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I LOATHE peacock. I don't know what checks they do at the start of the stream, but they always peg me at 720p or lower resolution despite having over 300mb. Its

I LOATHE peacock. I don't know what checks they do at the start of the stream, but they always peg me at 720p or lower resolution despite having over 300mb. Its not an issue on any other streaming app and they give you no option to set it manually. Streams look like a dog's breakfast on my 4k TVs.

palmotea 2y ago
I wonder if that's more an issue with them than you. I subscribed to peacock for one month during the Olympics, and it was terrible. Streams frequently were stuck at something super-low 320p, or just halted to that stupid sad cat error page. Cutesy error pages are cute exactly once, then they're even worse than a minimally viable error page.
znpy 2y ago
Maybe the issue is on their side. Their best outcome is you paying for 4k hdr and streaming 720p. Bandwidth is expensive and slow to provision.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  > Bandwidth is expensive and slow to provision. Not enough to hurt a paid service. Let's say 6Mbps for pretty solid 1080p. And at peak maybe we have .5 streams per account going simultaneously (I bet the real number is significantly lower). So we need 3Mbps per account. How much does a Mbps cost? "Across key cities in the U.S. and Europe, 400 GigE prices range from $0.07 to $0.08 per Mbps." Peacock doesn't even offer 4K most of the time or on the olympics, but for services that do a $1 upcharge should be more than enough to cover the bandwidth difference.
  - deelowe 2y ago
    I'd be happy with 1080p.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Who does 6Mbps for 1080p? I thought HD topped out at 3Mbps, and 4K was around the 6+Mbps
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      Twitch is typically 6Mbps+ and 1080p, though with more time to encode you can get the same quality out of fewer bits. Netflix can go up to about 20Mbps for 4K if my searches can be believed, but I didn't test it myself. When I've grabbed videos off Nebula they're a lot bigger than youtube; one here that doesn't even have much motion is 4Mbps at 1080p. And crunchyroll has a lot of 8Mbps at 1080p. But acceptable quality can definitely go smaller. Especially if "acceptable" is judged by the significant compression artifacts I see on actual cable TV all the time.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  I laughed. Netflix 4K is some bs in my experience. A 4K file of the same show, pirated, is vastly better quality. Whatever they do to it is just vandalism.
  - throwaway287391 2y ago
    IME Netflix is a close 2nd best after Apple, which I don't think I can distinguish from a 4K BluRay. I've found that the quality depends on the platform a little -- for Netflix the native LG app seems to look best on my LG TV, while Apple looks best on the Apple TV app (perhaps unsurprisingly). Amazon Prime 4K HDR on the other hand looks like garbage on every platform I've used -- the compression is unbearable in any dark scene.
    - mulderc 2y ago
      I would put Disney+ after apple. Both AppleTV+ and Disney+ consistently looks great to me. Netflix is strange as it generally looks good but whatever compression they use does something funny to the picture which makes it look fuzzy and sharp at the same time to me.
      - martinald 2y ago
        Netflix is actually the lowest bitrate offering. Netflix: 15-18 Mbps Disney+: 25-30 Mbps Amazon Prime Video: 15-18 Mbps Apple TV+: 25-40 Mbps HBO Max: 15-20 Mbps This is from an LLM but it tallies with what I remember reading. Apple TV is by far the best, followed by Disney+. Netflix unfortunately seem to use any improvement in compression encoding efficiency to reduce bitrates, rather than improve PQ at the same bitrate. It's definitely got worse over time. I also remember reading that for content they deem more compressible they use a lower bitrate. I can sort of get that on the lower plans, but its frustrating they won't improve PQ (or at least keep it the same) for the (expensive) 4K plan.
  - lfam 2y ago
    4K doesn't really say anything about image quality, just the resolution of the picture, which tells you the theoretical maximum level of visual detail. Focusing on resolution is like asking "how strong is one meter of rope" without talking about the composition of the rope. With streaming video, image quality ultimately comes down to the codec and the bitrate. They probably use a relatively low bitrate regardless of codec.
bb88 2y ago
Are you behind a CG-NAT? Not all companies have caught up to the fact that one IP is used by multiple customers now. Things like throttling by IP Address which used to be a viable option is not effective anymore.
- deelowe 2y ago
  Don't think so. Does cgnat use private IP space? I'm not familiar with how it works.
  - bb88 2y ago
    Sorta. It's like NAT except it's at your carrier. Multiple customers share the same IP. If an attack or abuse comes from a CG-NAT address they have to throttle the IP and all the customers behind it.
    - hedora 2y ago
      If it’s not a cgnat, your ISP could be throttling everyone that isn’t using a whitelisted site. Try using speedtest.net or fast.com just before streaming, and see if it fixes peacock.
recursive 2y ago
Could be a DRM thing. You might not have a trusted display/decoding device, so it gives you the low res.
- TuringNYC 2y ago
  >Could be a DRM thing. You might not have a trusted display/decoding device, so it gives you the low res. True, but that is why this is a hard engineering challenge -- there are a lot of variations on client-side devices which need to be supported well. Upgrade cycles for TVs is 3x that of phones, is my guess.
  - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
    'That' being DRM?
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    Except there are only 3 DRM providers, and as a streaming service provider you just wrap the 3 providers libraries and write a few config files.
- deelowe 2y ago
  Its not that. I'm on a lg c2 with a modern Chromecast (or whatever name Google is calling it now) plugged in. Its all new stuff.
boopdewoop 2y ago
Its just them being cheap. They probably set every one to a max of 720p, hope most people do not realise (cutting down bandwidth costs) and let them set max quality themselves.
- TuringNYC 2y ago
  They just need to look at their stock price vs NFLX to realize that people do indeed realize the difference across the stack.
  - hirako2000 2y ago
    Netflix has been most popular for a bunch of other rather obvious reasons.
- Melatonic 2y ago
  On Roku (actual box not integrated) Peacock has been good quality. Definitely hits 1080P with a decent bitrate. I suspect the software teams only have the bandwidth to focus on a few of the more popular devices (so probably Roku and Apple TV boxes) and others suffer
njovin 2y ago
Their 'seek' behavior is also horrendous. IIRC they don't support the standard "click to skip forward 10 seconds" behavior and instead it's either in fast-forward mode or it's not, and in that mode it's impossible to seek to an accuracy of ~1 minute. Video player controls have been a solved problem for something like several decades. It's actually impressive that they managed to screw it up so badly.
mindcrime 2y ago
Peacock is terrible. They are, as far as I can tell, the only mainstream service of this sort that actively block Linux users. I can use Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, Disney+, Max, Prime Video, etc. from Linux with zero issues. But Peacock? Nope. Doesn't work, and given that it had worked in the past, it seems like they have taken active measures to block Linux and to close any workarounds that let you use their service from a Linux box. So fuck Peacock. They have some content I would watch, and that I'd be happy to pay for. But they actively reject my business, so fuck 'em.

