arris HD STB on the other. I tuned-around the various channels on both of their types of boxes and found the quality to be exactly the same as what I am seeing on my own TV's so I must conclude that I'm doing everything I can signal-wise and equipment-wise.
After my visit to WCG, I visited the showroom of a BellMTS store, and evaluated their "Fibe TV" picture quality on a large Samsung TV that seemed to be in "pure-motion" mode or whatever they're calling it, as well as having some sort of vivid saturation mode BS turned on which really complicated the eval. The best conclusion I could arrive at based on that visit, is that TSN looked about the same as everything else(yuck), Sportsnet looked about as good as the streaming app on my TV(so pretty decent), and all the rest of their channels were a mixture of decent, and awful.
I have been an FTA enthusiast over the years, having a motorized Ku and C-band dish at various times, currently stuck with just a single motorized 36 inch Ku dish and "letter-salad" brand HD receiver. Given this, I KNOW a good HD signal when I see one! Random sportsball, lottery, racing and golf feeds from satellite trucks, and even some of the available 24/7 HD linear programming that's coming down from certain orbital slots looks ABSOLUTELY EXQUISITE, while consuming LESS bitrate than what is being utilized by my cable provider per channel (per the diagnostic information available within their equipment), and using the SAME H264 codec. Given this background experience, I find it especially difficult to accept the blurry mess that I pay big buck$$ to receive. I just can't un-see what real 1080 HD can-and should- look like.
If you are experiencing specific degredation of either of these networks, perhaps there is a case for anti-competitive behaviour to be investigated? I have heard about distribution problems in the recent year or so regarding TV providers who use(d) Shaw as their source over fiber, and needing to switch to other sources to get better quality or service response, but I don't know much else besides that on the issue.
Thanks for reading,
Sparky
edited for formatting and punctuation
I feel like I'm the one kid who "can see dead people" when I watch any programming on either TSN or Sportsnet, and I can't stand the low quality of the "HD". All of the people near me who subscribe to those channels seem satisfied with how it looks. The best answer I can get from them is "sit further away from your TV, you're just too close".
So I have decided to ask on here: What is your video quality like on those two networks, and how do they compare to the rest of your available HD programming? Are other TV providers having better luck keeping picture quality closer to original by the time it arrives at your box? Is there any pattern as to providers such as Rogers keeping the nicest quality for their own customers and exporting a crappy version for all the other providers use? Does TSN look best on Bell TV? I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what's happening... I'm starting to actually believe that this is "garbage in-garbage out" at the distribution-level, and that my local provider can't do anything to make it look better.
Backstory: I live in Brandon MB, and am a Westman Communications Group customer. We have the Tivo equipment ecosystem with an Arris main 6-tuner HDPVR master mob, and three "mini" slave boxes. Feed to the house is legacy hybrid fiber-coax network that's fiber to the node, and coax down the street to my house. Video quality is identical on all the TV's regardless of the box master or slave.
The main complaints I have about the video are centered around artifacts and evidence of excessive recompression (concatenation), but it's very channel-selective. Many of the channels look ... fine, but all of the TSN and Sportsnet channels are noticeably degraded. It's impossible to read any fine-print on the screen. The channel logos at the top corner of the screen have haze and blocks all around the edges. Banners and static score displays usually have hazy in-fill coloring, plus blocky artifacts along all sharp-edges. In the video-processing world, the catch-all term that describes most of what I'm seeing is "Mosquito-noise"in this Wikipedia article . It makes hockey players' faces look like lego, renders their arm numbers illegible, soccer field grass becomes a watercolor brushed mess in al but the tight shots of the field, and it makes talking-head sportball-panelists' complexion similarly watercolored.
I have one actual Smart-TV in my home, so I decided to install the official apps for TSN and Sportsnet, go through the authentication/login rigamaroll, in order to evaluate that as an option as has been suggested by those near me in the past. I can say that the Sportsnet app video quality looks significantly improved over what comes over the cable! The TSN app... not so much. It's about the same as over the cable. It's almost worthwhile for me to prefer streaming the Sportsnet content, except that the smart TV isn't the one I usually watch and is in a room that's usually in use by my kids for the video game, plus it doesn't solve my TSN quality issue at all. For the record, I have 20MBPS internet, which works really well, and everything including the Tivo boxes are wired to ethernet except for our portable devices. Youtube will stream in full HD to all of my family members easily, even when casting to the Tivo Slave boxes!
