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Anonymous User
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When will you be transmitting in HD?

Hi guys

 

Was wondering when you will start transmitting in HD?  Did ask a few years ago was hoping that by now shows would be available in HD...

 

Thanks in advance

 

Kriss 🙂

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Andy
Legend 5
Legend 5

@Anonymous User

 

Welcome to the forum. Great to see another sci-fi fan around! NOW TV stream in 720p HD on most devices now,  but there's no news on if or when this will be upped to 1080p HD. However streaming on my devices on the big screen, the quality is pretty good.

 

More details here

https://help.nowtv.com/article/what-is-highest-streaming-quality-for-my-device

View solution in original post

121 REPLIES 121
Anonymous User
Not applicable

It is not in skys interest to have now tv at 1080p, this chat has went on for so long, stop subscribing to 720 garbage. They cant even fix the framerate.

Anonymous User
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So much for your faith guys as Now Tv IS 1080p!! And it looks amazing too 😊 I can honestly say IMO it's exceeds the quality from Netflix, so yes Now Tv can certainly compete, it has more depth and deeper colours compared to Netflix and even Amazon Prime, so very happy with it!! All we need now is 5.1 surround thrown in, then it's complete 👍

Anonymous User
Not applicable

Absolutely correct about the abysmal compression. There are so many artefacts in a 720p picture it is shocking.

 

I've cancelled my subscription.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hello,

The main reason you have seen an improvment over the old black nowtv box is locked to 60hz output. Whoever decided to release the old now tv boxes with a 60hz locked output needs sacking tbqh. The nowtv stick (and also the now tv smart box/4k box) are 50hz which matches the 25fps now tv content.

 

On my Sony tv I use the equivalent of the IFC that another poster referred to earlier. On my TV its called Motionflow and I use some custom settings to get reduced motion blur but also do some 'smoothing'. This is actually frame interpolation and really does help with sports.

 

Out of interest do you or anyone else on here have a Chromecast Gen 3 or Chromecast Ultra? These 2 devices can support 1080p video at 50fps. At this point in time for me, the bt sport app will NOT send through the 1080/50p stream to my chromecast gen 3. It only sends the 1080/25p stream.

To get the 1080/50p stream I have to go to the bt sport web player on google chrome on a desktop or laptop, cast the tab to my gen 3 chromecast, press play on the stream and then click 'fullscreen'. After a couple of seconds the whole stream gets pushed to the chromecast and nothing is shown on the browser. The resulting picture quality is in my opinion outstanding. I actually believe that the picture quality watching like this is better than the 1080i50 (50 interlaced fields, still 25fps though) broadcast through a youview box or sky box.

I would be interested to know if anyone else has tried this out and agrees?

Also if anyone here casts nowtv or bt sport or any other british tv content, please make sure you have set your chromecast refresh rate to 50hz using the 'Home' app. This is imperative to ensure you get smooth playback.

Cheers!

Anonymous User
Not applicable

I also use BT sport but through the browser on my Samsung TV and usually the picture is fantastic, with none of the blurring or judder of NOW TV. I wish NOW TV would sort this problem out as with modern large TV's their service is unacceptably bad.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

 

Hi @Anonymous User,

How is your Panasonic receiving the streaming signal.

If its wifi, try any home hub setup connected into

the Panasonic Now Tv box.

Its a two minute job to setup.

1,Plug the sender into any three pin socket next to the router.

2, Plug the ethernet cable into the router, then into the Home hub

sender pluged into the three pin plug.

3 Plug the receiver Home hub into a three pin wall socket

next to your Now tv box connected to the Panasonic TV.

4 Connect the Receiver to your Now TV box with an ethernet cable.

5 Switch both home hub on.

6 In Now Tv box set connection from WiFi to ethernet.

You now have your Now TV box hard wired.

My LG has that setup and my picture is totaly stable, and

the picture quaily looks as if its a 4k stream with the LG

upscaling the HD to 4k, (Mint).

Im not sure, but the sound qualiy could be

Dolby Atoms being pass through to the LG TV speakers, and

the sound bar. ?.

Thanks BF.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

@Anonymous User

I know you probably mean well but as someone who gets their tv and connected equipment calibrated I'm well aware of PLA technology. Quite a bit of my equipment is connected that way. I'm pretty certain you are mistaking 'Power Line Adapters' for a 'home hub' which of course is what BT call their routers.

Talking about home hubs (routers), I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. I always use top end 3rd party routers so as to free me from the constraints of my ISP service.

The picture on my tv is also stable and the only slight issue is with 25fps output, the same way EVERYONE has the issue with 25fps.

Remember 720p, as utilised by NowTV, is not technically HD. Granted a 4K tv does upscale the picture but that doesn't magically turn it into 4K, that's impossible for any system to achieve.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/upscaling-how-does-it-work-and-is-it-worth-it/

Upscaling (also known as upconversion) sounds like you’re getting 4K video quality from 1080p video. That’s not what it is. And it’s far from perfect. It stands to reason that there would be problems with technology that forces a picture into duplicating its pixels to create a fair estimation of a higher resolution.

Whereas it’s implied to be all about precision, upscaling can’t add more detail than is already present.

The main problem with upscaling is the possibility of visual artifacts, increasingly an issue with fast-moving videos. While some material might appear stretched, one notable trouble is the ringing artifact, which appears as a ‘ghost’ or further outline around objects. Blurring and distortion of any sort, especially, will be most noticeable the closer you are to your television or monitor.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi All,

@Anonymous User, Thanks for advice on Home hubs, do you

think why my 720p picture quality looks like

a 4k steam is because I have the ( Advanced Technicolor HDR ) turned

on in my ( Picture setting ) plus the UHD TVs upscaling.

Thanks BF.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

@Anonymous User wrote:

Hi All,

@Anonymous User, Thanks for advice on Home hubs, do you

think why my 720p picture quality looks like

a 4k steam is because I have the ( Advanced Technicolor HDR ) turned

on in my ( Picture setting ) plus the UHD TVs upscaling.

Thanks BF.


Absolutely yes BUT if you were to test out a true 4K or even better HDR source you'd see just how massive the difference is from 720p input to 'real' 4K (or HDR) input.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

The black square NowTV box is identical to Roku 3 in terms of hardware. And 1080p was nothing new when that was released. It's totally capable of 1080

I think these bells and whistles, surround sound too, are kept back because the solution they want to steer you to is Sky subscription. Like the £5 extra will see many considering sky packages instead too.

From a marketing point of view, that makes sense. NowTV being a combination of gateway product into Sky, and making subscribers out of some that would never consider Sky. Win/win

Though these ommisions just mean I share times with Netflix and Amazon, and a few others (movies are what I use) while things remain like this.