palmotea 2y ago

I wonder if that's more an issue with them than you. I subscribed to peacock for one month during the Olympics, and it was terrible. Streams frequently were stuck at something super-low 320p, or just halted to that stupid sad cat error page. Cutesy error pages are cute exactly once, then they're even worse than a minimally viable error page.

znpy 2y ago

Maybe the issue is on their side. Their best outcome is you paying for 4k hdr and streaming 720p. Bandwidth is expensive and slow to provision.

Dylan16807 2y ago
> Bandwidth is expensive and slow to provision. Not enough to hurt a paid service. Let's say 6Mbps for pretty solid 1080p. And at peak maybe we have .5 streams per account going simultaneously (I bet the real number is significantly lower). So we need 3Mbps per account. How much does a Mbps cost? "Across key cities in the U.S. and Europe, 400 GigE prices range from $0.07 to $0.08 per Mbps." Peacock doesn't even offer 4K most of the time or on the olympics, but for services that do a $1 upcharge should be more than enough to cover the bandwidth difference.
- deelowe 2y ago
  I'd be happy with 1080p.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Who does 6Mbps for 1080p? I thought HD topped out at 3Mbps, and 4K was around the 6+Mbps
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Twitch is typically 6Mbps+ and 1080p, though with more time to encode you can get the same quality out of fewer bits. Netflix can go up to about 20Mbps for 4K if my searches can be believed, but I didn't test it myself. When I've grabbed videos off Nebula they're a lot bigger than youtube; one here that doesn't even have much motion is 4Mbps at 1080p. And crunchyroll has a lot of 8Mbps at 1080p. But acceptable quality can definitely go smaller. Especially if "acceptable" is judged by the significant compression artifacts I see on actual cable TV all the time.
lostlogin 2y ago
I laughed. Netflix 4K is some bs in my experience. A 4K file of the same show, pirated, is vastly better quality. Whatever they do to it is just vandalism.
- throwaway287391 2y ago
  IME Netflix is a close 2nd best after Apple, which I don't think I can distinguish from a 4K BluRay. I've found that the quality depends on the platform a little -- for Netflix the native LG app seems to look best on my LG TV, while Apple looks best on the Apple TV app (perhaps unsurprisingly). Amazon Prime 4K HDR on the other hand looks like garbage on every platform I've used -- the compression is unbearable in any dark scene.
  - mulderc 2y ago
    I would put Disney+ after apple. Both AppleTV+ and Disney+ consistently looks great to me. Netflix is strange as it generally looks good but whatever compression they use does something funny to the picture which makes it look fuzzy and sharp at the same time to me.
    - martinald 2y ago
      Netflix is actually the lowest bitrate offering. Netflix: 15-18 Mbps Disney+: 25-30 Mbps Amazon Prime Video: 15-18 Mbps Apple TV+: 25-40 Mbps HBO Max: 15-20 Mbps This is from an LLM but it tallies with what I remember reading. Apple TV is by far the best, followed by Disney+. Netflix unfortunately seem to use any improvement in compression encoding efficiency to reduce bitrates, rather than improve PQ at the same bitrate. It's definitely got worse over time. I also remember reading that for content they deem more compressible they use a lower bitrate. I can sort of get that on the lower plans, but its frustrating they won't improve PQ (or at least keep it the same) for the (expensive) 4K plan.
- lfam 2y ago
  4K doesn't really say anything about image quality, just the resolution of the picture, which tells you the theoretical maximum level of visual detail. Focusing on resolution is like asking "how strong is one meter of rope" without talking about the composition of the rope. With streaming video, image quality ultimately comes down to the codec and the bitrate. They probably use a relatively low bitrate regardless of codec.