In order to eliminate variables, I eliminated my entire house and neighborhood by going directly to the showroom of WCG. In their showroom, they have a Tivo master box same as mine on one TV set, and a tiny Arris HD STB on the other. I tuned-around the various channels on both of their types of boxes and found the quality to be exactly the same as what I am seeing on my own TV's so I must conclude that I'm doing everything I can signal-wise and equipment-wise.
After my visit to WCG, I visited the showroom of a BellMTS store, and evaluated their "Fibe TV" picture quality on a large Samsung TV that seemed to be in "pure-motion" mode or whatever they're calling it, as well as having some sort of vivid saturation mode BS turned on which really complicated the eval. The best conclusion I could arrive at based on that visit, is that TSN looked about the same as everything else(yuck), Sportsnet looked about as good as the streaming app on my TV(so pretty decent), and all the rest of their channels were a mixture of decent, and awful.
I have been an FTA enthusiast over the years, having a motorized Ku and C-band dish at various times, currently stuck with just a single motorized 36 inch Ku dish and "letter-salad" brand HD receiver. Given this, I KNOW a good HD signal when I see one! Random sportsball, lottery, racing and golf feeds from satellite trucks, and even some of the available 24/7 HD linear programming that's coming down from certain orbital slots looks ABSOLUTELY EXQUISITE, while consuming LESS bitrate than what is being utilized by my cable provider per channel (per the diagnostic information available within their equipment), and using the SAME H264 codec. Given this background experience, I find it especially difficult to accept the blurry mess that I pay big buck$$ to receive. I just can't un-see what real 1080 HD can-and should- look like.
If you are experiencing specific degredation of either of these networks, perhaps there is a case for anti-competitive behaviour to be investigated? I have heard about distribution problems in the recent year or so regarding TV providers who use(d) Shaw as their source over fiber, and needing to switch to other sources to get better quality or service response, but I don't know much else besides that on the issue.
Thanks for reading,
Sparky
edited for formatting and punctuation
1 - 20 of 32 Posts
Bell MTS is fairly new compare with other Bell’s division, and there were reports that Bell had problems maintaining the phone lines. And they still have cable TV listed on the web while telcos in other regions have terminated legacy cable tv subscriptions. I suspect it could because Sportsnet’s streaming packs have more functions and MB’s infrastructure isn’t so good, so they prioritize SN’s feed over Bell’s. And of course, PQ is one of Bell’s biggest problems, from TV packs to Crave and to TSN. Their even upload 540P CTV local news clips to YouTube despite it says 720P lol.
What’s the bitrate of your provider? And what channels are you comparing to?
What’s the bitrate of your provider? And what channels are you comparing to?
I was watching a bit of the Leaf game on Saturday night, on Sportsnet, and every time the camera view passed over the mesh netting behind the nets, it was a pixilation mess-fest. Definitely looked like bandwidth had been greatly reduced - for that matter, the fast motion didn’t help either. Something’s going on for sure, at least with Shaw Direct satellite…Hi all,
I feel like I'm the one kid who "can see dead people" when I watch any programming on either TSN or Sportsnet, and I can't stand the low quality of the "HD". All of the people near me who subscribe to those channels seem satisfied with how it looks. The best answer I can get from them is "sit further away from your TV, you're just too close".
So I have decided to ask on here: What is your video quality like on those two networks, and how do they compare to the rest of your available HD programming? Are other TV providers having better luck keeping picture quality closer to original by the time it arrives at your box? Is there any pattern as to providers such as Rogers keeping the nicest quality for their own customers and exporting a crappy version for all the other providers use? Does TSN look best on Bell TV? I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what's happening... I'm starting to actually believe that this is "garbage in-garbage out" at the distribution-level, and that my local provider can't do anything to make it look better.
Backstory: I live in Brandon MB, and am a Westman Communications Group customer. We have the Tivo equipment ecosystem with an Arris main 6-tuner HDPVR master mob, and three "mini" slave boxes. Feed to the house is legacy hybrid fiber-coax network that's fiber to the node, and coax down the street to my house. Video quality is identical on all the TV's regardless of the box master or slave.
