Observations - Firmware 2.2.8 and Sports (1080p, 60FPS)

@TabloSupport @TabloTV

Some observations…

Sports (NHL hockey in particular) has always been difficult to watch with tablo. Frame rates were off making the picture difficult to view during fast motion (it actually hurts our eyes, hard to describe but it is as if the picture is “micro jerky”). Anyway, there are many reports of the same in the forums so I don’t need to go further into this issue.

Ever since the new 1080p 60FPS setting was applied, this is my experience:

NHL hockey on CBLT-DT 5-1 (CBC Toronto), seems to work perfectly. I believe CBLT-DT 5-1 is transmitting 720p.

NHL hockey on CITYTV 57-1 (CityTV) picture is still very jerky. Hard to watch (in fact, it’s impossible otherwise you will get a headache). I believe CityTV is transmitting at 1080i, so there must be a conversion problem with the Tablo TV encoder.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

I checked at Save & Replay which say that both stations use 1080i .

Pretty sure that’s incorrect, some time ago CBC moved to 720p OTA signals.

But I could be wrong.

Sorry, You are correct. CBC moved over to 720p back in 2011. (I stand corrected)

I still find Hockey to be unwatchable via the Tablo. I also don’t like watching Football - not sure if it’s because it’s stereo only, or because you can just tell the framerate isn’t right - or both. I’ve resorted to recording the games I want to watch on the Tablo, but use an external Tuner and another damn antenna on my XBox One for live sports - I’m bummed that I have to do this - but I have some appreciation for the limitations. Live sports on the Tablo, even with 10mbps enabled, talking to a Shield, just aren’t up to the standards of live TV - as a DVR? Well, I guess that’s fine. DVR recordings of sporting events already lack the “edge of your seat” component because you already know who won - that doesn’t really help hockey being unwatchable from the Tablo, much.

This is my observation as well using Fire TV with Tablo recordings at 10Mbps and recording 720p/60 content (such as FOX NFL). The same recordings on Roku are perfectly smooth, but on Fire TV they are as you note painful to watch. I don’t know if this carries over to Android TV players as well, but I guess that would depend on if the issue is hardware in the Fire TV or the software player of the Tablo App. I’ve brought this up with Tablo several times, but they insist they don’t observe this jerky video playback (witch seems like its actually dropping frames, but may be some other issue).
But again, the same recordings look absolutely great on the Roku…
@nkouts - what device are you using for playback.
Also, if you go to the settings page of the Tablo App (Chrome, Fire TV, or Android TV) and scroll down to your station list, it will tell you if it is 480i, 720p, or a 1080i station.

Roku 3 and Roku 4.

Playback seems to be fine when using a web browser.

Guys Tablo cannot improve on what the networks broadcast. Get the standards right there 2 over the air formats
1080i @ 29.97 (59.94 field rate) and 720P @ 59.94. Providing more bandwidth helps to the 10 Mbps setting should always help but once again, !@#$ in from the OTA network results in !@#$ out.

Sorry, the 1080P60 thing that I see here bugs me :smiley:

If I watch the two stations I mentioned above straight from the OTA feed, the frame rate/picture is crystal clear perfect.

This is a tablo encoding issue, not a problem of the OTA signal… and it’s been an issue for a very long time.

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Whether or not the title is correct is irrelevant. What is, is what the OP said the micro-jerking that takes place when watching sports. Its hugely distracting. Is this a decode / transcoding issue? Is the hardware capable of decoding / transcoding 4 streams at once? The more i read these posts, the more my faith in tablo as a company goes in the crapper.

I have the same issue with AirPlay to Apple TV 4 for football. 720p (fox and abc) look great. 1080i (cbs and nbc) look bad, but look good when watched on iPad.

I have the same issue as well with anything broadcast at 1080i. Crystal clear when direct to the TV though jerky when through the Tablo. I can ignore it better when I don’t have the 720p to compare to but when I go to a bar or gym, its always immediately obvious that the picture is smoother (and not just through TV smooth motion effects). Not a huge deal to me, but annoying at times.

My observation with 2.2.8 is that even with the highest bit rates, 1080i material still looks to be 24 fps when I Airplay the content to my ATV. 720p material is better but not quite 30 fps. After a year with Tablo, I’m now used to watching sports at 24 fps and letting my brain “upconvert” to 30 fps.

Is you brain hard wired?

Not sure if you are trying to be funny or sarcastic. Either way, Tablo works for me. If it doesn’t work for you, you need to find something else.

Tablo working fine. Kidding. Peace

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