Poor picture quality on Channel 4 on demand

[mattybake]

Is anyone else having similar problems? The picture quality watching programmes on Channel 4 on demand is terrible. It's nowhere near HD. 

Live TV on channel 4 and recordings of channel 4 are fine, but on demand is rubbish!

[Whittin1706]

I have the same issue. I have an Apple TV 4K and an ee mini in my bedroom. The channel 4 streaming app on the ee mini is pixelated and not watchable when viewing F1 highlights, however it is fine on the Apple TV channel 4 app and the lg tv channel 4 app. They are all wirelessly connected to the same WiFi extender.  I also have tested the speed just to be sure and it is just under 80mb down and 20mb up which is way up the 25mb down that Channel 4 state that they need. There is definitely an issue here that needs resolving.

[Whittin1706]

@DarrenDev  Any ideas what is going on here?

[Profile closed]

It is just the quality of the stream provided by the app on the EE TV Box Pro, it will be down to Channel 4 to sort, if they want to.

[DarrenDev]

Unfortunately not - we have no visibility of the performance of the other apps on EE TV boxes.

If you launch the Netflix app on the TV Box, there's a speed tester in the Get Help section - this will give an idea of the network speed being achieved by the box (proving network speed from a different device means nothing).

Are other apps also performing poorly?

[Whittin1706]

I will have a look for the Netflix speed checker later. However all other apps, ITVx, Netflix, Now ect are all crystal clear with no issues. Only effects channel 4 app.

[Profile closed]

itvX, Channel 4 and My5 are all shocking on the Pro and Mini box, it isn't a speed thing, they are just poor apps that remind me of 240p YouTube.

Quality doesn't increase if you pay for premium and itvX is missing all the FAST channels.,

Netflix and Prime Video all worked fine for me, but also took longer to buffer up to peak quality than on any other device I own. Apple TV+ doesn't do HDR and once you see their content in Dolby Vision on an Apple TV 4K, you can't go back. 

iPlayer and YouTube are both excellent versions in my experience and work as you should expect.

Sadly, as you are now finding out @Whittin1706 , nothing is ever BT/EE's fault, it is always the app provider. 

[Whittin1706]

You make a very good point. If EE are going to sell this product they need to take some ownership of the quality of the apps. After all these apps are native to their box, they are fundamental to the whole experience. If they are going to sell a product to customers that relies on these apps then they should have deals with the apps they install to guarantee quality. It would be different if the apps were not part of the service being provided. We could not hold EE accountable if we downloaded an app but ass I said these are pre installed apps which are fundamental to the whole experience we are being sold.

[Whittin1706]

One more thing. If EE don’t chase this with the app developers then who will?

When it didn’t work I switched to another steaming device to watch the same thing. Channel 4 retained me but EE lost me. In the long run people will get fed up if the experience on the the EE box and move back to what they where on before because it works better there.

Come on EE, I honestly really love the product but you have to fight this for your own sake.

Or allow me to have an Apple TV as my second box as well as my main as binding experience these issues on the EE Apple TV 4K only on my mini EE box.

[Profile closed]

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@Whittin1706 wrote:

Or allow me to have an Apple TV as my second box as well as my main as binding experience these issues on the EE Apple TV 4K only on my mini EE box.

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It would be good if that changed.

I was sceptical at first about how the Apple TV live channels would work (and it isn't perfect), but the box is as good as it gets for a streamer, not perfect (nothing is), but for me, probably the best there is.

The combination of live TV, high quality apps (iPlayer excluded as the BBC have hobbled it at 720p) and the Apple TV app to track viewing using the "Up next" feature makes it a good choice.

The only caveat being, you don't need EE TV to actually deliver this kind of experience, Your own Apple TV, the TV Launcher app and direct subscriptions to the content you like (more flexible and cheaper), enables a similar experience and of course, no multiroom issues, you can replicate it on every Apple TV you own.

The only limitation is how many concurrent streams your subscription allows, which is at least 2.

Last waffle - I must go and see what the catch up apps are like on a Freely TV, mainly because it is all YouView under the hood and I wonder if the apps are such poor quality on a platform owned by the broadcasters themselves? 

[Midnight_Voice]

@Whittin1706 @Profile closed @DarrenDev 

Historically, the broadcaster apps have always been provided by YouView; the original versions had various peculiarities, such as requiring the corresponding channels to be tuned in via a TV aerial before they would even run.

And on Sony Android TVs, with their ‘optional’ YouView interface, you lost the itv and All4 apps if you moved away from it.

And while some of the sharp edges have been blunted since, EETV should be asking YouView why the versions of the broadcaster apps that are coming from them are so woefully inferior, and what do they, and the broadcasters, intend to do about it?

But you can see how EETV are trying to distance themselves from the increasingly busted flush that is YouView, and get over to the order and sanity of their souped-up Apple TV box; such a pity that it can’t record, and the world isn’t quite ready to give up recording just yet.

But while getting the full set of broadcaster apps on a single device was rare back in 2012, we had Samsung TVs that did it, and now, if your TV itself still can’t provide them all, a £40 stick will. So no need to use the apps on the YouView box.

But it is, or ought to be, more convenient to use those on the YouView box (except where the hell is Disney+?) and it’s there that they need to be working properly if the EETV value proposition is to stand up.

So please, no hand waving from EETV, and a firm push to get these apps back to performing decently. Something which we are, fundamentally, paying for, but not getting.