> Congress wasn't happy when they authorized without understanding the network's intentions of multicasting

Well if they don't like multiplexing, they really shouldn't be refarming OTA RF channels to cell carriers and they might want to relax the requirements for migration. As I understand it, stations that want to broadcast ATSC3 are required to find an ATSC broadcast to multiplex all of their existing streams onto.

That said, I'm not surprised Comcast is worse than OTA, they (and satellite) have been bitstarving video streams for a long time. When I've watched regular games on ESPN+ or Amazon, they usually have sufficient bitrate that I rarely notice video artifacts, which is better than I get with OTA. ESPN+ does like to start at a low frame rate and then transition a few seconds in, which isn't ideal, but I can deal.

I don't know the stream details, because effort, but I suspect with the streaming device I use that they're using h.265/AV1 and a decent amount of bitrate, and at a higher resolution than 720p or 1080i.