For some it’s crystal clear images with wonderful contrast and depth of color, for others it’s a murky digitised mess of swirly patterns.
How good streaming series and movies look on your TV depends on numerous factors. Some are in your control – the ‘tier’ of your account on SVOD services (ie. 4K/HD/SD), along with the quality of your home video equipment (ie. OLED/QLED/LED).
Others are not, such as the quality of your internet connection, which is often what takes the blame when picture quality seems poor. Sometimes it is, but there’s another factor you may not have considered – the way you access these services.
Turns out Netflix, Disney+ and the like can look quite different depending upon whether you load them through an app on your Smart TV, or whether you launch the exact same app on the same TV through a media player box, be it a Roku, Apple TV or Chromecast.
Digital Trends has posted up a Q&A today in which host Caleb Denison, a veteran reviewer of new TVs, explains how certain TVs and media player platforms have issues with the images rendered from these services. The problems vary not just from TV model to TV model, but also from platform to platform, and app to app. As a result, no single way of accessing solves all the potential problems:
“Something I’ve been learning slowly over the last couple of years is that many, if not all, of the most popular streaming apps behave wildly differently from platform to platform, so the Netflix app on LG’s WebOS for example may behave dramatically different from the Netflix app on Roku TV OS which is different than Netflix on Google TVs versus on Chromecast with Google TV and so on and so on…
Some include certain platforms limiting color bit depth to 4:2:0, which means more color banding just because you are watching on that particular platform. It’s also true that some platforms refuse to allow buffering in favor of better picture quality, so even though you pay for 4K, you might not be getting it because the internet connection is too slow. Some platforms may present 24 FPS content locked down at 30 FPS without you having any say in it.”
He goes on to say the issue is wide-ranging, and there isn’t a single streaming platform or device that is perfect – they all have issues. He then explains that he’s settled on the Apple TV 4K box as his preferred streaming device and OS. Why?
“It’s the one with the least amount of questions and just enough controls available. It also comes with the fewest number of headaches, and for that I’m willing to pay a little extra. It’s not perfect, but it is the least flawed and sadly I think that’s where we’re at right now with streaming.”
Unfortunately, there isn’t a master list online pointing out the problems that specific apps can have on specific devices. It does seem though that maybe one’s internet connection isn’t entirely to blame for any image issues you might have watching a streaming series or new original film.
