HD Content playback quality

[Shaladash]

Hi All,
First post..

I have a Foxsat HDR with 4.1.3 custom firmware and wondering if there is any significant quality differences when playing back recorded content (HD)
As i can see there are 3 easy ways..
Copy file(s) to usb (after optimise for streaming) and attach direct to TV USB port
Stream (Twonky Media/Media Tomb) over the network
HDMI direct from Foxsat to TV

Playback through LG OLED 4k TV

All work well and seem similar but can't prove 100%

Read that different sytems will potentially give different results depending on how H264 is decoded etc

Any comments welcome

S

 

[Black Hole]

First post

Welcome aboard.

All work well and seem similar but can't prove 100%

Correct. There is a standard specification for decoding H.264, so all implementations should produce identical results given the same input. Variations occur on encoding not decoding, because that's where the various "optimisations" are applied to strike the desired balance between picture quality and data rate.

Your final picture is mostly affected by the TV's internal scaler which converts HD (1920x1080 or 1280x720) to 4K (3840x2160). You'll only get a difference if you feed the TV from a native 4K source. If the source has to upscale to 4K, then you can choose whether to have the source or the TV do the upscaling, and see which one has the more pleasing result (it's in the eye of the beholder).