TV Everywhere Picture Quality

Channels DVR Server TV Everywhere
#1

Apologies if this has been discussed, but I logged in to TV Everywhere with Philo as my provider and am able to access the channels I want, but find the picture quality lacking. It's as if it's not being deinterlaced properly? I've seen that TVE streams are progressive but when watching through channels motion is strange and quality is worse. If I watch through Philo it's clear and normal.

This on on an Apple TV 4K which could also be the culprit of how it handles the streams? Anyone have any advice or input? Would love to have one central location to access these channels.

#2

The TVE feeds come from the websites (i.e., https://abc.com/watch-live/fx-east); what you see on your provider is a direct line, like with classical cable. If you want to compare, don't go to your provider's website, go to the station's website and stream from there. That is what Channels will ingest. Basically, Channels is at the mercy of whatever those websites produce, that's it. Learn more here:

As you'll see in the linked spreadsheet in that thread, TVE streams just aren't the best they could be.

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#3

Thanks for the reply. That's what I've found when doing research as well but for some reason it will display fine on my PC but when I watch on Apple TV the video looks terrible.

#4

Does that mean in a browser, playing from the network live website?
You can test playing in a browser from the Channels DVR web UI player, and that should look identical to what you see on the network live website.

What TVE channel has the issue and what is the quality issue?
Maybe you could post a screenshot.

#5

If there’s actually interlacing issues, it’s on the provider side, because the streams are progressive.

What you could possibly be noticing is a 30fps stream. Fast motion, like sports, don’t tend to look very good in 30fps. Many TVE streams that broadcast sports are 60, but plenty are 30.

#6

Noticing on Comedy Central, mtv, vh1. Streams look terrible and have motion issues. The channel within Philo itself looks great. Would philo utilize a different/better stream?

Funny thing is commercials look great. But then it gets back to the movie airing and that looks terrible. Looks like interlaced lines out of sync and terrible artifacts.

#7

Yes, different stream than the network live website (which Channels DVR uses).
These are all Viacom Networks channels
6010 CC
6011 CCP
6012 MTV
6013 MTVP
6014 VH1
6015 VH1P
6016 CMT
6017 CMTP
6018 BET
6019 BETP
6020 TVLAND
6021 TVLANDP
6022 PARAMOUNT
6023 PARAMOUNTP
6024 LOGO
6025 LOGOP
6028 NICKJR
6029 NICKJRP

If you see the interlaced artifacts on their live website stream, you could contact them about the issue.
Users didn't have much luck doing that when the Nick Jr channel had the issue Nick JR. De-interlacing issue

#8

Yea... trying to get ANY sort of help/ fix for a TVE stream is waste of time. I have spent way too many hours, days, weeks, back and forth with various networks, via email and such. They can never replicate the issue, and say "contact your cable tv provider..." or similar. It don't matter if it is the raw live stream on their own network website, like Nat Geo, WILD,... etc. They say its your providers fault.

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#9

TVE is of an acquired taste for some. This is not cable. If your expecting a very HQ feed, then just get a cable provder with CableCARD and HDHR Prime and use that instead.

I have no problems watching the TVE feeds. The streams look fine.

#10

I get better quality from TVE than my 2 Primes as XFINITY only broadcasts 720p in H264.... but TVE is only Stereo ... Cable is 5.1

#11

You have to pick what works best for you.
I'm already working on making he switch from relying on TVE to moving to the different options available in the community.

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#12

I will stick with my Primes/OTA tuners until they die or XFINITY stops supporting Cable Cards then will look at my options.

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#13

I just thought it would look the same as watching through the Philo app. :man_shrugging:t3:

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#14

That's what everyone is saying: it won't, they aren't the same thing. What Philo's app is getting is a direct feed, what Channels is getting is what they put out over their own websites. I put together this (very simplified) diagram to see if it makes it clearer what is going on:

image
image1440×598 130 KB

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#15

Thanks for taking the time to make this. Great to see channels has an active community! Funny thing is some of the TVE channels that have lower quality streams look fine to me! It’s just the Viacom ones that look terrible and they use a higher bitrate.

I mostly noticed it on the movies they were playing. Commercials looked great. The movies had so many artifacts and appeared like the interlacing was out of sync.

#16

I think eventually, these TVE feeds will eventually be dropped.

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#17

the channels with issues were dropped and are now back with the most recent update. Funnily enough the issues are corrected now. Whether it was an issue on the client or server side I couldn't say. Hope they stick around!

#18

Wondering if Channels has any way to 'force' the highest quality stream available. For example, when I look at the playlist file being provided from a streaming site (we'll use CNN in this case) they provide several different streams based on bandwidth. Most of the time it will start with a lower bandwidth stream and work it's way up but not always.

It would be great if Channels could force the highest one (for CNN it is VIDEO_0_xxx.m3u others it is profile_0 or a letter) so that it always pulls the highest quality available rather than allowing it to 'auto detect' the bandwidth / resolution. There are a few channels I have manually mapped and created a custom m3u file directly to the 1920x1080 stream and the quality difference is quite noticable.

Specifically in the manifest file it outlines the bandwidth and resolution of each stream. It would be nice to match on the ones that contain "RESOLUTION=1920x1080" or whatever the highest provided is and leverage that stream.

#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:RESOLUTION=1920x1080,BANDWIDTH=5430335,CODECS="mp4a.40.5,avc1.640028",FRAME-RATE=30.000,AUDIO="aac",CLOSED-CAPTIONS="ccs",AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=5303853

#19

Yes that's what Channels does

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#20

That's interesting because I notice a pretty significant difference between the Channels provided streams and the ones I hard-code to 1920x1080

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