4k NFL game 10/10 review / FUBOTV & APPLE TV 4k brief review

[bjf]

Not sure how many watched yesterdays NFL game in 4k / HDR (1080P upconvert).

So I joined FUBOTV for a week trial for both 4k and the various sports channels.

A few good things and lots of bad with FUBOTV.

The article a week back said it wouldn't work with AppleTV in 4k.
But that is now fixed. Mine worked fine.
So that writers criticism must have forced Fox to fix it's AppleTV software.

Next you CAN NOT RECORD ANY 4k programs to the DVR using FUBOTV.

You can only watch a live stream and it's gone forever.
No replays and no way to save it to show your friends later.
HUGE FAIL BY FIBOTV.

As for the 4k / HDR picture it was good not great.
I viewed a good OLED and it looked dim and flat color.

ONLY 30 frame per second.
So that looked like ####.

But the high bitrate 1080P looked quite good.
And the HDR was also fantastic to see.
Detail in both light and dark areas.

The standard HD channels FOX local tv and the NFL channel both looked like garbage.
Loads of compress and motion artifacts. And the SDR had ultra bright white areas were
typically way to bright. A day game would have been a better test for HDR and probably would have
shined even more than a night game.

The 4k channel even with high bitrate HD and progressive still have visible artifacting with high speed motion and the slo-mo replays. Very obvious. Real 4k would look much better and should eliminate that.
We'll soon see via ESPN.

Anyway, on a side note most of FUBOTV tv channels in HD are still 30 frames a second.
Hard to watch any sports at 30fps.

But amazingly the BEIN Sport Extra channels feeds 4 - 8 looked fantastic.
I've never seen BEIN sport look that good.
Spain soccer matches.

Of course they force you to buy a more costly package to get it.
They've added a $25 spanish package but don't put these spanish channels in it or to add on.
Good move FUBOTV.

Their DVR will record UNLIMITED channels and the same time.
Forget a tuner limit with the satellite dvr.
You pay a little for a 500 hour DVR add on.

With Apple TV on SOME not all channels you can pause the recording you made and then
scroll through the time line and see your recording and play the bits you you want.

The older AppleTV remote lets you skip ON SOME channels 10 seconds.

Over all the much overused term "not ready for primetime" is exactly what FIBOTV is currently.

Their interface is crap.
Menu's are crap.
No 4k recording.

4k 30p NFL crap.

NO skipping on many channels.

But they do somethings right like unlimited tuners.
Only an issue when you hit 500 hours (if you pay for the dvr add on).

There are many many others gripes I had and I told them on a few long calls I had with them.
They also gave me a lot of wrong info at times.

They did have some good help on the phone.

ALL of it was in India I believe.

What FIBOTV needs to do is fix all their design flaw and dump every channel except sports.
Become a global source of every sports network and package.

They will get eaten up by youtubeTV and AppleTV, Amazon, Disney eventually.
Unless they are unique.

BTW, they said AppleTV is their top choice with FUBOTV by their company.
So it works better than any other box Roku, Amazon, etc.

BTW, the 4k channel even with a 25 meg connection wired, did not drop frame or freeze up.
Solid picture just 30P look super choppy and hard to watch.
But this upconverted 1080P HDR was really enjoyable compared to the regular HD channel.

Hard to watch other HD channels for sports after you see a better picture.

Hope this answers a few questions for you all.

Oh and the 4k channel doesn't show up in the guide until litterally same day or a few hours before show time.
Another bad move.

I'm cancelling after the free week.

Too many negatives right now and it pisses me off you can't record 4k.
Very stupid of them to do that.

Maybe they will improve things quickly.

I would go back if they do.

All 60P channels would be a first step in fixing their problems.

bjf

 

[comp9]

Glad I read this on a Directv forum.....................

 

[CycloneSat]

Uh, this is the DIRECTV forum. Can staff move this post to where it belongs?

 

[Nominal]

My impression of fuboTV is somewhat more positive. I'm not going to quibble with the OP on the video frame rate critiques as I don't have a 4K tv (I do have an Apple TV 4K just to have the latest, fastest processor, however). I signed up back in February when they added my "real" RSN with the Houston pro teams, AT&T Sportsnet Southwest (up until the current dispute Dish has only carried Fox Sports Southwest for my area which is useless in Houston as they only have Dallas pro sports). I was willing to do without my RSN because I enjoy so many other things about Dish and I understand their philosophical opposition to "Regional Sports Fees" that non-sports fans can't opt out of. When fuboTV picked up ATTSW and I had a way to get it without switching to Xfinity or DirecTV I jumped at the chance, especially since the Astros and Rockets are now contenders.

I'm keeping Dish for the things they offer that fuboTV doesn't like a complete set of my local channels (pending any disputes) with DVR, the ESPN/Disney networks, the MLB Network and NHL Network. I did drop my Dish package down a tier as all the channels I was getting AT250 for, fubo has and I moved the extras I was getting from Dish like Showtime and RedZone over to fubo as well. It's nice to have all the Showtime channels including the Next, Women and Family channels Dish doesn't carry and they're all in HD. No more watching boxing matches on Showtime Extreme in a blurry postage stamp in the middle of the screen where Dish only has Extreme in SD. It's also nice to see so many channels I've only seen in SD on Dish in HD on fubo like Oxygen, TVG/TVG2 and Boomerang as well as having BBC World News in a mainstream package in HD like it is on other providers.

If I have to use a Cloud DVR, fubo's implementation comes the closest to something I can be comfortable with. The combo of an available 500 hours of storage (the same advertised HD hours of a Hopper) and being able to keep the recordings as long as I'm a subscriber with no auto-delete that I don't see any other service offering. That's probably why the restriction on recording 4K. You also can't DVR Showtime like you can on Dish, but they have the Showtime on demand library and you can log in to the Showtime Anytime app with your fubo credentials. fubo finally rolled out series recording options for their cloud dvr and it's been working well for me so far, as a bonus they still use Gracenote/Tribune guide data that Dish used to use before TiVo/Rovi. There have times when the guide data is incorrect or incomplete on Dish but the listings are correct on fubo. The split-screen feature (which works much like Dish's PIP) plus the mini-guide and swipe navigation to browse channels while still watching video are nice touches as well.

The UI is useable for me at least. The biggest complaint I have seems to happen across the board with streaming services from what I've read and that's technical issues when sometimes certain channels load slowly or not at all, especially Showtime. It happens more than I would like, but not often enough for me to cancel the service. I'm generally happy with Dish and as long as I can afford it I have no plans to leave, but one thing I like about this streaming era is that if your provider doesn't carry content that you want like HBO or AT&T Sportsnet Southwest and you're otherwise happy with them you have options to get the content you want without switching providers if you're willing to pay for it.