Spark Sport: Rugby World Cup 2019

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#2323205 23-Sep-2019 10:18

hio77:

wingbat45:

I had it on pretty good authority that its only being transmitted to spark at 50fps and spark are upscaling it before sending it out... god knows where they are pulling 10fps from.

In conversation its often stated as 30/60. But if its 25/50 content its sent as that.

As far as I'm aware all the RWC content is actually 50.

Maybe that's why game play looks jittery at 60hz on the ATV4k, but fine at 50hz

Jiriteach

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#2323212 23-Sep-2019 10:24

"Streaming issue never came up in testing - Spark Sport" - I am truly suprised at this statement
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/rugby-world-cup-2019/2019/09/rugby-world-cup-2019-streaming-issue-never-came-up-in-testing-spark-sport.html

Given that things worked on Friday and some of Saturday, and tests (one hopes) would have covered a ton of scenarious - the factor and thought of load comes to mind given how hard it is to accutately test.

-- opinions expressed by me are solely my own. ie - personal

unsignedint

69 posts

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#2323213 23-Sep-2019 10:25

Wellington, 2degrees gigabit fibre. During the NZ game I had the common frequent quality drops (on both Apple TV + Panasonic). However, I switched over to the Formula 1 at times (and half-time) and I had exactly the same quality drops. So it seems like the problem affected the whole platform? I have been watching F1 regularly on Spark Sport and never seen this before.

I would be really interested to hear a more detailed technical explanation from Spark.I mean, I really don't think it was that bad, but I feel like they should be more open about what is/was wrong and where the limits of their infrastructure is. For example, see what most of the Silicon Valley crowd do these days, e.g.: https://blog.cloudflare.com/details-of-the-cloudflare-outage-on-july-2-2019/

tdgeek

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#2323227 23-Sep-2019 10:39

dfnt:

Maybe that's why game play looks jittery at 60hz on the ATV4k, but fine at 50hz

How do you change that, I have a non 4k ATV4

sbiddle

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#2323233 23-Sep-2019 10:49

dfnt:

hio77:

wingbat45:

I had it on pretty good authority that its only being transmitted to spark at 50fps and spark are upscaling it before sending it out... god knows where they are pulling 10fps from.

In conversation its often stated as 30/60. But if its 25/50 content its sent as that.

As far as I'm aware all the RWC content is actually 50.

Maybe that's why game play looks jittery at 60hz on the ATV4k, but fine at 50hz

Japan is a NTSC country (not to be confused with their voltages which vary in different parts of the country and are both 50Hz and 60Hz). Everything I've read has said the 4K, 1080p and 1080i RWC master feeds are all 60Hz

That's not to say Spark Sport are streaming at 60Hz though, obviously 50Hz conversion needs to occur at some point for the terrestrial feed on Duke as an example.

Dratsab

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#2323234 23-Sep-2019 10:50

Jiriteach:

"Streaming issue never came up in testing - Spark Sport" - I am truly suprised at this statement
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/rugby-world-cup-2019/2019/09/rugby-world-cup-2019-streaming-issue-never-came-up-in-testing-spark-sport.html

Given that things worked on Friday and some of Saturday, and tests (one hopes) would have covered a ton of scenarious - the factor and thought of load comes to mind given how hard it is to accutately test.

What testing? There some was some internal testing but no public beta, unless you count the F1 streaming as such.

dfnt

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#2323239 23-Sep-2019 10:58

tdgeek:

dfnt:

Maybe that's why game play looks jittery at 60hz on the ATV4k, but fine at 50hz

How do you change that, I have a non 4k ATV4

Unsure on that, but under Settings -> Audio and Video -> Format should display the resolutions and refresh rate there

It'd be a global change

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tdgeek

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#2323245 23-Sep-2019 11:04

dfnt:

tdgeek:

dfnt:

Maybe that's why game play looks jittery at 60hz on the ATV4k, but fine at 50hz

How do you change that, I have a non 4k ATV4

Unsure on that, but under Settings -> Audio and Video -> Format should display the resolutions and refresh rate there

It'd be a global change

Thanks I'll have a look tonight. I did mess around with Match Frame Rate, but every time I changed channels it flickered the TV, bit annoying

dfnt

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#2323257 23-Sep-2019 11:19

Normally I'd leave it on 60hz and match frame rate on, so that programs like Netflix and Plex can adjust the frame rate to 24 when required

surfisup1000

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#2323269 23-Sep-2019 11:25

unsignedint:

Wellington, 2degrees gigabit fibre. During the NZ game I had the common frequent quality drops (on both Apple TV + Panasonic). However, I switched over to the Formula 1 at times (and half-time) and I had exactly the same quality drops. So it seems like the problem affected the whole platform? I have been watching F1 regularly on Spark Sport and never seen this before.

I would be really interested to hear a more detailed technical explanation from Spark.I mean, I really don't think it was that bad, but I feel like they should be more open about what is/was wrong and where the limits of their infrastructure is. For example, see what most of the Silicon Valley crowd do these days, e.g.: https://blog.cloudflare.com/details-of-the-cloudflare-outage-on-july-2-2019/

Are you on wifi?

whizbang

31 posts

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#2323278 23-Sep-2019 11:37

tdgeek:

dfnt:

tdgeek:

dfnt:

Maybe that's why game play looks jittery at 60hz on the ATV4k, but fine at 50hz

How do you change that, I have a non 4k ATV4

Unsure on that, but under Settings -> Audio and Video -> Format should display the resolutions and refresh rate there

It'd be a global change

Thanks I'll have a look tonight. I did mess around with Match Frame Rate, but every time I changed channels it flickered the TV, bit annoying

I have had these kind of issues in the past when setting up a Raspberry Pi with Libreelec, tvheadend (live NZ TV), and other sources.

In short, the frame rate which is being output to your tv over hdmi by your device (Raspberry Pi, chromecast, whatever-it-may-be, etc), should be the same as or very close to the frame rate of the source material. For example, in Libreelec, there is an option to choose both the resolution and the frame rate for that resolution. When you change the frame rate for example, in Libreelec, from 50Hz to 60Hz, the TV should adjust and operate at that refresh rate, if it is capable of it (not all TV's are created equal, but these days, any flat screen Tv of late *should* be able to operate at either 1920x1080 50Hz or 1920x1080 60Hz).

In the past I have watched content from both live NZ tv, and Japan on my TV here in NZ. Japanese broadcast TV, (and therefore their TV's), by default, usually operate at 60 Hz (or 60fps frame rate - when I was living over there, the motion on broadcast TV is slightly smoother than here is NZ). NZ Tv's, for broadcast tv, by default operate at 50Hz - which is a frame rate of 50fps.

I found, that in Libreelec, when I forced the TV to 1920x1080 60Hz, that live NZ TV every few seconds, micro-jittered. Most noticable during movement or news ticker tapes which scroll along the bottom of the screen. I had changed it to 60Hz refresh rate to watch some Japanese recording which I had, smoothly. However, given that most of the time I watch NZ TV, and that the micro-jittering was getting annoying, I changed Libreelec back to a refresh rate of 50Hz. NZ live TV then was absolutely perfect. I just lived with a little bit of jittering on the Japanese content I wanted to watch, no big deal.

In libreelec, there is a setting to match the output of the device (in this case raspberry pi), to the frame rate of the content to be played, but I found this annoying, as changing from NZ TV to other content, always forced a refresh rate change on my tv. So I usually don't use this option.

