Intermittent pixelation on Now tv app

[JPMLondon]

Have the latest 4K Apple TV and hooked up to LG G1 4K tv with a 1m UHS Basesailor HDMI cable (and comes out as fine with Apple TV's tester).

Internet connection is 900+ up and down, 1ms ping and .1ms jitter, no loss and connected directly to Apple TV via ethernet.

Both match content and frame rate are on.

Basically, I'm expecting no issues when streaming anything.

However, I'll get intermittent pixelation eg on the Now TV app when streaming. As far as I know this is "only" HD, not even 4K.
Also on Apple TV's Home Screen trailers running in the background seem to pixelate sometimes.
Just watched No Time To Die as a purchase via Movies/Apple TV itself which would be 4K and with all bells and whistles. Not a single hiccup at any point...

Any suggestions to what could cause this, steps to try etc?

 

[McScooby]

Have the latest 4K Apple TV and hooked up to LG G1 4K tv with a 1m UHS Basesailor HDMI cable (and comes out as fine with Apple TV's tester).

Internet connection is 900+ up and down, 1ms ping and .1ms jitter, no loss and connected directly to Apple TV via ethernet.

Both match content and frame rate are on.

Basically, I'm expecting no issues when streaming anything.

However, I'll get intermittent pixelation eg on the Now TV app when streaming. As far as I know this is "only" HD, not even 4K.
Also on Apple TV's Home Screen trailers running in the background seem to pixelate sometimes.
Just watched No Time To Die as a purchase via Movies/Apple TV itself which would be 4K and with all bells and whistles. Not a single hiccup at any point...

Any suggestions to what could cause this, steps to try etc?

I'd guess it's just a crap app, if you have sports wait until the sound drops out of sync with the picture, i.e the picture stops and the sound keeps going. This only affects TV users. I'm guessing there'll be a full rewrite / nowtv will be dropped when sky launch their satellite free service / sky go @ $15/month later this year.

 

[JPMLondon]

Ah, that's sort of what I feared... Luckily I don't watch much sports, so don't have that.

I think the Sky GO thing is different in the US and UK (where I am). Here I think it's for full Sky subscribers only, whereas Now is for non-Sky users.

 

[w5jck]

I agree that the issue is likely the fault of a crappy app. I stream Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, Britbox, Prime Video, Apple TV+, CuriosityStream, and others without any issues. However, Philo TV screws up all the time, and has done so for over a year now.

 

[JPMLondon]

Either of you experience the background trailers on the ATV dashboard/home page pixelate sometimes as well?

 

[w5jck]

Not that I’m aware of, but I’m not really sure what the ATV Dashboard is referring to. I rarely watch any content from the Apple TV+ service. I have a subscription to it, but the content isn’t of much interest to my age group. I mostly have it for the Music and iCloud+ services.

I can say that if I have the ATV app button highlighted (enlarged) the Up Next items never seem pixelated. If I select the ATV app button and it opens the Home screen, I never see pixelated content there either. I hope that helps answer your question.

The only current app that gives me issues on a regular basis is Philo which is a live TV streaming service. It acts up on some of the TV channels, especially the MotorTrend and Science channels. For some reason, commercials often become low resolution like the old SDTV was. They are blurry, but not pixelated. The resolution is okay on the TV programs though, however I get a lot of spinning gears when the programming stops streaming, and occasionally the app shuts itself off. But I’m pretty sure this is just a Philo issue. No other apps act like this. I have 200 Mbits streaming speed and very reliable internet service plus my ATV 4K 2017 is connected via ethernet. Philo has a long history of streaming issues, so I think their servers are not very good.

 

[JPMLondon]

I can say that if I have the ATV app button highlighted (enlarged) the Up Next items never seem pixelated. If I select the ATV app button and it opens the Home screen, I never see pixelated content there either. I hope that helps answer your question.

This is what I meant...

I'll keep an eye out for potential issues on other apps, but from both you guys' feedback it currently sounds like what I suspected as well - an app issue. Thanks again for your comments!