Streaming Quality /Vs 360 Recordings
Streaming is the modern way to view TV but is it the best? In my opinion definitely no! I have a Samsung 77" OLED TV and a Virgin 360 box. Set up identical recordings vs stream on BBC1,2 ITV CH 4,CH...
Forum Discussion
If the same programme was both broadcast and streamed by VM, I'd expect quality to be better for streaming. As VM's STBs get streams from the BBC’s CDN network via VM's direct peering agreements, then I'd expect top video and audio quality. Furthermore the use of adaptive bitrate streaming enables a better user experience during adverse network conditions as ABR can switch to a lower bitrate or resolution whereas broadcasting is done at a fixed bitrate and resolution and is more prone to problems such as buffering or freezing.
Try ITVX live streaming. The quality is appalling. Live terrestial broadcasts or hard drive recording are superior.
Whether its the 360 'upgrade' or streaming, these changes aren't always for your benefit. They are saving money and increasing profits for the provider.
Roger_Gooner wrote:Furthermore the use of adaptive bitrate streaming enables a better user experience during adverse network conditions as ABR can switch to a lower bitrate or resolution whereas broadcasting is done at a fixed bitrate and resolution and is more prone to problems such as buffering or freezing.
I'm not entirely sure that's true. I'm certain VM's headends alter the bitrate on broadcast TX to cope with varying requirements in real-time.
And insufficient bitrate would tend to exhibit in poor detail during fast-moving sequences, rather than buffering.
VM's central headend knows nothing of downstream network reliability, its job is to process the TV content received and to rebroadcast it. Output resolution is always 576i, 1080i and 2160p50 for SD, HD and UHD respectively (with fields per second of 50 for SD and HD and frames per second of 50 for UHD), and VM has standards for minimum levels of bitrates. So, some re-encoding is always done to achieve these standards before multicasting over the core IP network to the regional headends and onto the STBs.
