Lets talk about 4k sports broadcasting

[Snuffleupagus]

What the hell, 9 years later and barely anything, Sportsnet and TSN both have dedicated channels but its rare to find a real 4k broadcast. In the states they have Thursday NFL and the odd Nascar but that's about it.

Is the reason purely cheapness?

[Sr. Mints]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

What the hell, 9 years later and barely anything, Sportsnet and TSN both have dedicated channels but its rare to find a real 4k broadcast. In the states they have Thursday NFL and the odd Nascar but that's about it.



Is the reason purely cheapness?

Isn't Edmonton rigged with 4K cameras? Whether it's broadcast as such, i couldn't say.

[TorqueDog]

I found Sportsnet's feed was glitching here and there during the game last night; anyone else?

[Hemi-Cuda]

4K is a dream at this point. Hell for streaming NHL I'd gladly take 1080p instead of this 720p nonsense that Sportsnet, TSN, and the NHL itself use

[PsYcNeT]

44% of US households had a 4K TV last year, but I'm curious what platform sports networks would actually stream 4K with.

Even the Stream<>TV Partnerships like Amazon's Stack integration don't support 4K (because no traditional TV channels stream 4K)

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Sr. Mints

Isn't Edmonton rigged with 4K cameras? Whether it's broadcast as such, i couldn't say.

No. Dome has one 4k rig and it's in Toronto.

They had it in Edmonton for the WJC.

Edit: their website lists that they have 3 4k mobiles now.

[Erick Estrada]

This is a gear grinder for me as 4k sports would be a boon for televised hockey.

[Jimmy Stang]

Even when the Shaw 4K channels aren't playing a true 4K feed, I find that the quality is slightly better. A tad sharper and more range in the colours.

I assume that the 4K channels just have less compression, so HD looks more like HD should.

Also, I compared the traffic on my router between the Sportsnet 4K and HD channels (with both showing a non-4K broadcast), and it was at least double on the 4K channel.

So there might be an argument for watching the 4K channel if your hardware supports it. But I agree - it would be nice to have more actual 4K broadcasts. Maybe with the Leafs out of the playoffs and the Raptors long finished, they can do the Flames/Oilers series in proper 4K.

[Mazrim]

I mentioned in the TV thread that 4k was a bit of a mistake to adopt so quickly. We basically skipped 1440p on the way to 2160p/4k marketing nonsense without any real thought about what handling true 4k would take. Every step to handle and process a video signal is so much tougher when you have to push a huge amount of extra pixels at 60 frames a second for sports. Then you have the people at home who have "4k" cable or streaming boxes but in reality it's always down-sampled to something manageable for the system. True 4k broadcast signals are still a pipe dream.

I can understand why cable companies are hesitant to support it too, since they'd probably need fibre optic cables to every house to pull it off.

That being said, there's no excuse for the lack of 1080p60 sports broadcast signals today both on cable and streaming. Gene Principe tweeted a picture earlier this season of their broadcast monitor zoomed in on a player, and it showed that they were filming in 1080p60. It's being downscaled to 720p60 for cable and Sportsnet Now.

[activeStick]

Are Prime or Netflix on 4k?

[agulati]

Originally Posted by activeStick

Are Prime or Netflix on 4k?

I beliver certain shows on Netflix are 4K. They do have a price tier that gives you 4K

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

That being said, there's no excuse for the lack of 1080p60 sports broadcast signals today both on cable and streaming. Gene Principe tweeted a picture earlier this season of their broadcast monitor zoomed in on a player, and it showed that they were filming in 1080p60. It's being downscaled to 720p60 for cable and Sportsnet Now.

That's a total disgrace.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by activeStick

Are Prime or Netflix on 4k?

All the major streaming services (except Crave which caps at 1080p) have a 4K/HDR tier of service (in fact, only Netflix charges extra for it).

In order of quality of picture and compression gradients, I would say it's probably something like:

Disney+ > AppleTV > Netflix > Prime Video > Everything else. Disney and Apple are neck and neck for HDR quality as well.

The Big 4 also now support Dolby Atmos 7.2.2/7.2.4/9.2.2 setups as well on select titles, though I haven't noticed any of them being a particular standout on this front.

[Fuzz]

It doesn't help that Shaw compresses the crap out of the signal, so it may be 1080p, but it's a blurry 1080p. Pause on anything with a text box and you can see it. Downloading F1 vs watching on TSN is a huge difference, so much that a 720p download of an F1 race is better than Shaw's 1080p.

[Jimmy Stang]

Shortcomings of Shaw, Telus, and Sportsnet aside, I do hope that this series is broadcast in 4K. One one hand, this will be a massively viewed series and Sportsnet should show it in the best possible quality rather than have the equipment sitting idle on Ontario. On the other hand, people are going to watch it anyway, and being in 4K isn't going to attract any new viewers. It will just arouse a few nerds would would be watching anyway.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

That being said, there's no excuse for the lack of 1080p60 sports broadcast signals today both on cable and streaming. Gene Principe tweeted a picture earlier this season of their broadcast monitor zoomed in on a player, and it showed that they were filming in 1080p60. It's being downscaled to 720p60 for cable and Sportsnet Now.

SNow used to be in 60fps, but they changed something in the last couple of years. Now it's only 30fps, and extremely choppy at that

[Draug]

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.

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

SNow used to be in 60fps, but they changed something in the last couple of years. Now it's only 30fps, and extremely choppy at that

You can get 60 fps with Sportsnet Now on a PC through a web browser. That's sadly the only platform I've been able to continuously get 60 fps.

[corporatejay]

Can someone explain why Sportsnet doesn't stream in 4K or at least 1080p? Is there additional infrastructure on their end or something?

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Can someone explain why Sportsnet doesn't stream in 4K or at least 1080p? Is there additional infrastructure on their end or something?

Cheap, cheap, cheap. I know they use 4K cameras for Blue Jays games and have used 4K cameras for some Leafs games but I don't think they use any 4k equipment out west.