Flickering ball

[Anonymous User]

Anyone else had a flickering football when using a Sky Soorts day pass (for football obviously)? I’m watching on an LG OLED 4kUHD with a hardwire connection on Virgin Media 100mps download. This has to be a problem at the NOW TV end surely? Any ideas?

[Thom77]

@Anonymous User 

The main issue here (that everyone contends with on Now TV with Sport) is that Now TV deliver their content with a Frame Rate of 25fps, which is OK for entertainment, but with Sports action and fast moving balls, for example, can lead to iffy picture issues...... one of those main things being a pixelated football when it is booted through the air.  Sports action would be much smoother at 50fps, but this is not what Now TV currently use.

Myself and others on this forum have been able to improve the picture quality a little by tweaking some of the picture features on their TV........ if you go in to the TVs Settings menu and find the Picture section, there will probably be a feature that deals with 'auto motion smoothing' (or something similar), find this and play about with changing it and you might see an improvement with the pixelation.  I had a similar issue with a Panasonic TV and someone else on this forum (also with a Panasonic) talked about altering a feature called Intelligent Frame Creation (IFC).... I did this and it has removed the pixelation from Football with Now TV..... it's still not perfect but is much better.

Again, until Now TV use 50fps, try tweaking your TVs picture settings to improve things.

[schnapps]

Hi @Anonymous User 

Have you had a play around with the picture motion settings on your LG TV ?

I would start with Trumotion switched off to see if there is any difference when watching football.

I don't own an LG TV, but my Panasonic 4K TV exhibits picture juddering artefacts when using intelligent frame creation motion processing when the broadcast goes from live to slow motion replays during a match (which i believe its a bug in the TV software processing that Panasonic never fixed on my TV model number).

Hopefully other LG OLED TV owners could offer you some further assitance.

I personally don't like watching NowTV sports which is streamed at 25fps where there is a lack of detail & clarity on panning camera shots due to this lower frame rate used.

The picture looks un natural flim like in apperance to my eyes though i don't see the ball flickering only a lack of resolution in the picture on fast moving objects.

[Anonymous User]

So if I’ve interpreted this correctly NOW TV sports isn’t good enough for my TV? I mean, to make it work I need to turn things down/off on the TV?

[schnapps]

Hi @Anonymous User 

I have never seen the ball flickering when watching football on my Panasonic TV, but i don't like the cinematic look & feel and lack of detail with moving objects which look blurry with 25fps on NowTV sports.

NowTV really need to up the frame rate too 50fps when streaming their live Sky Sports channels.

Are you seeing the ball flickering on all Sky Sports channels such has football, golf, tennis etc ?

If you talk to most professional TV calibrators they will say set your TV picture settings to True Cinema, THX or ISF mode and switch off MPEG & Noise reduction and start by disabling the motion processing features.

If it was me i would start with switching off Trumotion and if it is the same then start playing & experimenting with different combinations of deblur, de judder, clear motion etc etc.

Sorry i couldn't offer any more suggestions or help, perhaps other LG OLED TV owners can assist you further when it comes to watching NowTV sports on LG OLED's.

Should you believe the ball flickering picture artefacts is down to the broadcast, then speak to nowtv live chat about it.

[Anonymous User]

Just got this TV and changed the setting to game mode. Seems to have resolved it.

[Anonymous User]

Hi , 

I had the same issue did you change this setting on a LG TV ? And if so was the picture mode set to game ? 

[Anonymous User]

Hi,

Yeah I changed it to “game mode” and it did improve.

[Anonymous User]

Running NOW TV on a Smart stick. Have a Samsung OLED 4K UHD Smart TV. Ball flicker when ball is played. Went to Picture settings... Set picture mode to DYNAMIC and selected Expert Settings - Auto Motion Plus Settings - selected Custom and set it to 10. Not perfect but significantly reduced. Apparently to do with Pixel rate transmitted by NOW @ 25 and should be 50. Offer of BOOST for extra £££ which I guess is there way of increasing revenue. Hope this helps

[Wolfy86]

I have the boost, makes no difference on my C9 Oled with Sports mode (kinda the point right?) for Footie or F1. I think boost is just HD content but doesn’t improve frame rate.

[gavs82008]

@Wolfy86 

The frame rate with Boost only works with certain devices. Annoyingly LG is not supported with 50fps when using Boost.

Also not all sports channels are supported by 50fps.

https://help.nowtv.com/article/what-is-now-boost

What do I get with NOW Boost?

• Full HD: Watch all the Sky Sports channels, plus selected shows and movies, in 1080p video quality instead of the usual 720p.
• Smoother sporting action: 6 Sky Sports channels – Main Event, Premier League, F1, Football, Cricket and Golf – are available at 50 frames per second (except on Xbox One & Series X/S and LG TV).
• Awesome audio: Got a surround sound speaker system or soundbar? Boost lets you enjoy a fully immersive audio experience with Dolby Digital 5.1.
• An extra stream: Another handy benefit is that you get to stream on 3 devices at the same time. Perfect for families that can’t agree on what to watch!

You’ll need any of these devices to enjoy all the features of Boost:

• NOW Smart Stick
• Any NOW Box
• Amazon Fire TV Stick (2nd & 3rd Gen, 4K, Lite & Basic Edition)
• Roku Express or Roku Streaming Stick
• A supported Samsung TV
• Sony TV (most models from 2016)
• PS4
• PS5
• Xbox One (50fps not currently available)
• Xbox Series X & S (50fps not currently available)
• Apple TV HD (gen 4) or 4K (Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound not supported on Apple TV)
• YouView (including TalkTalk & BT boxes)
• LG Web OS TV (50fps not currently available)
• JVC Fire TV Edition Smart 4K TV
• Chromecast Ultra or 3rd generation (note that 1st and 2nd generation Chromecast devices are not supported. See the image below if you're not sure what generation your Chromecast is.)

[rkingd01]

I have the same experience. On NOWTV a  fast moving ball blurs which spoils the experience of watching football. The same (Sky) coverage on iPlayer and YouTube produces no such blurring. 

The NOWTV football product is much more expensive than Entertainment and Film and yet this issue is never addressed.

Try extracting a straightforward answer from NOWTV about recompense? I couldn't.