Over the past month, a small group has been working on gathering data for the main services we've tested that are mentioned in the community highlight posts. I wanted to share the results of what we've gathered to help find the right provider for you. To those of you who have helped gather this data, thank you.

Notes re: all charts:

• All charts intentionally exclude live event channels (PPV, etc). Because these channels are often offline unless a live event is occurring, we don't expect them to have EPG listed or to be working at all unless a live event is on, so it's easier to exclude them across the board.

Broken vs Working Channels

% of broken channels by provider

Interpreting this chart:

• Using Eagle 4k as an example, the blue bar shows channel count (~33k), the red line shows % of channels that do not work (~16%).
• The % of offline channels gives you some indication of how much care is taken by the provider to actually check that what they're advertising is working. You'll see there's a fairly large difference among providers here. (now whether the channels that are broken matter to you is very hard to figure out... you still have to trial them to know for sure)

Stream Quality

There is a lot to review under this category. Most of the charts are self-explanatory, but I'll add a few notes below.

Channel resolution breakdown by provider

Notes: re resolution reporting. All data comes from testing the actual resolution of the stream, not the name of the channel. If it is counted as 4K, it was actually broadcasting in 4K.

Arguably more important than 720P vs. 1080P vs 4K however is the quality of the streams. This is covered in each of the charts below which shows the bitrate of the average streams by provider. The higher the bitrate, the higher quality the stream (arguably a higher bitrate 1080P stream will look much better than a lower bitrate 4K stream, so these next charts are probably the most important ones to help assess the quality of each provider).

4K Channel Count & Resolution by Provider

Interpreting this chart:

• Using Strong8K as an example, the blue bar shows channel count in 4K (~140), the red line shows the average bitrates of those streams (7.5 Mbps)

1080P Channel Count & Resolution by Provider

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720P Channel Count & Resolution by Provider

Subtitle and Surround Sound Channels

Surround Sound & Subtitle Support

Interpreting this chart:

• Using Trex as an example, the blue bar shows channel count with subtitles (~1,000), the red line shows the % of their total channel catalog with multi-channel audio (2%).

Catchup Channels & EPG Coverage

Catchup & EPG Coverage by Provider

Interpreting this chart:

• Using Eagle 4k as an example, the blue bar shows channel count (~33k), the red line shows % of channels with EPG (~25%), and the yellow line shows % of channels with catchup (~6%)
• It's very difficult to check whether catchup channels actually work, and in many cases they do not... so I wouldn't focus overly on that part of the report.