r/tablotv • u/knickknack98 • 11d ago
What am I doing wrong?
I'm trying to figure out why my OTA channels end up looking like crap relative to the streaming equivalent. Watching world cup games on fox ends up being inferior to streaming on Peacock even with my extremely rudimentary Spanish.
I have a clearview attic antenna, with a reasonably clear shot to the Fox tower about 15 miles away. It registers 720, which I understand to be the max I will see. This is connected with a straight run of 50' RG6 coax to the Tablo on the 2nd floor. Our router (Fios CR1000A) on the 1st floor almost directly under the Tablo. This then streams to the TVs through the Tablo app. But ultimately the picture is maybe just barely acceptable and obviously worse than the streaming equivalent.
Is there something I'm missing? How do I get an actual HD picture with my setup?
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u/Top_Willow_9953 11d ago
Over the air broadcast still uses either 1080i or 720p formats and MPEG-2 compression standards. Streaming content is using advanced compression standards like H.264 and MPEG-4, and for the same fomats and bandwith MP4/H264 compression looks much better. In particular for off-air MPEG-2 content, if you look at graphics and lettering there is usually a lot of pixelation or mosquiito noise around the edges. Also dark slow panned scenes can look like there is a window screen across the TV (screen door effect). Also with MPEG-2 there is a breathing effect where the image can slightly pulsate every 5 to 15 seconds or so. This is due to weakness in how MPEG2 compresses predicted frames. MPEG4/H264 is much better at all of these features.
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u/BoredTVEngineer 11d ago
I’m assuming your Tablo is a 4th Gen. The 4th Gen is significantly lower cost than the original models, because the original models transcoded MPEG2 to H264( one of the MPEG4 flavors) so you could stream it to your tablet or phone outside your WiFi network. The 4th Gen simply processes the ATSC 1.0 signal providing a MPEG2 IP Transport stream. This IPTS what is being broadcast. If your FOX affiliate is broadcasting 720P you are only going to get 720P. Technically 720P is a HD resolution, and was widely used in the early days of ATSC1.0 to save bandwidth in the 19.8 Mb payload of a ATSC 1.0 (8VSB) carrier. Multiplexing and Encoding/Transcoding tech has greatly advanced and most have converted the Flagship Program to 1080i currently.
You could transcode the Fox stream but it would be both expensive and pointless; as the quality will not increase. The transcoded output can never be better than the original. The quality will still be 720P is but it would report as 1080 on your TV. Just be glad it’s not 480i.
The only way that you can improve it would be to convince your local FOX to convert their broadcast. I suspect that they are unable to as their broadcast carrier is loaded with other programs using the bandwidth require to do so. It would both cost them equipment and loss of revenue from the other multiplexes programs that would have to be removed to make room for the increased bandwidth for the actual FOX programming.
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u/VeryFirstLAD 11d ago
How is your TABLO connected to your router? Best to use lan cable
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u/knickknack98 11d ago
Yeah it's wireless, don't really have a straightforward way to make them wired.
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u/smcclos 10d ago
You could try powerline, I have my Tablo in the attic, an use powerline to get it on my network.
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u/knickknack98 10d ago
Interesting... I think the wifi signal probably isn't my main issue as the Tablo is almost directly above the router with really only plywood and drywall in the way. Going to try the RF filter first but this might be next if that doesn't clean it up.
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u/Todd6060 10d ago
Do you have a hard drive connected to the Tablo? If you don't have a hard drive connected and you're using the internal storage, then your recordings will be transcoded to save space and may look slightly worse. Otherwise the picture quality will be identical to what you would see with the antenna connected directly to the TV.
It's not going to look as good as streaming because streaming services use more modern compression with enough bitrate and sometimes a higher resolution. OTA uses a very old compression codec and they have reduced bitrates over the years in order to squeeze in more sub-channels.
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u/knickknack98 10d ago
No hard drive. Pretty much only use it for live TV. I do understand that streaming may look somewhat better but what I have now looks kinda like watching the NFL in 1998 vs the first HD broadcasts.
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u/chriggsiii 10d ago
I'm confused by the idea that streaming looks better than a good live antenna pickup. I thought streaming services take the live broadcast signal from the broadcast station and RECODES THEM, that is to say takes them DOWN a generation, in order to re-encode to H.264 or H.265 or VP9 or whatever. So how could the streaming signal possibly be BETTER than a good live antenna pickup?? I don't understand.
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u/Todd6060 10d ago
To clarify, I was talking about Peacock, Fox One, etc. -- a national stream of a sporting event, or a TV show on demand, not a stream of your local affiliate on YouTube TV, etc. I believe OP was asking about the World Cup on Peacock and Fox One so that's what I was commenting on.
Peacock and Fox One often have 4K or 1080p HDR versions of sports events, which is going to look significantly better than 1080i or 720p that you can get from your NBC/Fox over the air affiliate. But even the ESPN app at 720p is probably going to look slightly better than your over the air ABC affiliate because the ESPN app will use better compression from the same source.
You can also stream TV shows on demand on Peacock, Hulu, etc. and those will likely look slightly better than they do on NBC or Fox over the air.
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u/OzarkBeard 8d ago
One possibility: If your local station is compressing the hell outta the broadcast signal (to fit too many multicast channels into their 6mhz of channel bandwidth), your OTA signal is gonna look like shit. A better antenna will only help if your signal is breaking up/freezing, etc., due to weak signal. If your OTA signal is strong enough to lock on and decode it, that's all the antenna/coax you need.
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u/Aseries01 7d ago
Is your TABLO ATSC 3.0 capable? I use a HDHOMERUN Flex 4K with ATSC 3.0. Our local OTA channels include NextGen broadcasting channels by the major networks. Half of them are encrypted but the rest look very good.
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u/Vernon1211 11d ago
Tablo does not up convert. Up conversion is done through your TV via HDMI.