Does skyHD negate the need for a PC ?

[LTJ]

Evening all. Sounds daft I know but with Sky HD now available would there be any advantage taking it RGB out put via the sweetspot capture card and dscaler. Infact can the sweet spot handle hi def and can dscaler process it.

Will using sky HD bypass the need for say, a PC, to polish up the processing.

[sbowler]

Skys HD image shouldnt need polishing up, your just adding more processing to the image and thereby degrading it, feed it straight to the TV from SKY HD box.

[LTJ]

That's what I mean. My dscaler and sweetspot card is now obsolete?

[JonMace]

Basically yeh, unless you are talking about the front end and GUI from what I understand Sky HD is the Sky+ GUI which I also understand to be apalling

[JohnS]

The sweetspot wont support hidef resolutions. In fact there are very few capture cards capable of hidef because of pci bus limitations, the one or two that are available are megabucks ~£2k and probably are not supported by dscaler anyway.

[LTJ]

Firstly thanks to those that have replied.


Okay the sweetspot is obsolete for the purposes of HD. Another £160 item in the spare bits cupboard. I know I'll put it in special spot with my IScan pro

I do know that skyHD is outputting RGB but that would seem pointless with a PC unless you have one of these Super-duper couple grand capture cards. So if go skyhd it's goodnight from sweetspot an goodnight from dscaler?

For my point of view currently that's fine, as my toshiba screen will take the sky hdmi at 1280 x720. Trouble now is all the upscaling potential has gone, and is it now needed?
I have to say with the Toshiba LCD screen I get far better results with Sky (not HD) rgb into the sweet spot -descaler and then out via ati sapphire 9960 DVI to HDMI than with the Toshiba on board digital receiver-far better.

Oh what a mess it all is.

[JohnS]

In theory (because I dont have sky hd) it shouldn't need scaling if the output resolution is the same as your screen resolution which for 720p is likey the case.

I agree that the improvement for regular sky using dscaler was massive when set up correctly but that was because the pc did a better job of fitting the picure to the screen than the scaler in the tv, in theory with hd it shouldn't mattter (as much). If you really want to improve a picture thats hd then a standalone scaler like the lumogen is the way to go.

[welwynnick]

I think Sky HD will still benefit from good video processing because most, if not all, of it's output is 1080i. Very few displays of any sort will process that properly without losing definition or adding artifacts, and effective processing will be a great benefit if you're going to get a 1080p display.

HTPCs were well able to do that for SD video, and I'd be pretty confident they will be able to do so with internal BD & HD DVD drives.

But I don't hold out much hope with processing external HD sources.

Unless some kind soul knows better...?

Nick

[-Hitman-]

I'm currently looking at a HD satellite card, due for release next week, which will enable me to unplug my Sky+ dish feed and connect to my PC to receive BBC HD, then transport it to my plasma!

HD video should not need any video processing unless the scaling used by the display is off par, if so then i would run the video pixel mapped to the display and let the PC or scaler do the scaling of the video,effectively cutting out the displays processing but nothing is available to recieve a HD input for capture/processing!

[LTJ]

Well I would assume the fact that I (or anyone with an average by todays standard PC) can play Windows HD video from a download shows the rest of the PC can do it. Of course though I'm not playing it through the sweetspot capture card and descaler, but WMPlayer or in my case Teater tek. That then leads me to another thought. Those windows HD clips are downloaded but you can purchase the full DVD? Now whether this is high def as in the up and coming format war between HD and BlueRay I'm not too sure at all?

[-Hitman-]

Originally Posted by LTJ

Well I would assume the fact that I (or anyone with an average by todays standard PC) can play Windows HD video from a download shows the rest of the PC can do it. Of course though I'm not playing it through the sweetspot capture card and descaler, but WMPlayer or in my case Teater tek. That then leads me to another thought. Those windows HD clips are downloaded but you can purchase the full DVD? Now whether this is high def as in the up and coming format war between HD and BlueRay I'm not too sure at all?

The full DVD's are in WMV-HD to be played back using WMP10, problem is that only the US can access/download the license for WMV-HD via DRM activation, which is required for the full DVD versions.

I bought Terminater2 WMV-HD only to be unable to play it, until i managed to spoof the licence server to think i was based in the US, bit of a bummer!

[David PluggedIn]

Okay the sweetspot is obsolete for the purposes of HD. Another £160 item in the spare bits cupboard.

Hi Ltj

Actually SkyHD is currently delivering a worse picture for SD broadcasts than the standard SD boxes, so users looking for the best viewing experience are connecting the RGB Scart from the HD box to their video processor (be it a PC based system with SweetSpot or a standalone unit) , and then using the HD outputs from the SkyHD box only on HD material. So, as a PC based user then you would still get value from it even with an HD box!

There are some new developments coming from us as well for SweetSpot - so stay tuned

[whats_this]

are these developments likely to be avaliable to existing sweetspot users ie add on cards for hd, driver updates to allow 1080i support (not sure if that is possible though). Or are are these developments completly new cards, replacing the existing sweetspot cards.