Sky Sport Now - 2019 changes

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Geek
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#2409843 29-Jan-2020 20:08

I'm pretty sure it is 50fps assuming a good connection. What I have found is that with Chromecast you must force it to 50fps or it is very juddery. I still believe that the stream is being over-compressed so what we are seeing is artefacts from compression. Watch the flight of the ball in front of complex backgrounds, even as a player moves in front of the crowd. Comparatively, in 'simple' situations the picture is quite good.

kharris

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#2409862 29-Jan-2020 20:30

barrypage:
I'm pretty sure it is 50fps assuming a good connection. What I have found is that with Chromecast you must force it to 50fps or it is very juddery. I still believe that the stream is being over-compressed so what we are seeing is artefacts from compression. Watch the flight of the ball in front of complex backgrounds, even as a player moves in front of the crowd. Comparatively, in 'simple' situations the picture is quite good.

Yeah, I watch on Apple TV and if I have it set to 60Hz then SSN is pretty jittery. But if I change it to 50Hz looks great. Btw I have a Sony A8G Oled.

Also... here is a portion of an email I received from SSN Support a couple of months ago....
For your Apple4k the settings are set to auto, you’ll get the best framerate available depending on your internet speed.

8000kbps (which is the equivalent of 1080p at 50fps) is not available on all devices as it's not needed for the smaller screens; e.g. iPhone is 720p - 4.5Mbps at 50fps or an iPad can range (depending on the model) 1080p - 8Mpbs at 50fps or 720p - 8Mbps at 50fps.

Kirk

JonoNZ

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#2409872 29-Jan-2020 20:44

I have tried SSN on an Apple TV 4K at 50Hz and still find the ball motion extremely jittery. AirPlaying Sky Go from iPhone or iPad looks great though -- no jitter at all.

If the frame rate is based on my internet speed I'd expect a pretty good result: I have 930 Mbps down, 468 Mbps up. Apple TV 4K connected via ethernet.

StNick

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#2409893 29-Jan-2020 21:17

One thing I know without a doubt is that it is not connection or speed related in any way. Both Sky Sport Now and Sky Go's highest quality stream is 8mbps. Both of these come from a CDN with servers in either Aus or NZ and if you're on any form of fibre in New Zealand I can guarantee that you will have zero issues achieving these speeds. You need only look at Chrome's Developer Tools to see the stream you are currently receiving. For example, on Sky Sport Now, it may look like this:

https://neunlds679oc.akamaized.net/nlds/skysportsfanpass/drm_sky4/as/live/nlncp/drm_sky4_hd_8000_video/Time=1580283000005.m4s

The "8000" in that url indicates it is the 8,000kbps stream. If you switch to 720HD in the video player's UI, you will see you are receiving the 4500kbps stream. 720 = 3000kbps, and so on.

It's worth noting that Sky Sport seem to enforce different limits on each device they support. On my Galaxy S10 phone, the max quality I can view is 3,000kbps. I do not know whether this means that the best quality I can cast to my Chromecast Ultra is also 3,000kbps or not.

But if you want to be 100% sure that you are seeing the best possible quality, you need only install Kodi (pick whatever device you like) along with Matt Huisman's video addons for SSN and Sky Go. These addons allow you to choose from a list of every video stream that is available for each service and force the video player to use it. In both cases, the best quality stream is 8.00Mbit/s 1080p 50fps. In the side-by-side videos I have uploaded to Youtube, it was these 8mbps streams that I used for comparison.

Here are the Sky Go bitrates:

And here are the SSN bitrates:

Just because Sky Sport Now is sending us an 8mbps 50fps video stream, does not guarantee that we are looking at a 50fps video source. While I agree, the image quality of BOTH is identical (crisp and clear), the frame rate is clearly superior on the Sky Go service. I can take a 1080p 10fps video and re-encode it to a 4k 60fps video but the video I encoded will still only contain 10 individual frames per second, merely played back at 60. The source that is being encoded is the issue here, and I believe that whatever source SSN is using for their streams (whether it is their own or from Endeavor direct) is 25fps.

It is also worth noting that the 3,000kbps stream (the max available on Android devices) is actually encoded at 720p 25fps. So even if SSN now figure this one out, if you use the SSN app you will never get 50fps video on Android unless they unlock the higher bitrates for us. No such limits on the Sky Go app on Android it seems, as although there are no quality selectors, there is a noticeable improvement in framerate when it jumps to the highest quality stream.

tanivula

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#2409947 29-Jan-2020 23:28

Yep, I'm using Matt's add-on on Kodi. I think comparatively, the cricket looked far worse than the tennis.

The app on my phone has caught the don't want to load bug too now. Used to be quite good last year, not so much now.

kharris

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#2421257 15-Feb-2020 00:50

SeymourScagnetti:

hello all

A quick update on one of the questions floating around: (I'll see if I can get to answering some more in the next few days - or seek answers from colleagues)

Upgrades are coming for PS4, Apple TV and Samsung TV to bring more of the features, and the look and feel from the web/ phone apps to these platforms. These are in final stages of testing now so expect to see them in next few weeks

Also an FYI: A 20% off code BREAKERS20 is currently live and will give 20% off any Sky Sport pass

Alex

SSN

Cool... as promised an update for the Apple TV app. Looks great.... you can even watch shows from the previous 24 hours... which is awesome.

