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 come on direct tv now channel 105 has no sound or picture. Glad I'm paying for a 4k service that doesn't work when I football game is finally broadcast in 4k. What a joke!!
— Tony Estanich (@TEstanich) January 2, 2020
@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
@espn the 4K broadcast on @DIRECTV is not working please fix it ASAP there is no sound and no picture unacceptable hope this doesn’t happen in the National championship game on January 13th
— James Maxey (@TopDawg1061) January 2, 2020
https://twitter.com/VectorPrime27/status/1212575063716839430
https://twitter.com/VectorPrime27/status/1212574403499905024
https://twitter.com/SpiresChuck/status/1212553881776984066
Remembered primarily for the repeated broadcast difficulties throughout the first half when viewers had no or limited audio and loss of entire broadcast for much of the time making the game pretty much unwatchable. 👎 Sugar Bowl 4k @DIRECTV #SugarBowl
— Lynne 🏀 (@MiamiWinR) January 2, 2020
Beautiful 4k black screen. See the deep black levels. Awesome.
— Lynne 🏀 (@MiamiWinR) January 2, 2020
Getting great 4k sugar bowl pictures on directv but no volume. Kinda sucks .
— Lester Babb (@broqueleglNFT) January 2, 2020
Was really excited to watch the @SugarBowlNola in 4K tonight, but @DIRECTV @ATT just can't get their act together. Halfway through the second quarter and there hasn’t been any audio
— Svend Jansen (@svendjansen) January 2, 2020
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]
