Another round of picture quality comparisons, including DirecTV Stream, YouTube TV, Verizon Fios, Over-The-Air, Peacock, and the ABC app. Also a quick discussion of the DirecTV super-high bitrate myth.
A follow up to previous image quality comparisons, this time focused on scripted, cable network content.
In recent months I’ve seen a lot of online posts stating that “YouTube TV streams at a ‘low bitrate’” and as such can never provide acceptable picture quality.Let’s do a quick comparison to determine what the the difference in bitrate is between Hulu Live TV and YouTube TV and if it has any significant effect on picture quality.
The Super Bowl is considered to be one of the biggest annual sporting events in US. As such, one would expect the Network and local affiliates to pull out all of the stops to deliver the best possible product. Let’s take a look at how NBC 10 Philadelphia did with this and compare image quality across a few different sources (traditional TV and streaming).
It has often been assumed that over-the-air or cable tv sources will offer better image quality when compared to live TV streamed over the Internet, but this isn’t universally true. Especially in recent years since the FCC repurposed TV spectrum for cellular phone service. Here we compare some still frames from a local news broadcast using Verizon Fios and YouTube TV as the source.
Live sports is one of the primary reasons for purchasing a TV subscription (traditional cable TV or streaming). Considering the costs (thanks, Regional Sports Networks) one might expect that video quality would be top notch, but unfortunately this may not be the case. Surprisingly enough, YouTube TV and ESPN+ may have jumped past traditional TV sources when it comes to image quality.