Watching sports seems "herky jerky"

Just wondering, for those with Roku - does this apply to interlaced video (1080i stations)?

I tried SlingTV for all of 5 minutes. It looks like they haven’t figured out how to properly convert interlaced into progressive so that, on a Roku at least, it would look a LOT nicer.

Same goes for Emby. When it encodes, it does a fine job. Problem is, on a Roku, the interlaced channels are very hard to watch. On some material, you might not notice a lot, but it’s there, and worse for sports and scrolling “tickers” on screens.

Anyway, I wonder how this device handles interlaced video. Is it transcoded? If so, for interlaced video (CBS in many areas, for example), is it re-encoded into a “progressive” form that a Roku would handle (and, I assume other devices)?

A theory I have after reading everything posted. Could it be that this is related to the device’s ability to playback 60FPS content? It could be that the Roku and the Amazon Fire TV are dropping frames while trying to playback the video. As someone else suggested, if @shiner could use Tablo Ripper to pull the original Tablo recording and view it on his PC, he could tell us if he sees the choppiness there. If not then we know it’s device specific.

After watching both NFL playoff games today I noticed something.

The first game was on ABC, which broadcasts locally in 720. The game on that channel between the Houston Texans and the Kansas City Chiefs looked perfect.

The later game is currently on the local CBS affiliate which broadcasts in 1080i. The game on that channel has the “herky jerky motion”

I have noticed this on both the Roku 3 and the Amazon Fire TV in our “theater room”

Thinking back the other games that had this “herky jerky” motion were always the CBS games and the Sunday Night football games on NBC.

So, is there something in the Tablo that could be causing issues with 1080i broadcasts when viewing fast motion such as in sports?

That’s it! The Roku 3 and Amazon Fire TV don’t support interlaced content. That would cause the issues if the source was 1080i, but is being outputted in 720p/1080p without Deinterlacing.

Not sure what the solution would be for this though, beyond Tablo adding a deinterlacing filter to the encoding process for 1080i content. A workaround would be for you to rip the recording to your PC and play it back in VLC with Deinterlacing enabled then it should look fine.

Interesting. Does the Nexus Player support interlaced content? I may have to borrow one from someone I work with to do some testing.

Not from what I’ve read.

But interestingly, seems this issue has been discussed here before. In that topic at the end it’s suggested to disable any setting on your TV related to motion smoothing and you might see an improvement. The actual name of the setting varies by brand though.

Yeah, been there. Done that.

That was one of the things I tried after I first noticed the issue. Went through every TV and adjusted the motion settings. No real improvement that I could see.

Darn. At least we narrowed down the issue.

I’d run some tests myself to try to narrow down a solution but I don’t currently have any recorded 1080i broadcasts.

Your best bet would be to contact Tablo support, just make sure to mention 1080i as the issue.

Don’t recall being distracted by this with NP. I’ll have a closer look next time around. I’m recoding at 1080/8

Agreed, ever since I set recording quality to 10mbps I never noticed jerky movement on my Shield. Maybe I need to see a video demo.

@shiner are any of these Fire TVs the new 4K edition? Curious if the new ones solve the deinterlacing issue.

The Fire TV in our “theater room” is one of the newest model.

I don’t notice any picture quality differences between it and the older model.

@japzone what about the nexus player? This Kodi post seems to imply it doesn’t have hardware deinterlacing support either: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=212757

I’ve not noticed any problems watching sports on Roku but not sure if the station I watch is 1080i or 720p.

@shiner LCD and OLED TV’s suffer from Motion Blur (“Herky Jerky”). Motion blur happens when an on screen object is moving fast or when the camera pans across the screen quickly. Sports in general see both these situations and that’s why most folks notice motion blur only when watching sports.

