Highest quality television service in Los Angeles?

May 10, 2017 5:33 PM

If my wife and I wanted to watch first-run basic, 2nd tier and pay-cable shows in the highest quality possible, what service should we subscribe to? We're in Los Angeles.

When I say highest quality, I'm talking HD (or 4K UHD if that's possible!), six-channel sound, high bit rates, and other technical specs. I suspect the live streaming add-on packages from Amazon Prime, Hulu et al won't do the trick (but if I'm wrong, please tell me). When I say first-run, I mean Fargo Season 3, American Gods and Twin Peaks: The Return.

posted by infinitewindow to Technology (6 answers total)

I think your only choice for 4K first-run TV in any capacity is DirecTV (although super limited), and as far as I know, DTV still shows TV with the least compression in HD of the major carriers.
posted by General Malaise at 6:40 PM on May 10, 2017

There are little pockets of town with FIOS, but I don't know how long you could realistically expect that to maintain high fiber quality because they kind of gave up on the FIOS rollout. Like, we like where we live and we hate moving but we had FIOS in Dallas and we'd consider moving to have it again maybe.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:18 PM on May 10, 2017

Response by poster: Lyn Never, we're pretty close to Northridge and have confirmed that FIOS is not an option.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:52 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Just to clarify, AFAIK there are no options for 4K premium cable channels. DirecTV has two or three 4K channels, but they're just movie channels and not the channels that carry the shows you're looking for.
posted by bluecore at 9:25 PM on May 10, 2017

Waiting for the DVDs to be available is probably your only option.
posted by COD at 5:48 AM on May 11, 2017

Get an antenna. OTA has the best quality, no compression. Too early to look for 4K.
posted by Ferrari328 at 5:23 AM on May 12, 2017