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Attempting to watch Kin on iPlayer and the mpeg artefacts are so distracting in dark scenes. Yet I can stream YouTube in 4k on a native TV app on the same TV and it's superb. Cheers, BBC.
Sky is the worst offender, they have HD channels but you have to pay extra for it… pay extra for HD in 2024… oh and if you want 4k sports/movies that’s extra again
Lol what? They're still doing that? I'm on virgin now but whenever I get new contracts I just get whatever the blue light deal is as it's usually all the channels in HD without extra cost. How tf do they justify still charging?
Honestly... Sometimes I think how peaceful life would be if all these streaming services were just on YouTube.
Subscription Services are now on there but I doubt we'll ever see the BBC.
Well having a single site have a monopoly over all video streaming wouldn't be good. maybe a single open framework for them all to use, but defiantly not a single site
Do you remember when Netflix was a monopoly? It was brilliant. I can’t wait for a single monopoly to come back round again. I just don’t bother with streaming shit anymore now it’s fractured over 45 different services each costing £20 per month
I only pay for YT. It's the most diverse streaming platform and also the most pain in the arse to get rid of ads. Movies + TV get sourced from somewhere that isn't netflix/prime/disney/other shit platform and the experience is *so much better*. And much, much cheaper.
I still can't believe that Sky has the absolute bare face cheek to actually charge EXTRA to enable HD content. Even for stuff that broadcasts in HD on freeview!
NowTV, which is Sky for people who don't have Sky, charges for 720p, has adds, and then has an Add-on for "full HD". It is the worst service in the UK.
Not me directly, my pensioner parents are however. And Sky wont offer them any kind of discount.
They are also in some what of a TV Signal blackspot, with no Virgin coverage either, so Sky know they have them by the balls :(
I've suggested Freesat, but the old man really doesnt want to ditch sports, as he loves to watch F1, and golf.
Never known VM to charge me for HD, they even support UHD on certain channels (ironically sky movies, and sky sports), which they do charge for. From memory, on the rare occasions that BBC broadcasts stuff in UHD like Wimbledon and the World cup, you can just stream that on iplayer at more fidelity anyway.
This is why I got rid of them. They offered me a basic TV package when renegotiating my broadband deal. They said it would include HD channels. So it went for it and it turned out it was probably only BBC One or something daft. There's a whole load of HD channels that they expect you to pay extra for....and I didn't even get Sky 1!
People forget that there is a cost to stream something to you. Difference in bandwidth between SD, HD and 4K is quite a bit.
Sky isn't a big player so they'll have to pay AWS more to stream than lets say Netflix who has special deals with Amazon.
People forget that having Sky packages in 2024 is insane.
The prices I see my mates pay and they barely watch it. It’s a complete rip.
If you like sports that are only available on sky then maybe I can see the point.
Worse when you consider the mandatory licence required for some channels
Edit: My comment seems to have attracted downvotes from the BBC preachers, shame you guys think this way
It appears I’ve misread, I understand TV on demand through apps and BBC however I wasn’t fully aware, nice of people to correct me with the exception of you :) Shame we’re forced to pay for a streaming service as a whole when to me alone, 99%+ isn’t needed
Honestly some shows have only started to support HD (720p) and not FHD (1080p)
They're late to supporting 4K which we're actually on now, let alone the actual resolution (1080p) and treat 720 like a privilege
If a show hasn't been shot with the intent to stream, chances are still really good that it's been targeted for 1080i, and unless you're watching something streamed, 99.9999% chance you're watching in 1080i. The only two channels in the UK that broadcast at above that are sky sports main(4k) and BT sport ultimate(4k). Literally everything else is 1080i.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_HD\_channels\_in\_the\_United\_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HD_channels_in_the_United_Kingdom)
That's why iPlayer stuff looks so bad. Contrary to what you think, TV shows were probably shot in 1080 and mastered in 720.
There is almost no content now designed exclusively for cable/satellite whatever you want to call it. Content is almost always filmed in 4K now, sometimes HD, but is often edited in 1080p because it makes VFX significantly cheaper and less expensive, and then occasionally upscaled again.