I’ve been playing around with it a bit and have a little usability feedback Alex.

1. When you select a program from the guide that is currently playing there is no way to watch it from the beginning. You can only watch it live. There is no way to scrub back to the beginning like there is is for other devices. This means you have to wait for it to finish before you can watch it from the beginning. If you are running 5 minutes late you can watch any completed program from the past 24 hours but you can’t watch the current one from the start. Unless there is something I missed?

2. When ou scroll back into the past on the guide there is no way to quickly get back to the “live line” (currently time) on the guide. You have to scroll forward again until you find the line again... even if you press the live tv menu item again you are still positioned in the past. This clearly isn’t a big thing... it’s just a nice usability feature.

3.While watching you can swipe up for channel selection but you can’t swipe down again to remove it? I figured out you can press the menu button but swiping down would make logical sense.

The app looks awesome though. I have been playing around so much that I haven’t watched much yet so I can’t comment on picture quality yet for anyone that is interested.

Cheers.

Kirk

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kharris

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#2421396 15-Feb-2020 12:57

kharris:
...
...
1. When you select a program from the guide that is currently playing there is no way to watch it from the beginning. You can only watch it live. There is no way to scrub back to the beginning like there is is for other devices. This means you have to wait for it to finish before you can watch it from the beginning. If you are running 5 minutes late you can watch any completed program from the past 24 hours but you can’t watch the current one from the start. Unless there is something I missed?
....
....

@SeymourScagnetti after some playing around it seems this is a bug (but only for live tv)
Most of the time for a live program when you pause the slider appears but is empty, giving you no control.

But then sometimes the slider appears correctly with times in it and you have control.

I have tested this on both the Apple TV 4 and the Apple TV 4K. Both have the latest version of tvOS. For both devices I deleted the app and installed a fresh copy but it made no difference.

Cheers

Kirk

wazzageek

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#2421959 16-Feb-2020 20:48

The changes are really nice, if only all the XFL games were played live :-)

It's interesting that in the apple app there is a one off charge for Sky Sport Now for 12 months, but I cannot see that via any other avenue.

It's also nice to see that some codes are getting a full replay available "on demand" - hopefully that expands to cover more codes!

tdgeek

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#2422214 17-Feb-2020 09:26

If someone wants to watch PPV, can they subscribe to SSN but not buy a package? To book a PPV without having to book a sub?

SeymourScagnetti

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#2423882 19-Feb-2020 11:41

tdgeek:

If someone wants to watch PPV, can they subscribe to SSN but not buy a package? To book a PPV without having to book a sub?

You don't need to be an active Pass holder to buy a PPV event. You just need to have an account.

arnies

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#2424105 19-Feb-2020 15:30

I sometimes have a bug with the Apple TV app where I press something (not sure what) and it 'rewinds' a few hours in the past. I can't find a way to get back to live so I have to exit and restart the stream.

This might be related to the Apple TV issue above. Note this happened before + after the new app version.

Btw loving the new version, well done.

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davidcole

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#2424150 19-Feb-2020 17:31

arnies:
I sometimes have a bug with the Apple TV app where I press something (not sure what) and it 'rewinds' a few hours in the past. I can't find a way to get back to live so I have to exit and restart the stream.

This might be related to the Apple TV issue above. Note this happened before + after the new app version.

Btw loving the new version, well done.

I may have seen the same and posted it in this thread. It was something to do with pause via the control pad or something like that. There was a way of getting it back. But sounds like it’s irrelevant now.

The navigation in this app on the Apple TV wasn’t great.

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kharris

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#2424280 19-Feb-2020 22:26

arnies:
I sometimes have a bug with the Apple TV app where I press something (not sure what) and it 'rewinds' a few hours in the past. I can't find a way to get back to live so I have to exit and restart the stream.

This might be related to the Apple TV issue above. Note this happened before + after the new app version.

Btw loving the new version, well done.

Yeah it is related to the live tv pause bug above. When you pause, either with the pad or play/pause button, if the slider is empty, and you have no control of the slider, then if you press the pad or play/pause again you are taken back in time by an hour or so. It doesn’t happen when the slider is working properly on a pause.

Kirk

SeymourScagnetti

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#2424329 20-Feb-2020 09:15

StNick:

allstarnz:

Has anyone else noticed the Android app is sometimes unresponsive on startup? I will go open the app, it will think for a second or two, and then not open. I have to force stop the app for it to initialize correctly after this. I'm not sure if this is just my phone, or a more wide spread app issue.

Happens to me 9/10 times. I have to force kill (well, swipe it away), then re-load.

I have DM's you for details on this to share with Dev team

Breezzee

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#2425858 23-Feb-2020 12:42

Is there any timeline for the Sky Sport Now app for the AppleTV to have its frame rate increased?

I brought another week’s sub to watch the Supercars (fingers crossed) hoping to watch a clear stream.......but have gone back to using the SkyGo app on my phone.

The difference is night and day. If it was as good as the SkyGo stream on the AppleTV, I’d be signing up for a year right away.

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