How does SKY SDI compare with SD from Sky HD?

[Steve_B]

Thinking about switching to SKY HD, currently have an SDI-modded SKY+ box.

Any views on how the SD picture from SKY HD compares with SD via SDI?

Is it possible to force the HD box to output 576i into a VP50?

Cheers

[StooMonster]

My view is that Sky+ SDI versus HDMI from Sky HD is indistinguishable -- once you've got the 576i from Sky HD -- I would challenge anyone to spot the difference in a blind test.

VP50 has a cool feature called PReP, this feature extracts the original 576i fields from the 576p that Sky HD outputs over HDMI; it works perfectly, and has no corruption of loss of quality.

It would be nice if VP50 offered up EDID as means to force 576i over HDMI too, but PReP works so well that it's a non-issue.

StooMonster

[Steve_B]

Many thanks Stoo,

Was aware of PRep but didn't realise the HD box output 576p over HDMI.

Is there any news of, if DVDO will release EDID editing for the VP50? (or even if 1.01 will ever become a non beta version )

Looks like a sensible upgrade and for only another tenner a month with the bonus of SKY plus functions for free

cheers

[welwynnick]

Yeah, and any sign of PREP on the VP30?

Nick

[Liam @ Prog AV]

EDID editing would be nice for colourspace etc but prep works really quite well so not so much of a worry.

Prep on VP30? Who'd buy the VP50 if they did that....

[StooMonster]

Sky HD outputs in YPbPr colourspace over HDMI to VP50, so that's not a problem; over DVI connections it uses RGB colourspace.

PReP or EDID on VP30? Updating firmware on VPx0? Cough cough mutter cough.

As mentioned above, I haven't had any emails replied to in a long, long, long time; although I keep sending them in. My personal, uninformed, speculative view is that after appointment of new CEO ABT are currently focusing on their OEM component business, and less on their DVDO products.

StooMonster

[Chipster]

Hi Steve.

Had a friend over last night who said wow, how long have you had Sky HD?

When I told him it was just standard Sky he was amazed considering he has HD at home. In fact he said it looked better than his!!!

SDI looks almost 3D to me at times, even the lower bitrate channels are acceptable so it will be a while before I give Sky the extra dosh for the at present very limited service.

[StooMonster]

Originally Posted by Chipster

When I told him it was just standard Sky he was amazed considering he has HD at home. In fact he said it looked better than his!!!

Which is why it's essential to get the 576i signal out of Sky HD for your video processor, the 576p one that 99.9% of people will be displaying on their flatscreen is not good.

StooMonster

[Steve_B]

Originally Posted by Chipster

Hi Steve.

Had a friend over last night who said wow, how long have you had Sky HD?

When I told him it was just standard Sky he was amazed considering he has HD at home. In fact he said it looked better than his!!!

SDI looks almost 3D to me at times, even the lower bitrate channels are acceptable so it will be a while before I give Sky the extra dosh for the at present very limited service.

Chipster,

Have to agree when comparing SDI to standard SKY HD I think SDI wins hands down. Though of course I haven't seen it running though the VP50, which may skew it a little. I myself am not brave enough to shell out for a box and 12 months subs to be disappointed.

Having viewed the "canned" demo at a recent SKY HD sales pitch, I got talking with one of the non SKY sales people who said they had heard and expected the price of the boxes to drop within the next 6 months to encourage more take up? Probably just speculation but gave me a further reason to stick with SDI for now...

[Chipster]

Originally Posted by Steve_B

Having viewed the "canned" demo at a recent SKY HD sales pitch, I got talking with one of the non SKY sales people who said they had heard and expected the price of the boxes to drop within the next 6 months to encourage more take up? Probably just speculation but gave me a further reason to stick with SDI for now...

Every channel would have to be HD for me to consider it, and I just dont think the source material will be there for some years. Can you imagine watching 'On the buses' on an HD channel?

Which is why it's essential to get the 576i signal out of Sky HD for your video processor, the 576p one that 99.9% of people will be displaying on their flatscreen is not good.

StooMonster, that is interesting. How can I find out if a sky HD box is indeed sending a 576i signal to my friends Panasonic PX60 TV? I guess it is connected via scart?

[tryingtimes]

Hi Chipster - if it's analogue then 576i is possible, but the analogue outs are only as good as the analogue outs ever were on the SD SKY boxes.

If it's HDMI - which is the only connection that gets close to SDI, then you would have to have a video processor which either had PReP or EDID editing to force the SKY box to output 576i.

Everyone else is getting 576p - which looks pretty poor.

I've stuck with SDI for now, but that's more to do with not wanting to spend any more money on TV as it is about a stand on picture quality (I don't have PReP or EDID control though).

[StooMonster]

Originally Posted by Chipster

StooMonster, that is interesting. How can I find out if a sky HD box is indeed sending a 576i signal to my friends Panasonic PX60 TV? I guess it is connected via scart?

If it's connected by scart, that is always 576i. Component is 576i if HDMI cable is unplugged, or 576p if an HDMI cable is plugged in. HDMI is 576p unless EDID tells it otherwise, or PReP extracts the 576i.

Problem with analogue output from Sky HD is that the picture is quite soft and blurry, I found my old Pace v2 Sky+ box gave a much better RGB picture. So if your mate is feeding his plasma with Scart then it would probably look terrible, but then you said it's Sky HD so it's probably HDMI connection or component.

I'm betting HDMI though, so his picture's bound to be 576p with the screen scaling it to native resolution ... but only if his picture output is set to 'AUTO'. If he's left it at Sky HD installers setup default, picture output set to '1080i', he is forcing everything to 'upscale' to 1080i. He would then have Sky HD receiving 576i signal, that being deinterlaced to 576p, then upscaled to 1080i, which is then send to his display and downscaled to native resolution, and if display is not good with 1080i signals throwing away half the picture resolution. Is it any wonder that your SDI looks better than that?

However, 576i over HDMI to scaler will look pretty much identical to 576i over SDI to scaler.

StooMonster