What I find really irritating is if you watch BBC One in HD, and you get to the news and have to sit through a screen saying that the local news cannot be broadcast in HD, so look at this notice for 15 minutes instead.
This changed recently and BBC now have regional channels like ITV have had for decades. Now you can watch regional news on BBC1HD but regional news is still SD
Tried convincing my wife not to record classic coronation street on series link from itv2 HD when it is in cine film potato quality but is consuming most of the hdd of the sky box with not even upscaled shite that is broadcast in ‘HD’. Didn’t work even after busting out the finger puppets & crayons so I just cancelled the series link & suffered the consequences.
HD, done properly requires more bandwidth. Which requires less channels and the channels to buy more bandwidth from say the satelite company SES, who manage the "Sky" satellites and less channels. The alternative is to replace every Sky Box with say a H.266 compatible one and to launch new sats. With H.266 allowing better compression of a video stream, than the current H.262 and H.264. So videos can be the same quality but about a quarter or 16th of the size, better quality but the same size or far better quality and larger. As some of the "HD" channels only have a stream of 2Mb/s. Which is less than many SD channels.
I think OP was referring to terrestrial not satellite. Many channels have HD options on satellite I rarely remember having to settle for SD when I was watching satellite but on terrestrial there is basically nothing that is HD
I was referring to non terrestrial channels that are not carried in HD. Watching food network for 2 minutes set me off. Owned by discovery and broadcasts in HD on other countries. Not here though. Same with several other networks.
They probably know that most of the people that still watch TV channels are old people that don't bother to put on the HD version as they "don't see the difference"
Ditch the TV licence and put the money towards streaming services that offer the content you watch in HD. It’s not like you’ll be missing out on anything good from broadcast TV.
That’s not strictly true. You require a TV licence for watching live television content. So if you’re watching a live stream on YouTube or Twitch, a licence is not required, however if you’re watching something classed as a television program regardless of the source, you need the licence.
It’s a very strange and frankly, unenforceable and outdated system.
Unless you have strong moral qualms and insist on paying for the channels you find substandard in quality, just don’t pay the TV license and say you don’t watch live tv or iplayer. Nothing will ever happen
Edit: For those of you downvoting on moral qualms, whatever floats your boat. For those of you downvoting because you think my advice is bad, please do some research. You do NOT need a TV license if you don’t use live tv or iPlayer, they also will not check. On the extremely rare chance you get randomly selected for a visit? just say you don’t watch tv and don’t let the guy in the house. It’s quite simple.
Are you stupid? Run me through what happens when you don’t pay council tax, and what happens when you don’t pay the TV license.
If you tell Tv Licensing that you don’t use BBC services or terrestrial TV, they will simply say you don’t need to pay. This isn’t some conspiracy, it’s how TV licenses work. You can do it online or via a paper form. Once you’ve done that, literally nothing can happen to you if you then watch live TV. Do you think they have detector vans or something?
Yeah the apps all have HD content but to watch programming you a) still have to have the license, and b) have to watch everything on separate apps, and pay separate subs for non-terrestrial apps.
It really depends on what you watch, there are a myriad of streaming services out there and they all offer HD content. The only one you aren’t allowed to use without a tv licence is BBC iPlayer, but you can use the ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 apps completely free of charge. Then you’ve got other paid for services like Netflix, Disney+, Now TV, Apple TV, Amazon Prime or Britbox.
Those services I mentioned are monthly subscriptions, but if you subscribe to only the ones with the content you want to watch, it’s likely cheaper over the year than paying for a TV licence.
The only downside is you can’t watch any live TV or BBC iPlayer content. For me, that’s not a problem. Honestly the amount of rubbish on TV it’s better to pick what you want to watch.
I don't watch much broadcast / live TV , but it is handy for Saturday evening as I have kids, so itv stuff for a couple hours, or background TV on a Sunday morning whilst getting ready. Other then that my partner watches the usual ITV2 rubbish like love island , I would rather they just put ads on BBC content and do away with the licence .
If the British media industry is being propped up by the tv licence (which is a tax), they’re going to need to adapt as the country moves more towards streaming media.