The main complaints I have about the video are centered around artifacts and evidence of excessive recompression (concatenation), but it's very channel-selective. Many of the channels look ... fine, but all of the TSN and Sportsnet channels are noticeably degraded. It's impossible to read any fine-print on the screen. The channel logos at the top corner of the screen have haze and blocks all around the edges. Banners and static score displays usually have hazy in-fill coloring, plus blocky artifacts along all sharp-edges. In the video-processing world, the catch-all term that describes most of what I'm seeing is "Mosquito-noise"in this Wikipedia article . It makes hockey players' faces look like lego, renders their arm numbers illegible, soccer field grass becomes a watercolor brushed mess in al but the tight shots of the field, and it makes talking-head sportball-panelists' complexion similarly watercolored.
I have one actual Smart-TV in my home, so I decided to install the official apps for TSN and Sportsnet, go through the authentication/login rigamaroll, in order to evaluate that as an option as has been suggested by those near me in the past. I can say that the Sportsnet app video quality looks significantly improved over what comes over the cable! The TSN app... not so much. It's about the same as over the cable. It's almost worthwhile for me to prefer streaming the Sportsnet content, except that the smart TV isn't the one I usually watch and is in a room that's usually in use by my kids for the video game, plus it doesn't solve my TSN quality issue at all. For the record, I have 20MBPS internet, which works really well, and everything including the Tivo boxes are wired to ethernet except for our portable devices. Youtube will stream in full HD to all of my family members easily, even when casting to the Tivo Slave boxes!
In order to eliminate variables, I eliminated my entire house and neighborhood by going directly to the showroom of WCG. In their showroom, they have a Tivo master box same as mine on one TV set, and a tiny Arris HD STB on the other. I tuned-around the various channels on both of their types of boxes and found the quality to be exactly the same as what I am seeing on my own TV's so I must conclude that I'm doing everything I can signal-wise and equipment-wise.
After my visit to WCG, I visited the showroom of a BellMTS store, and evaluated their "Fibe TV" picture quality on a large Samsung TV that seemed to be in "pure-motion" mode or whatever they're calling it, as well as having some sort of vivid saturation mode BS turned on which really complicated the eval. The best conclusion I could arrive at based on that visit, is that TSN looked about the same as everything else(yuck), Sportsnet looked about as good as the streaming app on my TV(so pretty decent), and all the rest of their channels were a mixture of decent, and awful.
I have been an FTA enthusiast over the years, having a motorized Ku and C-band dish at various times, currently stuck with just a single motorized 36 inch Ku dish and "letter-salad" brand HD receiver. Given this, I KNOW a good HD signal when I see one! Random sportsball, lottery, racing and golf feeds from satellite trucks, and even some of the available 24/7 HD linear programming that's coming down from certain orbital slots looks ABSOLUTELY EXQUISITE, while consuming LESS bitrate than what is being utilized by my cable provider per channel (per the diagnostic information available within their equipment), and using the SAME H264 codec. Given this background experience, I find it especially difficult to accept the blurry mess that I pay big buck$$ to receive. I just can't un-see what real 1080 HD can-and should- look like.
If you are experiencing specific degredation of either of these networks, perhaps there is a case for anti-competitive behaviour to be investigated? I have heard about distribution problems in the recent year or so regarding TV providers who use(d) Shaw as their source over fiber, and needing to switch to other sources to get better quality or service response, but I don't know much else besides that on the issue.
Thanks for reading,
Sparky
edited for formatting and punctuation
I can say that TSN's streaming quality is terrible. I find anything streamed through them to look consistently worse than things on the TSN channel.
@sparkycivic
I have SN and TSN apps on my Chromecast. SN streaming is HD and flawless.
TSN is crap. It actually oscillates between HD and 4k, or worse. Like every minute or two. The score overlay or ticker feed will almost be unreadable during those times.
Again, no issue with SN or MotoGP or any other app I stream with.
I have SN and TSN apps on my Chromecast. SN streaming is HD and flawless.
TSN is crap. It actually oscillates between HD and 4k, or worse. Like every minute or two. The score overlay or ticker feed will almost be unreadable during those times.
Again, no issue with SN or MotoGP or any other app I stream with.
Just here to say I recently subscribed to TSN to watch the world juniors and I can't believe how bad the quality is. Not what I expected at all.
