Streaming Quality /Vs 360 Recordings

[charlestsa]

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,CH5. On A/B switching ALL the streamed programmes looked somewhat flat and lacking in fine detail with visible noise often noticeable especially on bright outdoor scenes.

Obviously if you have a small screen or a non premium TV then these issues will not be as noticeable.

For the ultimate picture quality when you cannot view when transmitted the "old fashioned" way of recording on a V360 to a hard disc is by far the superior way.

Hopefully Virgin will continue with this method and not go down the Sky route of streaming only!

[Roger_Gooner]

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.

[japitts]

I've picked a multiplex which carries a sport channel and thus particularly variable bitrate requirements.. it does alter quite substantially.

Taken from the same page, with the bitrate in graphical format..

[Roger_Gooner]

Yes, bitrates do vary as Sky adjusts the bitrates dynamically to meet their quality standards or to deal with networking or satellite transmission issues. If those bitrates are within VM's parameters then VM can rebroadcast as received, otherwise VM can re-encode to meet its own standards. As a fixed line operator VM isn't bothered about its networking constraints as its content providers might be about theirs.