So, the conclution was, that to do away with motion micro-jittering, you need to know the frame-rate of the source content, and the current frame-rate at which your TV is operating (in other words, what frame rate your device is outputting over HDMI to your tv). In Libreelec (Kodi), it is easy to obtain both these pieces of information. Other devices, not so much. I never subscribed to Spark Sport, so I cannot give any conclusive answers to what the frame rate of the source stream each individual user is receiving may be. But, I do know for sure, if you want smooth TV motion without micro-jittering, then the frame rate of the content, and the frame rate at which the TV is operating must be the same or very close, or be close to evenly dividable (for example, for source material at 25 fps, then set your device to output 50Hz refresh rate to your TV. For source material at 30 fps, set your device to output 60Hz to your TV - evenly dividable). I won't get into interlacing, de-interlatcing, 29.95fps etc etc.

(You can take Hz, fps, frame-rate, and refresh rate in this post to mean roughly the same thing).

arnies

525 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2323295 23-Sep-2019 11:49

surfisup1000:

unsignedint:

Wellington, 2degrees gigabit fibre. During the NZ game I had the common frequent quality drops (on both Apple TV + Panasonic). However, I switched over to the Formula 1 at times (and half-time) and I had exactly the same quality drops. So it seems like the problem affected the whole platform? I have been watching F1 regularly on Spark Sport and never seen this before.

I would be really interested to hear a more detailed technical explanation from Spark.I mean, I really don't think it was that bad, but I feel like they should be more open about what is/was wrong and where the limits of their infrastructure is. For example, see what most of the Silicon Valley crowd do these days, e.g.: https://blog.cloudflare.com/details-of-the-cloudflare-outage-on-july-2-2019/

Are you on wifi?

This was not a wifi issue.

tdgeek

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#2323297 23-Sep-2019 11:51

Thanks for the detail @Whizbang I will have a tinker tonight

Dial111

978 posts

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#2323302 23-Sep-2019 12:01

I feel sorry for Spark as how much of these issues are down to the end user? Granted if you paid for the pass you’d expect it to just work right?

Too many variables involved to make this a successful campaign for Spark, they’re on a hiding to nothing, it won’t matter what the issue is even if it’s the end users network setup or whatever, it will be “Sparks fault” and the media as they often do will be handing the pitchforks out.

baxnz

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2323315 23-Sep-2019 12:15

Watched all 3 games on Saturday on LG 2019 65" UM7660 100hz

Game 1 Aus vs Fiji

Started out Wifi TV to Fibre Modem

Game went well, HD 99% of the time, still not as smooth as sky though, lots of mucking around on the TV to try and get the smoothest settings

Game 2 France vs Arg

Took several attempts to join the stream with Spark Errors (guessing network load)

Switched to Ethernet to Fibre Modem just in case

HD 99% of the time, same smoothness as game previous

Game 3 NZ vs SA

Joined straight after game 2 (no mucking around)

Game was HD until around 20-30 minutes then buffering between HD and SD started occurring

Waited for 5-10 mins before cancelling the streaming and praying that it was on Duke TV (just in case we couldn't reconnect to the stream)

Duke was playing Live, so moved away from Stream to Duke

Smoothness and HD was PERFECT on Duke no issues

Spark Feedback:

Hopefully Spark and any other Future Streaming Services in NZ have learned their lesson that Streaming is not the future for this country as international sports will always have delay issues over fibre/copper networks due to the physical delay of the internet due to the distance? southern cross cable limitations? international bandwidth? etc etc

Spark might have paid $13 million dollars for the rights to broadcast the rugby, but over the weekend lost potential 10s of thousands of customers and lost 144 million dollars in share prices today

Was it really worth it Spark?

My guess is Spark went with the cheaper bandwidth option in the States and underestimated the network load, but too late spark to increase the computers/bandwidth now, the damage is done!

Personal Feedback:

I'm a little bit annoyed after spending $2200 on a new LG 2019 TV and getting Fibre Installed and Paying $60 for my Spark Sport to have this level of service

I'm not interested in getting a 15% refund on the $60.00, how about a $2200 refund on the new TV I just purchased which is now useless as the games will probably end up being free on Duke

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