What’s up with Teenick channel?

The teenick channel has never been very good picture quality wise. Whenever I watch it, especially at night with old Nickelodeon show reruns, it has black bars at all sides of the screen. In addition, the picture quality is not very good at all. It’s not horrible horrible, I can still watch, but it’s much more grainy looking than other SD channels like the SD Nickelodeon channel or SD Cartoon Network. I honestly always figured it was simply the way that the teenick Channel was broadcasting. Until now.

I am trying several streaming trials, and on the ones that teenick is available, the picture quality is way better. For example Philo. Watching teenick on Philo doesn’t show black bars around the show, and the picture quality is way way more clear than directv offers. Also, on Philo, all the shows (including 90s nick shows) actually enlarge all the way to fit my 55in tv, and still looks way more clear. Where as on directv, the shows would not fit the screen and still looked blurry.

At this point it very much seems it isn’t teenick causing the issues, but that it’s directv. Even the other channels like nick and Cartoon Network look better quality on Philo, youtube tv, sling as compared to the HD channel service on directv.

Overall, why would teenick look so much worse on directv? Can directv really just make a channel look worse than what the actual broadcast channel offers?