[sly.stewart]

I have an HD box and all the HD channels work fine plus most of the other standard channels but i have very poor very bad blocking on the rest of the standard movie channels. Have 2 boxes on a quad LMB in one room a sky plus all channels working fine and in the other room HD box with the problems have swaped over the inputs into the HD box same problem any ideas Stewart

[Starburst]

There are differences in components between the HD and SD boxes plus revisions between models so it could be you simply have a HD box that isn't as good as the SD box although there are plenty of SD channels that are lower resolution and bitrate then the movies and therefore the blocking should be more common. Have you tried the majority of the other channels you have access too perhaps those known for less than perfect bitrates.

Also what video output setting are you using?
It may be that if you are using 1080i the STB scaling isn't as good as the HD TV's scaling so you may be better off using AUTO or even RGB scart just for the SD channels.

[wednesday83]

SD channels are generally bad on HD boxes as Sky want you to go "WOW" when you see an HD broadcast. Showing crap SD means HD looks far better than it actually is.

[Martin J.]

Originally Posted by wednesday83

SD channels are generally bad on HD boxes as Sky want you to go "WOW" when you see an HD broadcast. Showing crap SD means HD looks far better than it actually is.

Yeah, of course, that must be it.

The majority report an improvement from the HD box via HDMI, that was certainly my experience. However, if the OP has also upgraded his display, it's quite common to notice all the compression artefacts on low bitrate broadcasts, especially if the display is deinterlacing the source. The processing of HDMI inputs varies too, so it's worth trying component.