Poor picture

[Hem]

Can anyone offer any advice on whether it is worth hassling Sky about improving my dish alignment to get a better picture? We got Sky for the first time last October as we had just moved to a new place and the previous owners already had a dish installed.

When the guy came around to set it up he did seem concerned that the dish signal was not exactly perfect, but on viewing on my old 25" tv everything looked fine. As the dish was already there I guess he was reluctant to do any realigning if he could get away with it.

Anyway, I have now just progressed to a new 36" crt television and am not particularly happy with the quality on a lot of the channels. There is a lot of "blockiness" across all the screen, which i believe is down to bandwidth problems. The premium channels are much better, mostly the movie channels. However the music channels are plain awful. Is this something have to expect or should I try and get an engineer to take a look at the dish. The signal strength reading is 60/70% and the quality reading flickers between 50/60%. As it is I find myself watching BBC etc on terrestrial as the picture is so much better.

Any advice appreciated.

[Kearney]

If the premium channels are ok then dish alignment is not the problem. Digital is either on or off regards quality, however a weak signal is more likely to be disrupted in heavy rain. Many music channels broadcast in a fairly low bitrate as does the terrestrial channels via satellite.

[Starburst]

You have just bought a modern TV with lots of digital processing and guess what, it requires a far higher quality of digital source than a bog standard smallish CRT does.
For a less than good quality digital source the smaller 50hz no digital processing TV will produce a better looking picture than the more modern TV. However feed the modern TV with a DVD source or a high bitrate premium digital broadcast and it will do a far better job than the older TV.

Short of the government and it's regulators forcing higher bitrates/lower compression on all digital platforms there is always going to be a less than acceptable picture quality on the majority of UK digital channels

[KW1816]

For what it's worth I agree with Kearney,

Is your new TV a 100Hz one ? I've found most 'out of the box' settings on 100hz TV's make sky look terrible
Try turning off any 'Picture Enhancement' 'Digital Processing' 'Super duper silly sharp image' on the TV's menu and see if that improves things.

BTW: I have a 100hz TV - with all settings turned off and Sky looks just fine - with similiar signal strength etc.

Oh - and turn the contrast down

Cheers
Kevin.

[Hem]

Hmmm, so I guess that's no then. Oh well, thanks for the feedback guys. I've got the tree surgeon coming round on monday to have a go at a tree which is partially in line of sight of the dish. Hopefully will improve things a little - although the main reason is to give us a little more sunlight in our little garden.

Yes the tv is 100hz - and Pixel Plus, and.....the list goes on. I was fully aware of the issues surrounding these, and this set in particular. While the low bandwidth channels are a little annoying, all else (movies, DVD, Xbox etc) are simply stunning.

Lets hope the Hi Def bandwagon will start to make inroads over here and people will start demanding serious improvements to picture quality on their large screen plasma & LCD tv's (we can all dream!).

[chilpillphil3]

My aunty has a Panasonic 36" tv and most of sky is plain awful, We have a Panasonic 32" IDTV and aslong as you dont sit to close the picture is super across most channels, Always check you have RGB on