example 3, roku display at 720, tablo encoded at 1080
example 3, roku display at 1080, tablo encoded at 1080
I can’t say anything much changed with tablo 1080 content. The tablo 1080 content is just so bad for sports… when viewed on a roku. Stepping the roku display down to 720 didn’t really improve anything.
This is why I’m stepping the tablo back down to 720. Now I’ll wait to see how the next OTA 1080i brodcast (captured by tablo at 720) looks with the roku at 1080 display output. It surely will be better than this and next couple of examples.
example 4, roku display at 1080, tablo encoded at 720
example 4, roku display at 1080, tablo encoded at 1080
This is showing how poorly tablo 1080 encoding captured nice clean crisp computer graphics… the 49ers logo in the score board is awful, but yet, a 720 OTA and tablo 720 encoding (above) handles CG team logos just fine.
example 5, roku display at 1080, tablo encoded at 720
example 5, roku display at 1080, tablo encoded at 1080
This just further highlights how poorly tablo 1080 content displays on a roku... then nfl and verizon logos looks like an 8bit rendering, the advertisements text is barely legible, and the small logos and fine print are hopeless... and yet, a commercial with fine print (above) and encoded by tablo at 720 is legible.
A Tablo a Roku 3 and football seasom = disappointment
Hopefully my tweaking will help others get the most out of these devices.
1) So far I’ve found that the roku has to be at its 1080 display setting in order to render tablo 720 “fast motion” content. Football games are horrible at roku’s 720 display setting. Avoid at all costs.
2) OTA 1080i captured by tablo at 1080 is a major disappointment. Text and logos should never be made worse by the encoding (tablo) or rendering (roku) process. One of these processes is really letting us down… but sense the two devices “must” be used together, it doesn’t really matter which is at fault… tablo 1080 recording of football (for playback on a roku) is a no go.
Unfortunately, I must wait until next week to find out if having tablo capture OTA 1080i at 720, really is an improvement. Fingers crossed.
For now, I know OTA 720p football games will be acceptable at tablo 720 and roku 1080 display settings.
roku 3, 4200x v5.5 build 415
tablo 2 tuner, 2.1.1.4
Overall, I blame Tablo for not controlling the content delivery quality the final 3 feet Why do I have to do this kind of troubleshooting!?
Bummer! So I was curious how these issues look on other devices besides roku and its the worst case scenario… tablo record quality is the issue here. Setting the roku to display at 1080 is actually having the roku cleanup the ghosting present in the tablo 720 source. When roku is set to 720 display, it is faithfully rendering the tablo 720 source… with all its flaws.
Wow. Kudos to roku. To bad it doesn’t have a 1080 cleanup setting too.
example 2, nexus 10 tablet display, tablo encoded at 720
notice all the ghosting around the fast action… identical to the output from example 2, roku 720 display…
@Thumbs are these images taken why the video is paused or in motion? Because I do not see the blur.
My attached two images were taken with a camera shutterframe of 1/30, 1/60 and 1/250s (in that order). You can clearly see the blurred motion effects being displayed between frames. 1/30s 1/60s 1/250s
My photos are from paused action. They show the artifacts but don’t show how bad it really is to view in motion (plus the camera softens the effect a bit as well)… So, I don’t see the “full color” double images like you do, but I do have “ghosting” (an outline of where the action was without any color) best seen in how Roku removes that effect in example 1 and 2 (which happens when the Roku is set to 1080 display). My last photo above is of example 2 shown on a super high res tablet (nexus 10) and you’ll have to zoom in to see the same ghosting present as Tablo on a Roku with 720 display settings. I want to be clear, the video experience isn’t great on the tablet but it’s so (physically) small that it’s just annoying vs. Unforgivable. In comparison, the post-processing done on Tablo 720 content by the Roku 1080 display settings IS definitely much better than watching high motion video on a tablet! I am saying… Tablo is letting us down with high motion video and some sort of post-processing is needed to clean it up. Wish I knew how to do that on a tablet.
I wonder if something in your video delivery chain is doing a bad job cleaning up Tablo content? Is your Roku 3 firmware up to date like mine? Knowing what I know now, I would do a control test and remove Roku post-processing of Tablo 720 content by seting your Roku to 720 display and play a Tablo 720 football game. It’s horrible, but if it doesn’t look like my images then maybe you could assume something in your video delivery chain is still post-processing the video poorly… Or… Gain insight to some other conclusion.
Hmmm… you’ve made me curious. Looking at your shots, I don’t think mine looks that bad. My football primarily comes off Fox which here is 720p though. Maybe I’ll give mine a closer look… to me, it looks just as sharp as it was on U-verse (actually better because U-verse is very compressed).
With a lot of effort (just switching cables around) I might be able to do some compares with live captures vs. Tablo vs. Tablo/Roku.
So… you made me look, but on my end, the picture looks really good… so maybe I’m not seeing what you’re seeing.
You need to test your image with motion (not paused) to see if you are getting ghosting. I do not see the ghosting when I pause the recordings. Also, I doubled checked the quality of the Fios DVR game vs the Tablo and the quality is very close. My only issue is the ghosting is distracting on my Tablo.
Also, I noticed that my Roku was not showing the edges the same as the Fios DVR, so I changed it on my TV from 16:9 to Just Scan and the edges of the screen match.
My football primarily comes off Fox which here is 720p though.
So… you made me look, but on my end, the picture looks really good… so maybe I’m not seeing what you’re seeing.
Thanks for looking @cjcox
I agree Tablo 720 content on a Roku 3 set to 1080 display settings is good. I shall not complain about that setup at all… But it’s because Roku’s 1080 display setting is cleaning up the Tablo issues. Did you step your Roku down to 720 display?
To be very specific, the scrambled edges around the fast moving football player (what I’m calling ghosting) is only present at Roku’s 720 display setting and on tablets. (That’s the limit of my testing so far). It is very distracting and the worst football viewing experience I’ve ever sat through. (Granted, @MattMan13 looks worse and I would chuck everything out the window if I had to sit through that!)
Roku at 720 display setting, Tablo 720 fast motion content
Well… I can the problem in your shots, I just have a feeling that if I use tools at my disposal, my results will look better (I think). You can’t really use an end device necessarily because the problem could be in the end device… and yes, the problem could be similar across two devices (a TV and tablet).
With that said, obviously, how it looks on the end device matters… so at best I may be able to show that not all end devices are affected which means that the problem might not be in Tablo or Tablo/Roku (??)
Just to be nit-picky here - JPG is not the best format to use for capturing pictures of artifacts like this. The JPG compression process may introduce its own artifacts, or exacerbate already existing artifacts. A non-lossy compressed format like PNG or BMP would be more appropriate.
But JPG certainly isn’t going to introduce blur like is shown in the above pictures!
I was just looking at the San Jose - Sounders MLS game on Tablo via Roku. I saw fairly obvious motion artifacts as are described above. Then I went to look at it on the TiVo feed from the cable, and the picture quality was almost the same - Tablo quality was perhaps marginally worse, but the point is the cable picture was also exhibiting the same type of ghosting artifacts.
Now, almost same frame direct capture from the Tablo:
The roku capture is actually from a capture of the roku at 720p, so slightly worse, but as you can see, similar enough to show that the quality is decent.
Also… I noticed that the 1080i to Tablo 720p captures are even better… at least to me. But I just wanted to show that 720p Tablo -> Roku 1080p is decent, though shown with a 720p capture.
1/30s
1/60s
1/250s