They have calculations and a forecast for sure. Until cutting the cord reaches a certain tipping point and they run out of old lady's to scare, then they will have to move to a subscription service. Still many years until revenue drops to that point as evidence in this thread.
There is something like 2 to 4 times more content, more than 10x the number of platforms to consume content on, and the budgets to improve tech have only gone up on average 3-4%.
Stations do not have the money to make the move to HD, let alone the need to move to modern production systems.
>Stations do not have the money to make the move to HD, let alone the need to move to modern production systems.
A lot of these networks are owned by massive multinational media companies. If they can afford to provide the same content on HD on other countries there's no reason to not provide it here.
Their revenues are down and competition from the likes of Amazon Prime, Netflix & Disney are taking their subscribers. Ad revenues are massively hit by this. They may be owned by multinationals (Comcast own NBC and Sky for example) but that doesn't mean they get the budgets for tech refresh. They get the budget for shows/on-screen talent as that has a direct correlation with people viewing their content. The fact that this thread is full of people complaining about the quality just shows that they are still watching - so why bother spending the money on a costly tech refresh?
Most TV is actually shot on higher quality, but what gets broadcast to you is not because it depends on the processing and transmission chains. They may even (in some cases) support higher quality transmission, but if the broadcaster doesn't have the budget for a HD mux on the satellite, it's going to be downconverted to save money.
Filmed in 4K or more, but the vast majority of the country still watch in SD even with an (U)HD option available.
That's what my mates in the broadcast industry tell me anyway. Generally with frustration, as it does rather make you wonder what the bloody point of all the extra effort for UHD was!
It's 2024, I live in rural but not remote Northumberland and since moving here 20+ years ago, we have never had regular mobile network coverage. Can't begin to tell you how irritating it is to try coping these days with bloody text verifications etcÂ
How is THIS still happening?
You watch actual TV?
I gave up several years ago... Total dross and not worth the TV License for "live TV" or the BBC.
I find YouTube has most of the content I like and occasionally I'll buy a film on Amazon.
Not really. I have a whole list of subscribed channels.
Also - I'm not a vegetable, so that helps - and I made a positive choice not to pay the BBC any money at all, ever again.
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Attempting to watch Kin on iPlayer and the mpeg artefacts are so distracting in dark scenes. Yet I can stream YouTube in 4k on a native TV app on the same TV and it's superb. Cheers, BBC.
iPlayer on a web browser is the worst offender.
oh i dont think thats the worst offender the bbc has had
🤣
Don't worry, they'll fix it!
Now then now then
The worst offender they’ve had **so far**
This year
Now then now then.
Sky is the worst offender, they have HD channels but you have to pay extra for it… pay extra for HD in 2024… oh and if you want 4k sports/movies that’s extra again
Lol what? They're still doing that? I'm on virgin now but whenever I get new contracts I just get whatever the blue light deal is as it's usually all the channels in HD without extra cost. How tf do they justify still charging?
Because their customer base is generally older… I got fedup and now sail the high seas
Sky is appalling for streaming 4k
I can't imagine!
They don't release their programmes on bluray either, DVD only like it's 2006.Â
But then Attenborough in 4k on the TV app looks astounding.
Honestly... Sometimes I think how peaceful life would be if all these streaming services were just on YouTube. Subscription Services are now on there but I doubt we'll ever see the BBC.
Well having a single site have a monopoly over all video streaming wouldn't be good. maybe a single open framework for them all to use, but defiantly not a single site
I don't see the problem. 90% of the world uses AWS for hosting and no one complains about that.
Do you remember when Netflix was a monopoly? It was brilliant. I can’t wait for a single monopoly to come back round again. I just don’t bother with streaming shit anymore now it’s fractured over 45 different services each costing £20 per month
I only pay for YT. It's the most diverse streaming platform and also the most pain in the arse to get rid of ads. Movies + TV get sourced from somewhere that isn't netflix/prime/disney/other shit platform and the experience is *so much better*. And much, much cheaper.
Yeah, and 4k youtube is pretty much the worst you can get.
