BBC iPlayer 4k support in time for the World cup?

[ajwool]

So, will we finally get Bbc iPlayer support in time for the World Cup? Announcement coming imminently:

https://www.whathifi.com/news/bbc-4k-hdr-world-cup-confirmation-week-away

[rgledhill]

One quick thought on the Roku stick - to get full 4k, you'll need around 40Mbit/s.  I'd be surprised if you can maintain that over WiFi to be honest so you may well find it's 2.5k (as it were) anyway.  Just a thought!

[ajoysarkar]

Got a Roku today, was going to get one for the upstairs back bedroom anyway. 4k test on IPlayer working and looks good on the A1 oled. The WiFi connection is showing over 50 Mbps. Admittedly it’s only 2 feet away from my router. Quite a nice piece of kit, could hardly get a signal over wifi for my firestick upstairs, getting 12 Mb with this. Hopefully can get a slot for the 4k matches

[rgledhill]

I think I've found the problem, or at least a bit more towards it...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2018-05-uhd_hdr_world_cup_2018

The problem is that the stream is live, and the best the live encoders can do is bringing the bit-rate down to 40Mbps for 4k HLG HDR.  This bit rate is too high for the Sony TVs to cope with and therefore you get jerkiness before it finally gives up - this is exactly what we saw when they did allow the trial on our TVs.  It's exactly the same problem with very high bit rate 4k HDR 50/60fps streaming from YouTube.  Other TVs don't have the overhead of the Android OS and can keep up with the bit rate; sadly ours can't.

The demo material on YouTube is encoded offline, rather than live, and is generally 10-20Mbps tops.  The 50/60fps demo material on YouTube is often 30-40Mbps and consequently doesn't work, e.g.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkggXE5e2yk&t=80s

If you turn on the Stats for Nerds option, you can work out roughly the network usage to get the bit rate (if it's not in the info).  My theory is anything greater than about 20Mbps or so is simply too much for the chain of processing going on in the TVs (network -> decoding -> picture enhancements).

If I'm right, all this means we won't get a fix any time soon.  They will need to have a work-around on the iPlayer release for Android TVs that limits the bandwidth to <20Mbps, no matter how good the network link is, to ensure it doesn't overload the TV.  Alternatively, Sony will need to somehow optimise their data processing chain to improve the maximum data rate supported.

Well, that's my theory anyway

[romipat]

 ifyou want to see what t our tv's arecapable of then  watch this video   using the built in  you tube apphttps://youtu.be/nBYZpsbu9ds -  transient  4k UHD 1000fps

[rgledhill]

Umm, I hate to break it to you, but that's 24fps (3840x2160 is 4k, 24 is fps):

The lightning is recorded at 1000fps so you're watching it at 24/1000 speed, i.e. about 1/40th of real speed.  You can tell what the frame rate is by pressing the main (centre) button, going left to More Options, then going all the way right and selecting Stats For Nerds.  As you can see on the screenshot, the Network Activity (ignoring the blank bit in the middle where I'd pressed pause) was coloured for about half the time, indicating a bit rate about half my connection speed - i.e. around 23Mbps.

If you really want to see the resolution shine through, this is an excellent example - filmed in 12k, down-sized to 4k, and running at 24fps...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN3uF3990Q0

As I say, I have yet to see any 50fps or 60fps videos work on this TV from any App running on it.  You will almost always see dropped frames on the Stats For Nerds on YouTube on anything running at 50/60fps.

[stormyuk]

Not sure its purely down to bandwidth processing as just watched the Death Stranding trailer, its not HDR but is 4K at a pretty constant 45Mbps. Zero dropped frames. But mix 4K with HDR and its dropped frames galore on YouTube. Maybe this it why the BBC are not happy with it.

Whats interesting for me is the performance with stats for nerds enabled seems to hit performance in itself.

[rgledhill]

Ok, found one that runs at 4k at 60fps ("Death Stranding TGA 2016 4k [60FPS]").  It uses around 20MBps, I'd say (about 50% network activity from 40Mbps connection) and has a few dropped frames, but it's definitely jerky, so this is a good example of what I'm talking about.

If you're looking at a different one, I'm keen to try it...

[bemaniac84]

I have to admit 50fps 4k does not run very well on the 2016 tvs with 2015 processors like XD8599 XD9305. It works...................but it's not watchable. High framerate rips of 4k Blurays run too slow. Sadly our mediatek chipsets are too slow for the BBC.

[rgledhill]

Stats For Nerds means it creates a screen (Viewport) of Full HD (1920x1080, scaled up x2) which it then superimposes with transparency so yes, it will only make matters (a bit) worse.

[stormyuk]

Yeh I think it was only 30fps @ 45Mbps