bb88 2y ago

Are you behind a CG-NAT? Not all companies have caught up to the fact that one IP is used by multiple customers now. Things like throttling by IP Address which used to be a viable option is not effective anymore.

deelowe 2y ago
Don't think so. Does cgnat use private IP space? I'm not familiar with how it works.
- bb88 2y ago
  Sorta. It's like NAT except it's at your carrier. Multiple customers share the same IP. If an attack or abuse comes from a CG-NAT address they have to throttle the IP and all the customers behind it.
  - hedora 2y ago
    If it’s not a cgnat, your ISP could be throttling everyone that isn’t using a whitelisted site. Try using speedtest.net or fast.com just before streaming, and see if it fixes peacock.

recursive 2y ago

Could be a DRM thing. You might not have a trusted display/decoding device, so it gives you the low res.

TuringNYC 2y ago
>Could be a DRM thing. You might not have a trusted display/decoding device, so it gives you the low res. True, but that is why this is a hard engineering challenge -- there are a lot of variations on client-side devices which need to be supported well. Upgrade cycles for TVs is 3x that of phones, is my guess.
- pbhjpbhj 2y ago
  'That' being DRM?
- londons_explore 2y ago
  Except there are only 3 DRM providers, and as a streaming service provider you just wrap the 3 providers libraries and write a few config files.
deelowe 2y ago
Its not that. I'm on a lg c2 with a modern Chromecast (or whatever name Google is calling it now) plugged in. Its all new stuff.

boopdewoop 2y ago

Its just them being cheap. They probably set every one to a max of 720p, hope most people do not realise (cutting down bandwidth costs) and let them set max quality themselves.

TuringNYC 2y ago
They just need to look at their stock price vs NFLX to realize that people do indeed realize the difference across the stack.
- hirako2000 2y ago
  Netflix has been most popular for a bunch of other rather obvious reasons.
Melatonic 2y ago
On Roku (actual box not integrated) Peacock has been good quality. Definitely hits 1080P with a decent bitrate. I suspect the software teams only have the bandwidth to focus on a few of the more popular devices (so probably Roku and Apple TV boxes) and others suffer

njovin 2y ago

Their 'seek' behavior is also horrendous. IIRC they don't support the standard "click to skip forward 10 seconds" behavior and instead it's either in fast-forward mode or it's not, and in that mode it's impossible to seek to an accuracy of ~1 minute. Video player controls have been a solved problem for something like several decades. It's actually impressive that they managed to screw it up so badly.

mindcrime 2y ago

Peacock is terrible. They are, as far as I can tell, the only mainstream service of this sort that actively block Linux users. I can use Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, Disney+, Max, Prime Video, etc. from Linux with zero issues. But Peacock? Nope. Doesn't work, and given that it had worked in the past, it seems like they have taken active measures to block Linux and to close any workarounds that let you use their service from a Linux box. So fuck Peacock. They have some content I would watch, and that I'd be happy to pay for. But they actively reject my business, so fuck 'em.