Picture quality, not happy

Hi, so I felt I researched everything pretty well over the course of two days. However, after forking over 25 dollars I learned that the app is unusable for me. While the picture quality is fine for regular viewing, for sports its unwatchable. How has this not been commented on before? And is it possible to improve it in a future update or is the app at the mercy of apple’s mpeg decoder?

What is the issue you’re seeing with sports?

Grainy less defined than my cable box. I matched everything with my tv, color settings ect. On a 65" it makes a huge difference.

There’s also screen tearing or dropped frames, not sure how to describe it. I’ve tried and read everything, it seems to be the decoder is not that great on the apple tv. I dug and found another post on here where the user was told he was out of luck. I’ll take any suggestions though, It’d be great if that wasn’t the case.

It’s hard wired as well. Signal quality, strength, symbol all above 95.

Are you using a 4K TV and Apple TV 4K?

Try the free apps InstaTV or VLC to try to play from your HDHomeRun and see if the video quality is the same.

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I don’t really see any difference in sports here in MD on Comcast with Channels, HDHomeRun app on a shield, or using OTA on the TV vs Channels.

I’ve wondered more interlacer options like Yadif 2x or Bob would help in the Apple TV 4K or not but it’s not a strong area of knowledge for me.

Edited my first post, I was a little cranky.

Yes, apple tv 4k and Samsung 4k KS8000.
HDHOMERUN PRIME
Signal Strength 99% (-1.0 dBmV)
Signal Quality 100% (37.4 dB)
Symbol Quality 100%

Just tried VLC on Windows, pixelation is pretty much the same as the apple tv. It’s a smoother playback though. Not as good as my cable box but there’s no apparent screen tearing or sudden stutters.

The pixelation is really the same on every device, I’ve it tried on my xbox, computer, tablet, ect… It just becomes more apparent on a big tv. It looks as if the stream is compressed like a good 25%.

Are you using a CableCARD? Is it paired according to my.hdhomerun.com

Double check that you are actually going to the HD versions of the channels and that your TV is not automatically resizing the image to fit in a large screen.

Some cable companies “remap” their cable boxes to show the HD version even though you select what would have normally been the SD version… (example: CBS here is channel 2, CBSHD is channel 702) When using the cable box, selecting channel 2 will display the feed from 702 on one of the cable box models used by the cableco.

For cablecard tuners they have to keep them separate…

To verify, go to http://IPADDRESSOFTUNER/lineup.html?show=all and make sure that it says “HD” to the right next to the channel number that you need.

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Hi, yeah it shows HD next to the channel under the web ui lineup. Recordings are big too, like 1-3GB. It's just as if it's being compressed on the fly. I've attached a image.

As you can see there's just a pixelation around the players, especially as they're moving

Yeah, everythings good
Card Authentication success
Card OOB Lock success
Card Validation success
Tuning Resolver ready

Is it happening on other channels? I’ve noticed that sometimes ESPN and Fox channels have really horrible picture quality.

On the web UI, if you click into a show and then select View Details in the dropdown for a recording, what is the resolution and bitrate shown?

On the details panel, it also lists whether the recording is interlaced or progressive. If you watch a progressive recording does it have the same problem?

Was this the first time you watched the streams on a TV that big? Comparing the picture quality on your computer in a smaller window (probably less than it’s native size) to the picture quality on your 4K TV (quadruple the native size of the video) isn’t exactly equivalent. The video is being scaled up a ton, and the artifacts are being exaggerated.

MPEG2 is an old codec and doesn’t scale nearly as well as h.264, so this happens. Also, depending on the compression of the stream, you might see more. Artifacts usually show up most around fast moving objects. This is just the nature of compression.

The good news is, in actual general watching of TV and content, at good distances, things look just fine.

A sports event for me would be WAY larger than 1-3GB. On the order of 8 to 10 times that size. I have sports events on my DVR that are 25-30GB. There is no way that your 1-3GB recording is not compressed by the cable co.

I could see someone seeing a difference but they’re about the same. ESPN/cable box is much better than espn/hdhomerun which is the issue

For a half hour show it’s around 1-3, more like 2-3GB’s.

Yeah, first time with the hdhomerun. But its in comparison to my cablebox.

Please double check the resolution and bitrate of your recordings as outlined above. There are situations where the HDHomeRun locks onto the wrong cable signal and actually receives a standard-def or otherwise compressed version of the channel.