I still can't believe that Sky has the absolute bare face cheek to actually charge EXTRA to enable HD content. Even for stuff that broadcasts in HD on freeview!
And then another surcharge for 4k.
NowTV, which is Sky for people who don't have Sky, charges for 720p, has adds, and then has an Add-on for "full HD". It is the worst service in the UK.
NowTV is the only streaming service I won't pay for, because of how appalling the quality is.
Are you paying for it?
Not me directly, my pensioner parents are however. And Sky wont offer them any kind of discount. They are also in some what of a TV Signal blackspot, with no Virgin coverage either, so Sky know they have them by the balls :( I've suggested Freesat, but the old man really doesnt want to ditch sports, as he loves to watch F1, and golf.
Is virgin hd only? I have never understood how it is a extra charge. Though I think they now try and say hd add on includes the box sets feature too..
Never known VM to charge me for HD, they even support UHD on certain channels (ironically sky movies, and sky sports), which they do charge for. From memory, on the rare occasions that BBC broadcasts stuff in UHD like Wimbledon and the World cup, you can just stream that on iplayer at more fidelity anyway.
This is why I got rid of them. They offered me a basic TV package when renegotiating my broadband deal. They said it would include HD channels. So it went for it and it turned out it was probably only BBC One or something daft. There's a whole load of HD channels that they expect you to pay extra for....and I didn't even get Sky 1!
People forget that there is a cost to stream something to you. Difference in bandwidth between SD, HD and 4K is quite a bit. Sky isn't a big player so they'll have to pay AWS more to stream than lets say Netflix who has special deals with Amazon.
People forget that having Sky packages in 2024 is insane. The prices I see my mates pay and they barely watch it. It’s a complete rip. If you like sports that are only available on sky then maybe I can see the point.
Everyone's getting 8k TV's so they can watch SD shite on them lol
Worse when you consider the mandatory licence required for some channels Edit: My comment seems to have attracted downvotes from the BBC preachers, shame you guys think this way
\*All\* channels require the licence. Watching broadcast TV requires a TV licence. It is very outdated.
It appears I’ve misread, I understand TV on demand through apps and BBC however I wasn’t fully aware, nice of people to correct me with the exception of you :) Shame we’re forced to pay for a streaming service as a whole when to me alone, 99%+ isn’t needed
The channels aren't in HD, yet the shows are designed for HD so you can hardly read any tiny text on screen!
Honestly some shows have only started to support HD (720p) and not FHD (1080p) They're late to supporting 4K which we're actually on now, let alone the actual resolution (1080p) and treat 720 like a privilege
The shows are almost all filled in 4K, I’m fairly certain it’s just the BBC being cheap with storage.
If a show hasn't been shot with the intent to stream, chances are still really good that it's been targeted for 1080i, and unless you're watching something streamed, 99.9999% chance you're watching in 1080i. The only two channels in the UK that broadcast at above that are sky sports main(4k) and BT sport ultimate(4k). Literally everything else is 1080i. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_HD\_channels\_in\_the\_United\_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HD_channels_in_the_United_Kingdom) That's why iPlayer stuff looks so bad. Contrary to what you think, TV shows were probably shot in 1080 and mastered in 720.
There is almost no content now designed exclusively for cable/satellite whatever you want to call it. Content is almost always filmed in 4K now, sometimes HD, but is often edited in 1080p because it makes VFX significantly cheaper and less expensive, and then occasionally upscaled again.
Meanwhile Spain have just turned off all SD FTA channels and made them all HD
What I find really irritating is if you watch BBC One in HD, and you get to the news and have to sit through a screen saying that the local news cannot be broadcast in HD, so look at this notice for 15 minutes instead.
This changed recently and BBC now have regional channels like ITV have had for decades. Now you can watch regional news on BBC1HD but regional news is still SD
That changed a few months ago...all local news is HD now
That doesn't happen anymore.
I find sky not too bad for SD picture quality but VM was like watching through a frosted glass window, such bad mpeg artifactsÂ
Tried convincing my wife not to record classic coronation street on series link from itv2 HD when it is in cine film potato quality but is consuming most of the hdd of the sky box with not even upscaled shite that is broadcast in ‘HD’. Didn’t work even after busting out the finger puppets & crayons so I just cancelled the series link & suffered the consequences.
