Artifacting on LG 4k OLED

Channels Apple TV Troubleshooting
#1

I’ve got Channels running on two Apple TV 4Ks in my home – one connected to a new LG E7 OLED, and the other to an older Sharp 1080p TV. The video in the channels app on the LG is showing significant artifacting – to the point where it’s distracting to watch. On the other hand, the video on the Sharp looks fine. Channels is pulling in OTA signal from a HDHomeRun Connect.

On the LG, I can pull up the same channel on Channels and on DirecTV Now, and the channel over DTV Now looks fine as well, so I don’t think the issue is either the TV itself or the Apple TV. Any ideas on troubleshooting or how I can fix this? Appreciate the help!

1 Like
#2

Sounds like a bad network/Wi-Fi connection to that Apple TV. The hdhomerun uses much more bandwidth than internet streams and is very sensitive to latency issues.

#3

Thanks for the response. I appreciate how responsive you are on here. I’ve gone and plugged the Apple TV into the router via ethernet. The video is coming through uninterrupted, but I’m seeing a lot of noise, especially in darker parts of the image. The image is not nearly as noisy in other apps on the ATV (such as Amazon Prime Video and DirecTv Now), and the image in Channels looks less noisy on my other TV (the Sharp). Any ideas?

#4

This is probably because it’s being upscaled. The tv you said it looked fine on was 1080p, which the video is native res to. The LG OLED is 4K, so the video is being upscaled for it (4x).

MPEG2 is an old codec and doesn’t scale up as nice as h.264. You mentioned other sources looked fine on there, and those sources are using h.264. It’s not really fair to compare the two.

I personally own a 55” LG B6, and while 1080p h.264 sources definitely scale up nicer than mpeg2 streams off of my HDHomeRun, it still looks ok to me. I was sort of scared to see what would happen to be honest, heh!

How close to the display are you? Like a lot of artifacts and deficiencies in TVs, they usually faded away at a certain distance. I’ve been guilty of complaining about how things look on a display when judging them from 1ft away, only to have them not noticeable where I actually view from, heh.

#5

I see similar on my OLED. I always figured it’s either just bitstarved h264 (mainly see it on the walking dead and it’s h264 for me) or maybe Channels could benefit from yadif (2x) on the new ATV4K since it has the ponies.

#6

Thanks again for the responses. I think the explanation you guys gave is right. Couch is between 9-10ft from the TV. Would upgrading to an HDHomeRun Extend with the h.264 transcoding help reduce the noise? It sounds like timstephens24 is still experiencing it even though his is in h.264 (I’m assuming you have the extend). Otherwise, it sounds like it just is what it is, which is a little disappointing.

#7

No Comcast H264 Channels.