What most effects better video?

[ArtReid]

To watch video sport streams with the most clarity, what is most likely to
effect clarity? (full screen fuzziness and/or breaks in action)?

My thinking would be a higher quality video card and/or a higher quality
monitor?
Any other suggestions ?

 

[Ed Cryer]

To watch video sport streams with the most clarity, what is most likely
to effect clarity? (full screen fuzziness and/or breaks in action)?

My thinking would be a higher quality video card and/or a higher quality
monitor?
Any other suggestions ?

Enough RAM; fast enough CPU; good enough source quality.

Ed

 

[SC Tom]

Enough RAM; fast enough CPU; good enough source quality.

Ed

And I think "good enough source quality" is the most important key. For the past two weeks, I've been watching live
streaming of the U.S. Open in New York, both on the Open's web site and ESPN3 (or whatever it's been renamed to now),
and found the stream from the Open's site to be much better in quality with less pauses, break-ups, and complete
stoppages. I'm sure there were a lot less people on its site than on ESPN at any given time, so that may explain part of
it.

One of the PC's I was using has an AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+ (2.5GHz) CPU, 4GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GT 240 w/1GB VRAM
running WinXP Home 32-bit. The other is my notebook with and Intel T8300 Core2 Duo 2.4GHz CPU, 4GB RAM and a dedicated
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 w/500MB VRAM running Win7 Home Premium 32-bit. Both of them had equal quality video,
although the picture was a little sharper on the 15.5" notebook screen than on my 22" widescreen Acer LCD. But, I have
the Acer connected through the VGA port and the notebook is HD, and pictures are generally sharper on smaller screens
than on larger ones (discounting the HD part).

 

[Ed Cryer]

And I think "good enough source quality" is the most important key. For
the past two weeks, I've been watching live streaming of the U.S. Open
in New York, both on the Open's web site and ESPN3 (or whatever it's
been renamed to now), and found the stream from the Open's site to be
much better in quality with less pauses, break-ups, and complete
stoppages. I'm sure there were a lot less people on its site than on
ESPN at any given time, so that may explain part of it.

One of the PC's I was using has an AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+ (2.5GHz) CPU,
4GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GT 240 w/1GB VRAM running WinXP Home
32-bit. The other is my notebook with and Intel T8300 Core2 Duo 2.4GHz
CPU, 4GB RAM and a dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 w/500MB VRAM
running Win7 Home Premium 32-bit. Both of them had equal quality video,
although the picture was a little sharper on the 15.5" notebook screen
than on my 22" widescreen Acer LCD. But, I have the Acer connected
through the VGA port and the notebook is HD, and pictures are generally
sharper on smaller screens than on larger ones (discounting the HD part).

I live in the UK and watch a lot of BBC News 24 on a very good quality
Samsung TV. Some of the reports from Libya (and we've been getting so
many recently) are extremely poor quality, with lots of pauses, picture
fragmenting, sound suddenly going etc. The roving reporters get
somewhere in the desert, set up their little satellite-dish and stand in
front of the camera telling us who's bearing the crap out of whom.
And the announcers don't often apologise for it, so I bet lots of people
rush to retune their sets. Just as I often used to rush in to check
everything on my computer, when the ISP was responsible.

That happens a lot. You often have no way of knowing what's at fault;
your stuff or the other stuff.

Ed

 

[Ed Cryer]

And I think "good enough source quality" is the most important key. For
the past two weeks, I've been watching live streaming of the U.S. Open
in New York, both on the Open's web site and ESPN3 (or whatever it's
been renamed to now), and found the stream from the Open's site to be
much better in quality with less pauses, break-ups, and complete
stoppages. I'm sure there were a lot less people on its site than on
ESPN at any given time, so that may explain part of it.

One of the PC's I was using has an AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+ (2.5GHz) CPU,
4GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GT 240 w/1GB VRAM running WinXP Home
32-bit. The other is my notebook with and Intel T8300 Core2 Duo 2.4GHz
CPU, 4GB RAM and a dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 w/500MB VRAM
running Win7 Home Premium 32-bit. Both of them had equal quality video,
although the picture was a little sharper on the 15.5" notebook screen
than on my 22" widescreen Acer LCD. But, I have the Acer connected
through the VGA port and the notebook is HD, and pictures are generally
sharper on smaller screens than on larger ones (discounting the HD part).

I live in the UK and watch a lot of BBC News 24 on a very good quality
Samsung TV. Some of the reports from Libya (and we've been getting so
many recently) are extremely poor quality, with lots of pauses, picture
fragmenting, sound suddenly going etc. The roving reporters get
somewhere in the desert, set up their little satellite-dish and stand in
front of the camera telling us who's bearing the crap out of whom.
And the announcers don't often apologise for it, so I bet lots of people
rush to retune their sets. Just as I often used to rush in to check
everything on my computer, when the ISP was responsible.

That happens a lot. You often have no way of knowing what's at fault;
your stuff or the other stuff.

Ed

 

[Yousuf Khan]

To watch video sport streams with the most clarity, what is most likely
to effect clarity? (full screen fuzziness and/or breaks in action)?

My thinking would be a higher quality video card and/or a higher quality
monitor?
Any other suggestions ?

If you're talking about streaming video, then the most important issue
is network speed.

Yousuf Khan

 

[DanS]

If you're talking about streaming video, then the most
important issue is network speed.

And compression level the provider uses too.

 

[Paul in Houston TX]

To watch video sport streams with the most clarity, what is most likely
to effect clarity? (full screen fuzziness and/or breaks in action)?

My thinking would be a higher quality video card and/or a higher quality
monitor?
Any other suggestions ?

Network speed: hops, etc.