Why did the College Football Championship game look so good on my Roamio?

Perhaps the broadcast just had less compression than usual. HD can be made to look pretty unpleasant by the cable TV providers. If you recorded it, you can check the bitrate using KMTTG; otherwise, you can do some math based on the reported file size and duration.

p.s. math on my recording's info seems to indicate around 3.9 Mbps (and I'm assuming MP4; 4h54m & 8.37GB)

billdz said:

Much to my surprise, when the game came the picture was fantastic, much better than regular HD. What happened? Did the Roamio somehow get upgraded to 4K, did the TCL somehow upscale the video to 4K, or what?
Thanks for any info,
Bill

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Two things come to mind. First, Maybe they used better camera equipment. To maintain 4k, all the parts from the field to your cable feed have to use parts good enough to support 4k.

Second, your TCL always upgrades to a 4k display. My old Sony always upgrades to 2k. Add that to the increased bit rate and you get a better picture.

I watched this on YouTube TV, broadcast in 1080p I believe, with a mid-range Samsung 4K doing the upscaling. Definitely agree. This picture blew me away compared to the past 2 weeks of NFL playoffs on Spectrum cable.

Would agree with the poster above. This is likely due to better equipment plus bitrate.

I think the answer clearly is because the correct Tigers won.

lalouque said:

I think the answer clearly is because the correct Tigers won.

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I was going to post that it was because Trump was there, but I want to keep things nice.

JoeKustra said:

I was going to post that it was because Trump was there, but I want to keep things nice.

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What's NOT 'nice' - pleasant or whatever if 'Your President' Trump is present? I'd say certainly 'DESERVING'!!!!!

Thanks for the replies. Well, if this was something less than true 4K, which it apparently was, I can't wait to watch football in true 4K, I'll have to upgrade to a Bolt or something.

@JoeKustra - "your TCL always upgrades to a 4k display." - Yes, but most football games in regular HD look the same as they did on my old, non-4K TV.

FYI, the NFL Super Bowl will be telecast in true HDR 4K, and for those with just a Roamio it can be viewed in 4K with the Fox Sports app.

billdz said:

@JoeKustra - "your TCL always upgrades to a 4k display." - Yes, but most football games in regular HD look the same as they did on my old, non-4K TV.
FYI, the NFL Super Bowl will be telecast in true HDR 4K, and for those with just a Roamio it can be viewed in 4K with the Fox Sports app.

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That's nice to know. It's sometime informative to check the bit-rate. When the originating channel has a bunch of sub-channels, it's a good bet the bit-rate is low. While kmttg does display bit rate, a recording can be checked with a simple formula:
size (in GB) * 8192 /Time (in minutes) /60 = Mbps. Trouble is TE4 doesn't show size. My best network was ESPN at 13Mbps, but I don't receive it anymore.

I've already deleted the LSU game but, for future reference, how do we get file size to check the bit rate?

billdz said:

I've already deleted the LSU game but, for future reference, how do we get file size to check the bit rate?

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On TE3 it's easy. Just select the program from my shows. In the next display, where it starts with Play, hit Info. Scroll down.

On TE4, I don't know. I haven't found it. But I have pyTivo Desktop and it displays the program size.

I remember when an hour of HD used over 8GB. Now, with sub-channels, my NBC and CBS have dropped to 5GB.

billdz said:

I've already deleted the LSU game but, for future reference, how do we get file size to check the bit rate?

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BTW, delete only moves it to the Deleted Programs folder. Go there and recover it. If you killed it (delete permanently), it's gone to heaven.

billdz said:

FYI, the NFL Super Bowl will be telecast in true HDR 4K, and for those with just a Roamio it can be viewed in 4K with the Fox Sports app.

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... but not via any TiVo, since that's not a supported app for the TiVo platform.

Supported devices/platforms >here<.

JoeKustra said:

simple formula:
size (in GB) * 8192 /Time (in minutes) /60 = Mbps

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For reference, 8192 (Mb/GB) = 1024 MB/1 GB * 8 bits/1 Byte

billdz said:

When I learned last week the LSU-Clemson would be telecast in 4K, I researched how to watch in 4K, since I have a TCL 4K TV. But I was disappointed to learn on this forum that my Roamio (and Mini) do not support 4K. So, I resigned myself to watching the game in ordinary HD.

Much to my surprise, when the game came the picture was fantastic, much better than regular HD. What happened? Did the Roamio somehow get upgraded to 4K, did the TCL somehow upscale the video to 4K, or what?

Thanks for any info,
Bill

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Yeah, UHD is a bit of a hoax, just like HD was a bit of a hoax, just like SD was a bit of a hoax.

Heck, I imagine I could fool a lot of people in to thinking they were watching 4K HDR with a nicely produced DVD on a 50" TV.

A lot of UHD movies were upscaled from 2k or have elements (such as special effects) that were produced in 2k.

We could have stuck with SD a lot longer as a standard if we ever bothered to take full advantage of it.

krkaufman said:

... but not via any TiVo, since that's not a supported app for the TiVo platform.

Supported devices/platforms >here<.

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Yes, you need a Roku, Fire, etc. to watch in 4K. My TCL has built in Roku.

billdz said:

Yes, you need a Roku, Fire, etc. to watch in 4K. My TCL has built in Roku.

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I have a Roku. To access the Fox Sports app, I need access to my cable's Fox Sports channel. I don't have that (or any sports channel). But when it (the 4k game) is carried on the Fox network then I will upgrade my stuff to support 4k. I'll wait.

I watched it on ESPN via Comcast, and it looked like crap. Probably Comcast is to blame for that, since they use crazy low bitrates.

Tonight I compared the picture from Fox for the NFC championship between my Roamio and the Fox Sports app on my Roku. The picture on the app was much better, although not quite as good as the LSU-Clemson last week on the Roamio. Must be the bitrate, since presumably they used the same cameras and equipment for both feeds.

One downside of using the app is no pause/rewind/fast forward. I had gotten used to waiting 30 minutes before starting to watch a game with the Roamio, so I could fast forward through all the commercials. But you have to watch the commercials if you use the app.

JoeKustra said:

I have a Roku. To access the Fox Sports app, I need access to my cable's Fox Sports channel. I don't have that (or any sports channel). But when it (the 4k game) is carried on the Fox network then I will upgrade my stuff to support 4k. I'll wait.

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Yes, and that seems not really fair, since the game is on Fox, not Fox Sports. You even need a paid provider too watch on fox.com or the Fox Now app.

billdz said:

Yes, and that seems not really fair, since the game is on Fox, not Fox Sports. You even need a paid provider too watch on fox.com or the Fox Now app.

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Thanks, but I don't feel that bad. I seldom watched sports, and removing all sports from my cable feed saves me $30 per month.

Luke M said:

I watched it on ESPN via Comcast, and it looked like crap. Probably Comcast is to blame for that, since they use crazy low bitrates.

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By today's standards, cable sucks.