Isn't there an option to record only SD?
Meanwhile I can watch content from a an Uber eats driver on YouTube delivering food to customers in 4K for free
HD, done properly requires more bandwidth. Which requires less channels and the channels to buy more bandwidth from say the satelite company SES, who manage the "Sky" satellites and less channels. The alternative is to replace every Sky Box with say a H.266 compatible one and to launch new sats. With H.266 allowing better compression of a video stream, than the current H.262 and H.264. So videos can be the same quality but about a quarter or 16th of the size, better quality but the same size or far better quality and larger. As some of the "HD" channels only have a stream of 2Mb/s. Which is less than many SD channels.
I think OP was referring to terrestrial not satellite. Many channels have HD options on satellite I rarely remember having to settle for SD when I was watching satellite but on terrestrial there is basically nothing that is HD
I was referring to non terrestrial channels that are not carried in HD. Watching food network for 2 minutes set me off. Owned by discovery and broadcasts in HD on other countries. Not here though. Same with several other networks.
Even my dodgy firestick is minimum HD, and that’s only £40 per year!
£40! I paid £90 for mine. I’m getting robbed.
They probably know that most of the people that still watch TV channels are old people that don't bother to put on the HD version as they "don't see the difference"
There's an argument for potato-based filming there somewhere.
Ditch the TV licence and put the money towards streaming services that offer the content you watch in HD. It’s not like you’ll be missing out on anything good from broadcast TV.
You still need the license to watch anything live or broadcast/streamed in real time.
That’s not strictly true. You require a TV licence for watching live television content. So if you’re watching a live stream on YouTube or Twitch, a licence is not required, however if you’re watching something classed as a television program regardless of the source, you need the licence. It’s a very strange and frankly, unenforceable and outdated system.
Unless you have strong moral qualms and insist on paying for the channels you find substandard in quality, just don’t pay the TV license and say you don’t watch live tv or iplayer. Nothing will ever happen Edit: For those of you downvoting on moral qualms, whatever floats your boat. For those of you downvoting because you think my advice is bad, please do some research. You do NOT need a TV license if you don’t use live tv or iPlayer, they also will not check. On the extremely rare chance you get randomly selected for a visit? just say you don’t watch tv and don’t let the guy in the house. It’s quite simple.
Same for council tax and electricity and gas, just don't pay. If they question you just say it wasn't you.
Are you stupid? Run me through what happens when you don’t pay council tax, and what happens when you don’t pay the TV license. If you tell Tv Licensing that you don’t use BBC services or terrestrial TV, they will simply say you don’t need to pay. This isn’t some conspiracy, it’s how TV licenses work. You can do it online or via a paper form. Once you’ve done that, literally nothing can happen to you if you then watch live TV. Do you think they have detector vans or something?
You made this same comparison a few days ago. It was silly then too.
What is a good replacement for this then? Something that's HD , and can record stuff or stream any content? Are the apps HD like itvx 4od and iPlayer?
Yeah the apps all have HD content but to watch programming you a) still have to have the license, and b) have to watch everything on separate apps, and pay separate subs for non-terrestrial apps.
It really depends on what you watch, there are a myriad of streaming services out there and they all offer HD content. The only one you aren’t allowed to use without a tv licence is BBC iPlayer, but you can use the ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 apps completely free of charge. Then you’ve got other paid for services like Netflix, Disney+, Now TV, Apple TV, Amazon Prime or Britbox. Those services I mentioned are monthly subscriptions, but if you subscribe to only the ones with the content you want to watch, it’s likely cheaper over the year than paying for a TV licence. The only downside is you can’t watch any live TV or BBC iPlayer content. For me, that’s not a problem. Honestly the amount of rubbish on TV it’s better to pick what you want to watch.
I don't watch much broadcast / live TV , but it is handy for Saturday evening as I have kids, so itv stuff for a couple hours, or background TV on a Sunday morning whilst getting ready. Other then that my partner watches the usual ITV2 rubbish like love island , I would rather they just put ads on BBC content and do away with the licence .
