[NashGuy]

AppleTV+ is pretty cheap at $5 per month. It's about the only bargain in the Apple universe.

Yup. IMO, Apple TV+ is becoming the new HBO, i.e. a service focused on a smaller library of buzzy, glossy, high-quality originals (plus a bit of sports -- remember when HBO had boxing and Wimbledon?). Just as HBO was never intended to be the first/only stop on your cable dial, Apple TV+ doesn't want to be a jumbo-sized something-for-everyone service to compete with Netflix, Prime Video, The Max (HBO Max+discovery+), or Disney+Hulu. But they do offer a steady flow of fresh new series and mini-series each week, with a few films, docs and kids shows thrown in there too.

I barely got in on the free year deal last June when I bought the new Apple TV 4K box. Once that year lapses, I'll probably drop Apple TV+ for a couple months while I rotate in Netflix and Showtime and then resubscribe for another year of Apple TV+ for $50.

 

[NashGuy]

A couple of things with tonight’s Mets/Nats game tonight.

Picture is great when there isn’t any action. Some judder during action scene though that I don’t see on this same TV on MLB EI or MLB.TV.

Sound and video is not synced. Sound of announcer describing a hit to left field before the pitch was thrown.

Needs some work it seems.

I watched a bit of both games, mainly the last couple innings of the Astros/Angels game. In both cases, the HD video quality was excellent (nearly as good as some live 4K sports I've seen) although I did notice occasional glitches, like a weird shake in the picture. Didn't notice the sound being out of sync at all but did hear persistent audio artifacts like a popping sound now and then. And unfortunately, no way to pause or rewind the live stream (unlike Peacock's recent live streams of the Winter Olympics). Even if Apple doesn't want to mess with that feature on their servers, there's no reason why they could use local storage on their Apple TV 4K to create a live buffer (as the Channels app for OTA TV does).

So good first effort at live sports by Apple TV+ but, yeah, they have some technical kinks to work out and improvements to make.

 

[NashGuy]

I noticed both games had a female announcer. I thought both did a good job calling the action. At one point in the Astros/Angels game they had 4 people talking at once. Two men and two women. They need to limit it to just 2 announcers. More than two is just too ESPN'y.

I don't watch a ton of sports but the announcing didn't feel quite up to par with what I expect from the major broadcast networks. As you say, having two people in the booth (along with an occasional cut-in from someone on the field) might be better.

 

[NashGuy]

MLB broadcast info from last nights game.

1080p native, 60fps, ~8 mbps (AVC H.264) video bitrate, ~256 kbps (AC3 Dolby Digital) audio bitrate.

Those are the stats for the games on Apple TV+? Wow, I'm surprised that they were able to get live on-the-fly encoded 1080p60 video in H.264 that looked so good at only about 8 Mbps. I also wonder why they weren't doing a second encode in HEVC H.265, which could have produced equal or better PQ at an even lower bitrate. Lots of devices running the Apple TV app support hardware decoding for HEVC.