TV’s manufactures use different tricks to help compensate for motion blur. The main one used by all is the Refresh Rate. TV’s will have either a 60Hz, 120Hz, or 240Hz refresh rate. Standard definition (SD) TV’s have a 60Hz refresh rate, but High Definition (HD) TV’s can have any one of the three available rates. 120Hz is the bare minimum to compensate for motion blur, but many bargain HD TV’s all the way up to 60 inches only have a refresh rate of 60Hz. You basically get what you pay for. Very few TV’s have a 240Hz refresh rate and if you can find one they will probably break the bank.

One thing you have to watch out for is that some manufactures mislead consumers by using 120 and 240 on their packaging referring to something else other than refresh rate. You should pay close attention because the 120 and 240 will not be displayed with hertz (Hz). For example:

LG:
TruMotion 120 = 60Hz refresh rate
TruMotion 240 = 120Hz refresh rate

Panasonic:
Image Motion 120 = 60Hz refresh rate
Image Motion 240 = 120Hz refresh rate

Samsung:
Motion Rate 120 = 60Hz refresh rate
Motion Rate 240 = 120Hz refresh rate

Vizio:
Most E-series and M Series under 60 inches = 60Hz refresh rate
Over 60 inches = 120Hz refresh rate

Sharp:
AquoMotion = As listed
Note - Sharp clearly differentiates between the listed Refresh Rate and the AquoMotion rate.

Sony:
All TV’s = As listed

Frame Interpolation and Black Frame Insertion (BFI) are also used to compensate for motion blur. Terms like “TruMotion”, “Image Motion”, and “Motion Rate” refer to all the tricks combined in one basket. The manufactures say that those combined elements make, for example, a true 60Hz TV to behave like a 120Hz. It’s misleading, but that’s how they talk their way out of it. It’s always best to do your homework and stick to the reputable manufactures. Also,stay away from those bargin brands if you are stickler for video quality.

With all that said, you still have to consider the quality of the video stream. Garbage in equals garbage out.

Haven’t seen this with NP. Recording at 1080/8.

Thank you, I was already aware of that information.

That said, I have never had this issue with sports prior to using the Tablo/Amazon Fire TV/Roku combination to view sports. We previously had DirecTV and there were no issues on any of the televisions when viewing any type of sports.

I have also, as part of my testing, directly connected the televisions to the antenna and do not see the issue when watching via that method.

I stopped using the live TV part of Tablo because of the audio and video sync issues, no 5.1 surround sound, and video quality issues like you described. When watching sports I just switch directly over to my TV tuners. The audio and video is much better that way. Right now I just consider the Tablo a standalone DVR for my OTA antenna and nothing more.

Well, interesting.

It’s a real shame the Roku can’t handle interlaced video very well. That’s not Tablo, or anyone else’s fault than Roku, or whatever other playback unit. It’s been rumored that they disabled certain hardware acceleration components in some of these devices. As to why, some guess it’s licensing, some guess it’s a little cheaper to manufacture. Whatever it is, it’s horrible.

The only solution I can think of at this point would be to de-interlace, but that is either done AT the playback device, realtime, or, the content must be re-encoded. The realtime part is easy - if the hardware supports it. Fully re-encoding something from interlaced to non-interlaced, however, requires significant power. Power that is not going to be present in a device like a Tablo, or a Roku. Modern computers can do this, but you’ll find that either your GPU is working to do it, or a few CPU cores are very, very busy.

In any case, very sad. Great idea for a product. Might check it at some point, but not on Roku anytime soon. My HTPC can correctly play 1080i content from nearly any source, including OTA. For now, it + tuners (OTA & Cable, via another unit) is my solution. Maybe once some of these kinds of kinks are better sorted, I’ll be able to get a Roku type device that can handle more than a codec or two in specific forms.

Best of luck to all.

I think I have the 1080i problem too. I noticed the Patriots game looked like butter on my ipad, but then jerky when airplayed to TV. It was not as noticeable for the Broncos game. CBS vs NBC.

If the settings on Tablo are changed from MAx to 720p, will the encoded files be deinterlaced?

Does the recording quality impact Live TV?

Yes the recording quality effects recordings and live tv.