Putting big sports events in 4K resolution has been a selling point for pay-TV providers like DirecTV, but it doesn’t always go smoothly. In particular, the 4K broadcast of the Sugar Bowl between the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs and the No. 7 Baylor Bears Wednesday seemed to have some significant problems. Twitter filled up with reports of the picture going out at times on the 4K broadcast (which is on a special channel, not the regular ESPN feed), error messages telling viewers to tune to the regular HD ESPN feed instead, and the sound not working for large portions of the game:
@DIRECTV you need to stop promoting 4K. Any time I try to watch something in 4K there is an issue. The Sugar Bowl so far has been a bust and right now I have a black screen.
— Jim Farris (@pastorjimfarris) January 2, 2020
https://twitter.com/Oldlineman58/status/1212563120507564033
https://twitter.com/VectorPrime27/status/1212575063716839430
https://twitter.com/VectorPrime27/status/1212574403499905024
https://twitter.com/SpiresChuck/status/1212553881776984066
https://twitter.com/MiamiWinR/status/1212578007312994304
https://twitter.com/MiamiWinR/status/1212580346396577792
https://twitter.com/RPMunson/status/1212559431323594753
That’s not a great look for a 4K broadcast to have such a prolonged sound outage, especially considering the picture outages as well. These broadcasts are big advertising focuses for companies like DirecTV (and parent AT&T), but if they’re not going to run smoothly, they might want to back off a bit on promoting them.
[Photo via @oldlineman58]