FuboTV, the live streaming service, plans to offer 11 Thursday Night Football games in 4K HDR this season, beginning with the October 8th matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Chicago Bears at 8 p.m. ET.
The games, which will be produced by Fox, will also be available in 4K on the Fox Sports app.
However, it’s unclear which streaming devices will be compatible with the 4K stream on the Fox Sports app. Fox last year offered 4K streams of NFL games on the Apple TV 4k, Roku 4K-enabled devices (Premiere+, Ultra, Streaming Stick +, Roku 4K TVs), and Fire TV 4K streaming devices and smart TVs (Amazon Fire TV Stick, Cube, and Insignia and Toshiba brand Fire 4K TVs.)
With fuboTV, you will only need a 4K-enabled streaming device that has the FuboTV app, or a TV that’s 4K-enabled and carries the FuboTV app.
However, the live streaming service, which costs $65 a month, does not carry all Fox affiliates. If FuboTV does not carry the Fox affiliate in your market, you will not be able to see the 4K or HD broadcast of the games on FuboTV. Here is a list of the Fox affiliates that are available on fubo.
FuboTV, which previously announced it would stream more than 10 college football games this season in 4K, will stream the the following NFL games in 4K:
Bucs vs. Bears (October 8)
Chiefs vs. Bills (October 15)
Giants vs. Eagles (October 22)
Falcons vs. Panthers (October 29)
Packers vs. 49ers (November 5)
Colts vs. Titans (November 12)
Cardinals vs. Seahawks (November 19)
Cowboys vs. Ravens (December 3)
Patriots vs. Rams (December 10)
Chargers vs. Raiders (December 17)
Vikings vs. Saints (December 25)
In past years, DIRECTV, Comcast, Dish and Optimum, among others, have also aired Fox-produced NFL games in 4K, but they have yet to make any announcements for this season. The TV Answer Man will monitor this situation and report back here if anything changes.
Update: Comcast, Directv and Optimum are confirmed for offering the games in 4K.
Last note: Fox produces its NFL coverage in 1080p and ‘upscales’ it to a 4K broadcast as opposed to shooting the event in 4K and transmitting in the same format.
Upscaling is the process when one video format is converted to another. In this case, Fox will take the 1080p HDR signal and convert it to a 4K format.
Upscaling 4K is not as good as what’s called, native 4K, which means the original event was produced in 4K, and broadcast or streamed in 4K as well. Still, the 4K broadcast should be an improvement over 1080i or 1080p HD.
Have a question about new TV technologies? Send it to The TV Answer Man at swann@tvpredictions.com. Please include your first name and hometown in your message.
— Phillip Swann
As last year, these games are not produced in 4k but just upscaled. Very little if any improvement over regular tv.
While these streamers are upgrading the video, do you know if, Fubo, for example, is upgrading from 2.0 stereo to 5.1?
We are leaving fuboTV because of the poor quality of their stream on certain channels. YouTube TV is much better in that regard. When we change a channel on fubo we are met with a fuzzy picture for a while before it decides to clear up. Sometimes it does not wish to clear at all. We are connected to 500/500 fiber internet service here, so it is not our internet connection. Also, you cannot record anything on ESPN or ESPN2 on fubo. They are “working on it”.
I’m surprised there is no mention here of these games also being in HDR. HDR is arguably more of a difference than the 4k resolution and really makes the games look great.
It’s in the headline. 🙂