Virgin Media Community

[ejp]

I get very poor picture quality when watching Premiership Football matches or Rugby matches on Amazon Prime. (eg football last night).

For everything else picture quality is very good. Including all other Amazon programs, Netflix, iPlayer, Sky, BT, etc.  Even the adverts at half time on Amazon are fine. Its just the football itself!

I have two V6 boxes, one connected to an upmarket Sony TV and the other to a more basic Panasonic. The problem is the same with both. Both are HD TVs.

Moving objects (like the football) are smeary.

My speculation is that Amazon football is sent in a 4k format that the V6 box has difficulty in down levelling to HD. It has no problem with other 4K - so I can watch BT Sport Ultimate and it will successfully show that in HD.

Does anyone else have this problem - or know if Amazon are using an unusual 4k encoding method?

[japitts]

I can't comment on the recent football specifically, that's the wrong-shaped ball 😉

As far as Amazon's live streaming goes, there were a couple of posts on here off the back of the recent Autumn rugby internationals and some very similar comments on CF, that generally reflected my experience. Here you go 

Amazon's non-live streaming is generally fine and entirely what you'd expect, but there's something about their live coverage that's just not the same an HD broadcast channel. I've not been able to put my finger on exactly what.

[ejp]

Those comments you pointed me to exactly refect my experience.   Someone I know in the broadcast TV business has suggested that Amazon, being an American company, could be using US kit for its live broadcasts - and a 60Hz format.  The V6 might be struggling with the conversion to 50Hz.

Its odd that more people aren't complaining. Don't know how to get VM to take this on board.

[LittleMick73]

Hi I have been watching many games on amazon prime via my V6 box and have had perfect images and sound, maybe there is a reason lots of people are not complaining, perhaps its individual problems which as its a streaming setup will point to an Internet issue. Regards Micky
,

[turbine]

I'm watching the football just now on Amazon Prime and the picture quality is fine.

[russellfinch]

I dont think it's a virgin issue, I have watched Amazon's live sport on various different platforms since they started streaming tennis a couple of years ago. It's a juddery mess whatever hardware you use. It looks like they have halved the frame rate or something.

Films can look very good on Prime Video so you'd think the technological might of Amazon could do way better with live sport than they do. It's so poor.   

[M1BDE]

I have been suffering poor picture quality watching football on Prime through my V6 box.

However, tonight I discovered the picture quality is excellent when watching through the app on my LG tv.

Surely Virgin Media can rectify this?

[ejp]

On the other hand my son finds the picture quality of Prime football to be very bad on 4k Fire TV as well.  You would expect Amazon to get it right when watching via an Amazon Fire stick.

[Eeeps]

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@russellfinch wrote:

I dont think it's a virgin issue, I have watched Amazon's live sport on various different platforms since they started streaming tennis a couple of years ago. It's a juddery mess whatever hardware you use. It looks like they have halved the frame rate or something.

Films can look very good on Prime Video so you'd think the technological might of Amazon could do way better with live sport than they do. It's so poor.   

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I agree with that. Started watching the Everton - City match last night on the V6 (Samsung HD TV) and whilst definition was good, it did seem to judder.
So I connected with my Roku (4K version) and did a direct comparison - pictures were identical.

I have both the V6 and Roku set to 'passthrough' so frame rates are passed to the TV. The V6 output was 25p and the Roku 50p.
Almost seems like how the old film based footage used to look.

[japitts]

"Nice" to see the issues that a few people (myself included) found with Amazon's streaming of the Autumn Cup rugby, are still happening.

I remain to be convinced that streaming is appropriate for live sport.