BT ultimate not triggering HDR

[TouchingCloth]

Watching chelsea v villa real on bt ultimate. The picture on my LG oled is incredibly saturated and bright like its  in the shocking vivid picture mode that TV's tend to have. It's as if it's being transmitted in HDR but it's not triggering my tv to switch to HDR mode as would happen with other HDR streams. 

I have backed off every setting in an effort to make it watchable to no avail. Researching suggests HDR from BT is only available via apps on various devices, but not through the virgin BT ultimate channel.

Anyone else got similar issues. 

[IoanaNeacsu]

Yes. It's not a Virgin Media issue, it's BT's problem. If you check on twitter you'll see many people complained about this. It's not the first time when BT f...s this up on Ultimate. Normally they would solve it during the match or at half time. That's a shame because the clarity was better than last season's matches on the Ultimate but the colours and the brightness were way too much up tonight.

[roy247]

Watched it on BT sports 1 as ultimate's picture contrast was so bad.

[TouchingCloth]

It's a shame we have to resort to BT sports 1. Ultimate is obviously native 4k and also uses Dolby atmos at times. At least BT sports HD chanels provide better clarity than sky HD. Goodness knows how bad a bit rate can be before it breaks trading standards rules for calling it HD. Assuming there is one of course

[ozsat]

BT Sport Ultimate is only available in HDR using their apps or their own Box Pro set-top-box on BTtv.

The Ultimate channel on VirginMedia is SDR only and Sky viewers don't get Ultimate at all.

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@TouchingCloth wrote:

Watching chelsea v villa real on bt ultimate. The picture on my LG oled is incredibly saturated and bright like its  in the shocking vivid picture mode that TV's tend to have. It's as if it's being transmitted in HDR but it's not triggering my tv to switch to HDR mode as would happen with other HDR streams. 

I have backed off every setting in an effort to make it watchable to no avail. Researching suggests HDR from BT is only available via apps on various devices, but not through the virgin BT ultimate channel.

Anyone else got similar issues. 

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[TouchingCloth]

Hi Ozat,

You will have read in my original post that I had discovered after researching that the HDR transmission was only available through the apps. However the picture was so oversaturated that it looked like a HDR broadcast not triggering the tv to adjust its setting. Turns out this has been an issue with ultimate broadcasts before, making it unwatchable and having to resort to std HD broadcast rather than the 4k version.

I'm not really bothered what sky customers can and cannot get.  I pay virgin for my services. So I expect to get a quality broadcast. Much the same as having to pay extra for sky movies in 4 k. I cant see the point as my tv upscales HD content pretty well. It's only the HDR 4 k transmissions that really show the capabilities of my new tv. 

Both sky and Virgin are being left behind by other streaming services that offer so much more content in 4K HDR plus Dolby atmos. 

[ozsat]

BTtv has BT Ultimate in HDR with Atmos.  It is not the services are being left behind - it is the services are keeping the stuff to themselves.

[BenMcr]

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@ozsat wrote:

BTtv has BT Ultimate in HDR with Atmos.  It is not the services are being left behind - it is the services are keeping the stuff to themselves.

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Indeed. Virgin Media were able to offer Eurosport UHD with HDR for the Olympics as a linear channel, along with all the streaming apps that do offer UHD HDR.

[TouchingCloth]

Of course the varios companies will want to keep the best options to themselves. Hence nobody else has access to virgins 4k channel. Though I doubt anyone would want it lol. 

The eurosport Olympic coverage in 4k HDR was great to look at but the sound issues took most of the olympic period to get sorted. I understand this was probably not virgins issue either. 

My point is not what that I want various additions to the sky platform, if they arrive great if they don't I move to where the best options to me are available.  It was purely that there appeared to be an issue with the picture quality of the BT ultimate service, I wondered if it was an issue with the virgin media box being fed an HDR signal that it was unable to decode, hence not auto switching the tv setting for the best viewing experience. 

It turns out it was just a dreadful picture that was unwatchable and not what I expect from my subscription 

[Bladehearts]

Given that BT Ultimate is Virgin's only UHD sport offering, its utterly ridiculous that the channel is unwatchably bright and therefore forces people to downgrade to the BT HD Channel.

Although at least the BT HD Channels are genuine HD quality, unlike the picture quality on the Sky Sports HD Channels which is horrific, grainy and completely washed out.