NOW TV

I suspect it all arrives 1080i as harshy has said.

Some events are covered in 1080i even if the local rights-holder broadcaster is 720p - as other clients will want 1080i too...

Another interesting anomaly is that NRK and SVT are both 720p for broadcast - but internally they are almost entirely 1080i (they cross convert on TX...). ARD and ZDF were similar (though they accepted programmes made in both standards) - though now they have 1080p outlets on DVB-T2 they are presumably running 1080i or 1080p (or higher) internally.

Ideally from this point on, HD origination should be 1080p (often referred to as '3G', but nothing to do with mobile phone networks !)

UHD/4k formats are all progressive, so you really don't want to be upscaling native 1080i stuff, and of course
1080p to 720p conversion doesn't require any temporal messing about.

On paper...

The reality is that most 50/59.94p production will be 2160p native, with 1080i still 'the norm' for native HD stuff for the foreseeable. There's no real incentive to switch to 1080p50 or 1080p59.94 production - the driver to 50/59.94p will be UHD.

Would seem a bit of a waste of time to move everything to 1080p50/60 when direction of travel is clearly towards UHD and they'd probably have to replace all the equipment in a few years.

Not sure if it's just an issue with Roku kit, but Gold has had really bad issues with vertical lines going across the screen and stuttering.

No issue with any other live channel.

Yep - though in theory a lot of current infrastructure can work 1080p50 already - it all depends whether it is 3G or 1.5G HD-SDI - though cameras are an issue AIUI. Don't think HDC-1500s do 1080/50i at the other end of the SMPTE camera chain do they? (There are a LOT of HDC1500s out there)

Just persusing this thread - and not from the beginning, so may be posting out of turn. The HDC's 1000/1500 are native 1080/50(60)i, it was a long time ago but from memory certainly the 1500 can work in 50/60p but Sony could not get the signal back up the fibre cable so the signal is only available from 2 BNC outputs on the back/side of the camera head - so not very practical? Not sure about the 1000, would seem logical that it would too, but again the fibre would be the problem. I may be misremembering all that!

The early cameras are getting on a bit now so would be naturally entering the replacement cycle - certainly there will be a lot coming up at auction on the Southbank soon!

The £25 Monthly Sports Passes seem to have re-appeared on Argos again.

Looks like NOW TV has added 50fps to some channels on the platform. From what I've seen, the likes of Gold, Comedy Central, Syfy and Discovery (which broadcast in SD) now seem to air at a higher refresh rate.

Unfortunately for channels such as Sky One and the Sky Sports channels, which broadcast in 720p, they still air at 25fps

And the sports channels are the ones that most need 50fps as well.

Also in Currys what is going on? Many available locally today.

I recently purchased a NVidia Shield, which allows you watch NOW TV through the Chromecast Ultra add-on and the 25fps issue is really noticeable. I watched Nat Geo Wild and you could see where the lack of frames per second shows on fast scenes which is similar to what happens when you watch sport on Sky Sports.