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

[BigUglyGac]

all i know is i doubt il be throwing down a chunk of money to get a top end sony set again when new features are being claimed as a selling point. the way sony has cheaped out on the vast majority of top end sets from 2016/17 is shocking and im left with a £3500 smart tv that is better used as a screen rather than a smart tv to view a lot of things it seems now. 

yes it will display 4k and hdr but only at 30 fps and theres no amount of tweaking that will ever change it. anyone who swollows sonys line that its either the bbc's fault (which is a flat out lie) or that the engineers will fix it (another lie) is in for a shock. 

is nice to see the mods on here not get involved and sony say this forums not iportant enough to read the thread and act on the issues because people obviously post on here to lie about sony sets being under powered. cant wait for when the iplayer app is fully released and i can send all the emails from sony tech support back at them asking where the support is for my set they said the engineers where working on, im sure il get ignored and lied to again and eventually they will just expect me to stop replying like now. 

thats how sony views us if some of you still hold out hope for a resonable responce from them. dont. they have you're money and dont give a monkeys because they know theres nothing they can do, let alone apologise for selling weak top of the line sets.

[Prior20]

as above, i really do not see sony in the same light as i did before.  what was a top end brand both in quality of product and service has lapsed into the realms of the Sanyo & JVC expectations (TBH both those likley top Sony for me at the moment)

[stormyuk]

Yeh, I keep reading Sony tweets about "Your TV was released and sold before this technology was available". etc etc. So were Panasonic TVs from 2015 and Sony non-android TVs in 2017 that are now support. Its just garbage customer facing nonsense. "Our Engineers working on it". Isn't all the software development outsourced?

[Kuschelmonschter]

"Our Engineers working on it". Isn't all the software development outsourced?

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The whole thing feels like a total rag rug. I suppose there are software parts from all over, being somehow stitched together with the hot needle. MediaTek for example plays a big role in that, delivering Linux kernel and drivers which is where most things fail/break. Those are just cheap and buggy chipsets with closed source drivers.

I still believe that this is about money. BBC obviously wants to sell and license stuff. Also see the YouView thingy. I don't know how their business model works. In Austria we get the UHD HDR WC2018 web stream for free on 4K/HLG capable Samsung, Android TV and Apple TV devices. No partnership with device manufacturers.

[BigUglyGac]

the tweets about hdr hlg being new to sony (and im reapeating myself here) is a lie. sony showed a modified set in oct 2015 at a trade show. so they knew about the technology enough to demo it!!!!

as for my own set no amount of engineer wizardy will make it capable to run 4k60fps hdr content as its just not physically powerful enough to do so like many others. sod all to do with the bbc looking for money from sony. its all down to sony selling a weak set to maximise profits. 

[Kuschelmonschter]

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@BigUglyGac  schrieb:

as for my own set no amount of engineer wizardy will make it capable to run 4k60fps hdr content as its just not physically powerful enough to do so like many others. sod all to do with the bbc looking for money from sony. its all down to sony selling a weak set to maximise profits. 

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As I already wrote... that's just wrong, see quote:

That's just wrong. I played 2160p60 HEVC in Kodi (including HDR10) without problems on an ATV1 based TV from early 2016. It is just a matter of properly optimizing the player app.

The BBC stream is plain <40mbps 2160p60 HEVC HLG. All Sony Android TV sets since 2015 are capable of doing that.

[BigUglyGac]

ok what did you actually play ? was it a file on the local network or the bbc stream ? 

[Kuschelmonschter]

I did a lot of things, like playing file via network (SMB, NFS, DLNA). Among those were HEVC HDR10 streams at 120mbps and also high bitrate HEVC HLG. Also WC2018 36mbps 2160p60 HEVC HLG stream in Austria (ORF TVthek) works which I assume is pretty much the same as the BBC one.

You could just read my previous posting. It is just BS that those streams are not supposed to work on older sets. They even exclude 2017 models which build on the exact same processor as 2018 models.

[BigUglyGac]

yeah if the austrian one is near enough the same then who knows what sonys playing at. and maybe the engineers will "fix" it or whatever at some date. but like i said the youtube stuff stuff not being playable is another wrinkle with all of this can play 4k60 but as soon as hdr stuff is tried it drops it and you can watch in the data on the youtube app how it struggles to download at faster speeds.

as for playing local stuff thats easier for the sets as they dont have to handle the data download themselves etc its just a straight transcode from a local file basically.  

just would be nice for sony to put out a proper statement about this farce rather than the total pr rubbish they have been feeding anyone who asks no matter how well you explain the issue to them. 

[Kuschelmonschter]

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@BigUglyGac  schrieb:

but like i said the youtube stuff stuff not being playable is another wrinkle with all of this can play 4k60 but as soon as hdr stuff is tried it drops it and you can watch in the data on the youtube app how it struggles to download at faster speeds.

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The new YouTube 2.0 app is really bad. There is another app called Smart YouTube TV which can be sideloaded. It is based on the old native YouTube 1.x app. It plays 2160p60 (VP9) without stuttering (even on old ATV1 based sets) and can even do YouTube HDR (VP9.2) for ATV2 based sets. One just hast to manually set color space to BT.2020 as the TV wrongly sets it to BT.709.

as for playing local stuff thats easier for the sets as they dont have to handle the data download themselves etc its just a straight transcode from a local file basically.  

As I said, I played it from network via SMB, NFS and DLNA. So the TV indeed has to download data via network and I assume SMB to be harder than some web stream (like DASH or HLG).

just would be nice for sony to put out a proper statement about this farce rather than the total pr rubbish they have been feeding anyone who asks no matter how well you explain the issue to them. 

Not gonna happen. They'll keep lying and beating around the bush.