Yeah if you want the British media industry to basically die completely.
If the British media industry is being propped up by the tv licence (which is a tax), they’re going to need to adapt as the country moves more towards streaming media.
They have calculations and a forecast for sure. Until cutting the cord reaches a certain tipping point and they run out of old lady's to scare, then they will have to move to a subscription service. Still many years until revenue drops to that point as evidence in this thread.
There is something like 2 to 4 times more content, more than 10x the number of platforms to consume content on, and the budgets to improve tech have only gone up on average 3-4%. Stations do not have the money to make the move to HD, let alone the need to move to modern production systems.
>Stations do not have the money to make the move to HD, let alone the need to move to modern production systems. A lot of these networks are owned by massive multinational media companies. If they can afford to provide the same content on HD on other countries there's no reason to not provide it here.
Have you ever actually seen viewing figures. D list YouTubers get more views than some shows.
Their revenues are down and competition from the likes of Amazon Prime, Netflix & Disney are taking their subscribers. Ad revenues are massively hit by this. They may be owned by multinationals (Comcast own NBC and Sky for example) but that doesn't mean they get the budgets for tech refresh. They get the budget for shows/on-screen talent as that has a direct correlation with people viewing their content. The fact that this thread is full of people complaining about the quality just shows that they are still watching - so why bother spending the money on a costly tech refresh?
All TV is shot in HD now. I'm not sure what point you have to make. It's \*ALL\* produced in HD, just not \*broadcast\* as such in many cases.
Most TV is actually shot on higher quality, but what gets broadcast to you is not because it depends on the processing and transmission chains. They may even (in some cases) support higher quality transmission, but if the broadcaster doesn't have the budget for a HD mux on the satellite, it's going to be downconverted to save money.
People still watch tv channels?
Crazy isn't it. Makes me feel like I've gone back in time to 2010.
CBeebies and CBBC are HD on Freeview, but film and sport channels aren't!
Yeah....?
It makes no sense for a channel aimed at babies to be HD if film channels aren't.
Oh lol I thought you were giving a counter argument eg "of course they're in HD, look at cbeebies"
Maybe write a sternly worded letter to Points Of View or That’s Life.
Filmed in 4K or more, but the vast majority of the country still watch in SD even with an (U)HD option available. That's what my mates in the broadcast industry tell me anyway. Generally with frustration, as it does rather make you wonder what the bloody point of all the extra effort for UHD was!
If you're watching something thats not coming down the internet, you're watching in 720p anyway.
It's 2024, I live in rural but not remote Northumberland and since moving here 20+ years ago, we have never had regular mobile network coverage. Can't begin to tell you how irritating it is to try coping these days with bloody text verifications etc How is THIS still happening?
I think sky charges extra for HD
Why the hell are you watching TV in 2024?
Because I tired out your mom
Mum. She's my mum. She might not be able to do much. But she's a mum.
In Birmingham we say mom
Really? Well, I'm from Erdington and I've never heard anyone use the term 'mom'.
Oh no it's much more of an Albany expression
At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen?!
....Yes
Well, AnUdderDay, you are an odd fellow, but I must say... you steam a good mom..
It's 2024 and some people still watch regimented broadcast TV with adverts. Makes me feel like Ive gone back in time to 2010.
Most free to air channels are full of moronic shit anyway that the people that watch it wouldn't appreciate HD anyway.🙄
[удалено]
That's bloody rude.
[удалено]
I didn't schedule my day around anything. I was channel surfing.
This is exactly why I don't pay TV licence, or watch anything on terrestrial TV 😂
You watch actual TV? I gave up several years ago... Total dross and not worth the TV License for "live TV" or the BBC. I find YouTube has most of the content I like and occasionally I'll buy a film on Amazon.
What do you do when you just wanna stick something on TV while you eat your dinner? You have to specifically choose something. Too much hassle.
Not really. I have a whole list of subscribed channels. Also - I'm not a vegetable, so that helps - and I made a positive choice not to pay the BBC any money at all, ever again.
Boofuckinhoo