I don't know which service provider you have, but I just checked TSN HD and TSN 4K channels on Rogers Ignite and they are excellent and superb. (75" 4K TV)Just here to say I recently subscribed to TSN to watch the world juniors and I can't believe how bad the quality is. Not what I expected at all.
Mine does this exact thing, absolutely horrible. But my monday night football will be crystal clear tonight. Gonna be a gooder@sparkycivic I have SN and TSN apps on my Chromecast. SN streaming is HD and flawless. TSN is crap. It actually oscillates between HD and 4k, or worse. Like every minute or two. The score overlay or ticker feed will almost be unreadable during those times. Again, no issue with SN or MotoGP or any other app I stream with.
I'm watching TSN via the Fibe App on my Nvidia Shield and it's awesome looking on my 75 inch TV and looks just as good on my 120 inch projector screen.
Sparky,
I posted this.
www.digitalhome.ca
Seems I see dead people too. The fact the TSN app is only using 3.5 Mbps for an NHL hockey game is all that needs to be said. H.264 can only do so much. Sportsnet is better but will not win any awards. Also, there are 3-5 freezes during a game on the TSN app. I can't recall the last time a 4K movie on Netflix, Disney+, Amazon froze. So it is not my infrastructure that is failing.
Once you see quality it is hard to unsee lack of quality.
Edit: Watching the IIHF finals via the TSN app cast to a Vizio 4K TV. Average bitrate is 2.3Mbit/s.
I posted this.
Streaming Bitrates for various providers
I found it interesting how some of the streaming providers bitrates vary. From time to time I will note the Service and the average bitrates in this thread. Feel free to compare. FYI I can monitor the last 24 hours of each device on my network but not the actual packets. So the numbers are...
www.digitalhome.ca
Seems I see dead people too. The fact the TSN app is only using 3.5 Mbps for an NHL hockey game is all that needs to be said. H.264 can only do so much. Sportsnet is better but will not win any awards. Also, there are 3-5 freezes during a game on the TSN app. I can't recall the last time a 4K movie on Netflix, Disney+, Amazon froze. So it is not my infrastructure that is failing.
Once you see quality it is hard to unsee lack of quality.
Edit: Watching the IIHF finals via the TSN app cast to a Vizio 4K TV. Average bitrate is 2.3Mbit/s.
I find that when watching the various channels on our WCGTV Tivo boxes, and logging the data throughput of the ports, I find that all 5 TSN channels transfer about 3.7Mbps. The SportsNet channels run at a flat rate of 6.2megabits per second. Many of the other channels that we watch seem to run at or near the 6 megabit mark, with the remainder channels closer to 3.5 megabits.
I haven't measured the traffic while using the streaming APP's for either sports service quite yet. Doing so will require me to re-arrange some of the wiring to make it go through my one switch which can measure traffic instead of the convenient switch, which lacks that capability.
I am really wishing my wife would allow me to install C-Band again... I really miss watching the sports feeds in their exquisite native encoding! It seems to get transcoded so many times in-transit between systems that by the time it arrives at my house, it's practically unrecognizable. The name for that effect is "Concatenation"... a quite misunderstood concept in this day-and-age of outsourcing all important functions of an engineering/technical enterprise to the lowest bidder
I haven't measured the traffic while using the streaming APP's for either sports service quite yet. Doing so will require me to re-arrange some of the wiring to make it go through my one switch which can measure traffic instead of the convenient switch, which lacks that capability.
I am really wishing my wife would allow me to install C-Band again... I really miss watching the sports feeds in their exquisite native encoding! It seems to get transcoded so many times in-transit between systems that by the time it arrives at my house, it's practically unrecognizable. The name for that effect is "Concatenation"... a quite misunderstood concept in this day-and-age of outsourcing all important functions of an engineering/technical enterprise to the lowest bidder
I keep an old deactivated Bell PVR with OTA recording on standby. Watching sporting events via the ATSC tuners is still impressive. I just assumed that 10 years later new STBs would have seen a drastic improvement in quality.
As I type this Sportsnet audio is jittering like crazy. That is new. Might be some concatenation going on
.
As I type this Sportsnet audio is jittering like crazy. That is new. Might be some concatenation going on
.
