It is so funny ... or maybe interesting ... or maybe downright sad?!?
Those of us old enough to have experienced and remember the infancy of High Definition, know and understand just how bad picture quality is now. It is awful! Unfortunately, being that we are a massive minority of the market, no production company cares.
IIRC, it was around 2002 when HD was in a similar place to 4K now, except nobody had HD TV's, while now almost half the consumers have a 4K TV. My brother and I were very early adopters of HD, as we lived together, and both had new jobs right out of University. Money to burn! We paid nearly $10,000 for a 42" 720p plasma TV and wall mount. Absolutely astonishing, looking back! At that time, Shaw cable had ONE HD channel; they would grab whatever HD content they could, from any network, and put it on that channel. For many months, it was basically only Jay Leno (NBC) and Monday Night Football (ESPN). It gradually expanded, and I remember when they put the fist hockey game on; you could see the texture of the fabric on Broduer's jersey, you could see what the fan in row 6 had for toppings on their nachos. It was literally as good as being there, but better, because the camera can zoom. On the normal high level view camera, you could 100% easily see the namebars on every jersey as they rushed through center ice. And that was with only a 720p TV and a down-converted 1080p HD signal.
Unfortunately, as more providers starting offering HDTV, they eventually used those enhancements in Technology to provide more quantity, rather than more quality. Instead of adding to their bandwidth capabilities while offering more HD channels, they started to digitally compress the HD broadcasts in order to fit them into their same supply networks. Awful! Fast forward 10 years or so, to about 2012-14, and we ended up with hundreds of HD channels, with the bandwidth and quality of Standard Definition. But we all had huge 50+ inch TVs. Essentially, the consumer traded picture quality for size; we ended up with a 65 inch screen that had the same fidelity as our old 27" tube TV's. And, sadly, the average consumer didn't even realize it!
After that, you get into the streaming generation. Even more compression is required to stream to every device over the internet, more and more channels and services are added, all in the name of how 'convenient' it is to stream. But the quality is down right horrific.
The cost of current 4K equipment is down right cheap. Everyone should have it. But we don't. Myself, I still have a 15 year old 65" high end plasma TV because it honestly looks close enough to the same as a high end 4K setup; solely due to garbage in equals garbage out!!!
As consumers, I wish we wouldn't stand for it. Until the profits are there, any provider will obviously cut every corner they can and pass it off as convenience! Truth is, we should have both supremely high quality and convenience!
LOL! What a rant! Struck a nerve I guess, on a totally distracted day, waiting for the first Battle of Alberta in my adult lifetime!
All that being said, is there anyway to get a true 4K broadcast of the Flames / Edmonton games? I'm hoping that they would be compressed less, and would look a lot better on my 1080p display, than the current Sportsnet HD channels offered.
HD channels looked good because we all adopted 1080p and on a 1080p display it looks good. Now they still broadcast 1080p on 4 k so what takes 1 pixel on 1080p display takes 4 pixels 9n a 4k display broadcasting 1080p. Thus looks extremely blurry.
HD channels looked good because we all adopted 1080p and on a 1080p display it looks good. Now they still broadcast 1080p on 4 k so what takes 1 pixel on 1080p display takes 4 pixels 9n a 4k display broadcasting 1080p. Thus looks extremely blurry.
No, not really true, in my experience.
We had a 720p display for the first couple years of HD, and were feeding it with 1080p that was downcoverted. And, that 720p looked, I'm gonna say, 15x better than 1080p HD looks on my 1080p display now.
By the time 1080p was affordable, we had a 50 inch first, and it looked about the same as the 720p, but was bigger, so marginally acceptable. But it was clear then, that too much compression was already happening. Then they improved the compression algorithms, and my 65 1080p looked about as good as the 50 inch. And now, compression is so heavy again, that the 1080p doesnt really look like HD at all; just a huge low definition display.
I know and understand what youre saying though, and I shudder to think how bad this current over compressed crap HD 1080p would look on a 4K display. I'm guessing about as good as a cell phone video texted vai MMS over Fido's LTE network! In otherwords, unviewable!
Your comment about compression hit the nail on the head; the source material when HD was in relative infancy in the consumer market was always of high quality. When you had a 720p display, the 1080p content you were watching wasn't streamed over the internet, it was usually from a Blu-ray (or HD-DVD if you made that bet like I did, oops) or HD-capable game console.
I got my first 4K TV -- a 55" Samsung KS8500 -- in 2016. Back then, you weren't streaming a damn thing in 4K -- just 1080p -- so again, consuming 4K content meant you were forced to view high quality source material. I remember how blown away I was by watching the Blu-ray version of BBC Planet Earth on my first 1080p TV (a Samsung 46" B6000 'Touch of Color'), and that level of awe was matched when I watched BBC Planet Earth II on UHD Blu-ray with HDR for the first time.
And, it was the same way with TV too. We had Shaw cable, DirecTV and ExpressVu back then, and it looked incredible downconverted on the 720p display. Some of it was even broadcast in 1080i and was still incredible.
Seems like forever ago, but satellite was the way to go for us, too. I recall reading on forums back in the early-mid 2000s people waxing on about the reasons why you'd never get a true 1080p picture "through the pipes" - it had to be beamed in. This was not sports, more movies
Even now when I watch hockey--especially the playoffs--I try and watch the games over the air on CBC with my el cheapo UHF antenna. It just looks better
We had a 720p display for the first couple years of HD, and were feeding it with 1080p that was downcoverted. And, that 720p looked, I'm gonna say, 15x better than 1080p HD looks on my 1080p display now.
By the time 1080p was affordable, we had a 50 inch first, and it looked about the same as the 720p, but was bigger, so marginally acceptable. But it was clear then, that too much compression was already happening. Then they improved the compression algorithms, and my 65 1080p looked about as good as the 50 inch. And now, compression is so heavy again, that the 1080p doesnt really look like HD at all; just a huge low definition display.
I know and understand what youre saying though, and I shudder to think how bad this current over compressed crap HD 1080p would look on a 4K display. I'm guessing about as good as a cell phone video texted vai MMS over Fido's LTE network! In otherwords, unviewable!
My samsung frame looks terrible on games not broadcast on cbc but in the same note I switch to my 24 inch ps3 3d display from 2013 or my aliean ware 27 inch moniter its amazing on sports netor any Channel.
The 24 and 27inch have a much higher ppi tho. Which is more important than resolution. A smaller screen with more PPI is always going to look better. Compared to my 55 inch to look just as good I'd need at minimum 25% to 35 %ppi more.
TSN and Sportsnet, and by extension Rogers and Bell, can suck my taint.
The Bombers and Jets both have 4k cameras at their buildings. The Bombers games in Winnipeg should all be broadcast in 4k, and, should be on 4k TSN.ca. I pay out of pocket to have TSN and Sportsnet without TV. But they never post the 4k streams online. Why? Because go #### yourself consumer.
And Rogers? NHL mobile? A joke. It's easier, faster and more convenient to use mario than the NHL app. Nothing in 4k streaming. ####, you won't even get 1080p.