The Qatar World Cup has already provided its fair share of shocks on the pitch and research of perceptual video quality from leading US streaming providers has showed that they are falling below minimum recommended levels for delivering content at acceptable levels.
The analysis by SSIMWave found that for the first World Cup match of Qatar vs. Ecuador on 20 November 2022, three streaming providers – YouTube TV plus two other unnamed sources - scored below the SSIMPLUS Viewer Score minimum quality benchmark of 80, namely 74, 78 and 71.
That said the company was subpar for any event, but especially for a sporting event that draws more viewers than any other, including the Olympics. It noted that the 2022 World Cup is expected to attract 5 billion viewers worldwide.
SSIMWave stressed that soccer/football can achieve high scores and noted that streaming providers have delivered a Viewer Score of 80 or above for the English Premier League matches earlier this in 2022. For example, the 4 September match of Manchester United vs. Arsenal had the following viewer scores from 4 different providers of 83.3, 80.4, 74.5 and 76.5.
Attempting to attribute the main reason behind these lower video quality scores for the World Cup game, SSIMWave said that while monitoring the first game, it saw many source quality issues where the camera was out-of-focus which causes the picture to be very blurry. This it said has a big impact on the perceptual viewer experience, especially for the key moments. For example, it captured an image immediately after the second goal of the game was scored that had a Viewer Score of 67.
Another issue was encoding quality. This can mean that overall the viewer experience is low, primarily due to blurred pictures and loss of details. No grass texture is present and sometimes faces are not recognisable, even in “simple” scenes.
That said the company was subpar for any event, but especially for a sporting event that draws more viewers than any other, including the Olympics. It noted that the 2022 World Cup is expected to attract 5 billion viewers worldwide.
SSIMWave stressed that soccer/football can achieve high scores and noted that streaming providers have delivered a Viewer Score of 80 or above for the English Premier League matches earlier this in 2022. For example, the 4 September match of Manchester United vs. Arsenal had the following viewer scores from 4 different providers of 83.3, 80.4, 74.5 and 76.5.
Attempting to attribute the main reason behind these lower video quality scores for the World Cup game, SSIMWave said that while monitoring the first game, it saw many source quality issues where the camera was out-of-focus which causes the picture to be very blurry. This it said has a big impact on the perceptual viewer experience, especially for the key moments. For example, it captured an image immediately after the second goal of the game was scored that had a Viewer Score of 67.
Another issue was encoding quality. This can mean that overall the viewer experience is low, primarily due to blurred pictures and loss of details. No grass texture is present and sometimes faces are not recognisable, even in “simple” scenes.