I'm guessing the TSN and SN experience must depend on how you get your programming. As I mentioned in post 8 of this thread, whenever I tune to TSN or SN the quality is excellent in HD and is superb on the 4K channels on IgniteTV.
I'm not sure what the issue is with people who don't see clear programming on these channels - either some sort of restriction when streaming, or perhaps bandwidth. I really don't know.
I know that when I travel I often get the opportunity to stream programming instead of using IgniteTV (or digital cable before that), and I'm often disappointed in the streaming experience. I know it's a bit off topic for this thread, but whenever I try to watch NetFlix when travelling, the PQ is often poor, and there is often buffering, especially at prime time. My wife and I go back to reading because it's just too painful to put up with the poor PQ and constant buffering.
I'm not sure what the issue is with people who don't see clear programming on these channels - either some sort of restriction when streaming, or perhaps bandwidth. I really don't know.
I know that when I travel I often get the opportunity to stream programming instead of using IgniteTV (or digital cable before that), and I'm often disappointed in the streaming experience. I know it's a bit off topic for this thread, but whenever I try to watch NetFlix when travelling, the PQ is often poor, and there is often buffering, especially at prime time. My wife and I go back to reading because it's just too painful to put up with the poor PQ and constant buffering.
TSN's TV channels are fine. TSN's streaming is terrible, quality wise. That's the difference. Go to TSN.ca and watch something and compare it to the feed you're getting on TSN for the same thing. It's not even close.
I don't think I've ever seen a Bell property that had good streaming, but TSN is particularly bad.
I don't think I've ever seen a Bell property that had good streaming, but TSN is particularly bad.
You must be having a technical problem. I watched the tournament on TSN's 4K channel and the picture was outstanding. Crisp and clear and definitely an improvement over TSN HD. I can also make the same comment about Sportsnet 4K. Games out of Toronto in 4K show every little detail perfectly. My signal comes from Bell Fibe (Aliant) by the way.Just here to say I recently subscribed to TSN to watch the world juniors and I can't believe how bad the quality is. Not what I expected at all.
Just to summarize, the STB stream is good for most people and the TSN app is poor for everyone. Except maybe those watching it on smaller screens like phones or tablets. Just making sure we are not confusing the two issues.
I do wonder if Westman Communications Group is doing something unusual to create such a low quality HD feed.
My parents have a different 'self-inflicted' issue. They have an HD box and HD TV but watch the SD channels because that is the channel number they know. Yet somehow they claim they can't tell the difference.
OK funny story time. Friend of mine had a bunch of us over to watch something on his new home theatre setup. He is a not a techie guy so he paid for a really nice projector setup. After about 10 minutes of listening to everyone gush about the amazing picture, I asked if it was HD. He insisted it was. But he just assumed it would be HD out of the box. I grabbed the remote and low and behold it was SD. After some teasing we switched it over and continued to enjoy our evening.
I do wonder if Westman Communications Group is doing something unusual to create such a low quality HD feed.
My parents have a different 'self-inflicted' issue. They have an HD box and HD TV but watch the SD channels because that is the channel number they know. Yet somehow they claim they can't tell the difference.
OK funny story time. Friend of mine had a bunch of us over to watch something on his new home theatre setup. He is a not a techie guy so he paid for a really nice projector setup. After about 10 minutes of listening to everyone gush about the amazing picture, I asked if it was HD. He insisted it was. But he just assumed it would be HD out of the box. I grabbed the remote and low and behold it was SD. After some teasing we switched it over and continued to enjoy our evening.
@Jake some teasing?
It's not that just they don't see a difference, it's more like they don't care. To them it's all just techie talk and marketing gimmicks to sell TVs. I've never been able to understand that thinking myself but I've come to the conclusion that some people will never appreciate HD and even less 4K no matter how much you try to show them the difference. It's a losing cause.
That's how my dad was about HD until he came over to my house and I showed him an HD Hockey game next to the SD version.It's not that just they don't see a difference, it's more like they don't care. To them it's all just techie talk and marketing gimmicks to sell TVs. I've never been able to understand that thinking myself but I've come to the conclusion that some people will never appreciate HD and even less 4K no matter how much you try to show them the difference. It's a losing cause.
A week later I got a call where he told me about his new HDTV.
1 - 20 of 32 Posts
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