HBO NOW on 2nd Gen Fire TV - Lousy Streaming Quality (1 Viewer)

[dpippel]

I just took advantage of Amazon's free 30 day trial subscription to HBO Now on my 4K Fire TV box, and I'm appalled at how terrible it looks. We decided to watch Westworld, and while we like the show the macroblocking, banding, and artifacting the app is throwing out is so distracting we almost had to turn it off. It literally looks like a crappy ten-year-old YouTube video. Everything else I use on the box looks pretty resoundingly fantastic, particularly 4K streaming content like Luke Cage (Netflix app) and The Man in the High Castle (Amazon).

Has anyone else been experiencing this with HBO Now, either on the Fire TV or other streaming devices? I admittedly haven't done much digging to see if the problem is isolated to Westworld or if everything the app dishes out looks like crap, and I haven't tried using the Amazon app on my LG OLED to see if it looks the same via that source. All I know that if HBO is using this free trial to try and snag new subscribers, they can count me out if this is the kind of quality I can expect.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I am using the Amazon Prime Subscription service where I actually add the show to my Watchlist, instead of subbing thru HBO and using their app or cable. The PQ has been the best I have seen. In comparison of a Roku Ultra vs Fire TV 2nd gen on 1080p tv shows, I saw banding on the Fire where I did not on the Roku. I just got a 2nd gen Shield in and sold the Ultra. I love the Shield and the only thing keeping me away was no Amazon, which is has now.

 

[dpippel]

Yeah, I did the same with the show and while it improved PQ slightly, it still looks pretty bad. I have a 2nd Gen Shield coming tomorrow and will give it a spin over the next week. Maybe I'll end up selling my Fire TV.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Let me know what you think. Westworld and Ray Donovan's latest season have been the best PQ thru the Amazon sub that I have seen vs pay tv subscriptions. I checked out some Game of Thrones which is notorious for being bad on Directv and Dish due to the dark scenes, and it looks much nicer through Amazon to me. That was with the Roku Ultra, but as far as I can tell the Shield looks just as good.

 

[dpippel]

I'll let you know. I'm really looking forward to trying out the Shield.

 

[albert_m2]

I watched something for the first time last night on HBO NOW through Amazon and the picture quality varied. I'm also really disappointed in the lag of when new episodes are available.

 

[dpippel]

I've found that watching HBO content directly through the Amazon app (as opposed to the HBO Now app) results in markedly better PQ.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Yep!!! ^^^