JonnyTester
Well-known Member
I got a hankering for some Mandalorian in HDR and Atmos yesterday. So I fired up the family (HA!) Xbox One S, started the Disney+ app, and settled down. The first episode started, and I was very impressed with the picture quality (the Atmos audio, not so great). But then it came to the part where the hero lands on Arvala-7/Tatooine to collect The Kid, and the sunny blue sky descended into horrible pixellated bands, instead of a solid, multitone vista. I was horrified. So I checked out animated flick Over The Moon on Netflix. It had the same pixellated banding. Before kicking the Xbox all around the room, I tried the BluRay of Avatar extended edition, and all sky shots were perfect.
Thinking it might have been down to low wifi bandwidth on the Xbox, I tried the Nvidia Shield with the same streaming apps, only to find that it suffered from the same banding. Just to make sure, I downloaded the first spisode of the Mandalorian series in 4K HDR with Atmos sound, and played it on Kodi on the Shield. And the sky scenes were perfect.
So it seems that it must be down to the streaming services. I can't remember the Mandalorian having such a bad picture when I first watched it. In fact almost all the movies and tv we watch is on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ and I have never noticed it being so bad before. I had heard way back when the first lockdown kicked in, that bandwidth on streaming services were being pared back. But I took it with a pinch of salt. So is that whet he problem is, or has the picture quality of streaming services always been so bad?
Thinking it might have been down to low wifi bandwidth on the Xbox, I tried the Nvidia Shield with the same streaming apps, only to find that it suffered from the same banding. Just to make sure, I downloaded the first spisode of the Mandalorian series in 4K HDR with Atmos sound, and played it on Kodi on the Shield. And the sky scenes were perfect.
So it seems that it must be down to the streaming services. I can't remember the Mandalorian having such a bad picture when I first watched it. In fact almost all the movies and tv we watch is on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ and I have never noticed it being so bad before. I had heard way back when the first lockdown kicked in, that bandwidth on streaming services were being pared back. But I took it with a pinch of salt. So is that whet he problem is, or has the picture quality of streaming services always been so bad?
