[gozzy]

Is it me or is the whole quality of SkyHD (SD & HD ) gone downhill !!!!!

HD looks almost like SD & some of the SD is almost video quality

[andy1249]

Ive actually been quite impressed with it lately , watched Trading Places the other night and was very impressed with the PQ.

Also I watched the Darts last night and I can honestly say theyve never looked uglier

Seriously though , I havnt noticed any huge drop in quality.

[simsini]

No complaints here!

[wednesday83]

I think when the new encoders came in a while back the quality drop was quite big amongst all channels but generally the main big channels such as Sky sports, Eurosport and Sky1 seem to have been improved and back to an excellent standard overall (possibly as these channels seem to have 1 channel per transponder so more bandwith to share).

I think some channels such as History HD, Nat Geo wild, Disney, Sci fi and some of the movie channels are struggling at times and very inconsistant.

[Knyght_byte]

hmm, I have to say I do feel that the pictures are not quite as good as they were when I got the box. I know there is a certain amount of simply getting used to it. But I see other formats most days as my parents still use analogue TV at times and VHS tapes and have also flitted around different HD channels. You usually still get fairly sharp pictures on the movie channels, but I must confess to being a little disillusioned with the Sky 1 HD programmes this last so many months. Still appear to be better than SD, but not by a margin I consider worthwhile, although to be fair i do worry more about sound than picture...lol

[derek500]

Originally Posted by Knyght_byte

...but I must confess to being a little disillusioned with the Sky 1 HD programmes this last so many months.

Do you mean Sky1's own programmes or acquired material?

The HD quality of their own stuf like Grease - High School Musical and Noel's Are You Smarter... are still examples of the best HD quality I've seen.

[eiren]

I would say it's 99% people's perception after they've got used to having HD.

I've yet to see any evidence shown by anyone of the quality being reduced... only stated bit-rates, which are just a small part of the equation when it comes to image quality.

[happyhomer]

I've had Sky HD since March, and I've found the HD shows on Sky 1 (and BBC HD for that matter) to be rather inconsistent in terms of quality. However, I would put that down more to variations in the source material rather than the quality of the broadcast signal. For example, I've always thought that A Town Called Eureka is consistently the worst HD show I've seen-no better than a half-decent SD programme. That said, in SD the show looks absolutely awful! When Friday Night with Jonathan Ross is on I often switch between BBC1 and BBC HD and struggle to see any differences.
At the other end of the scale is The Lost Land of The Volcano on BBC HD which was fantastic-as good as HD picture quality gets IMO. Also last night's Stargate: Universe was excellent as well (with some of the best sound I've heard on an HD TV broadcast too-it actually made good use of my sub!). I do all of my HD viewing on a 92" screen from a 720p projector, and when it's good it's very very good, but not everything looks fantastic-the same applies to BluRay and has really applied to TV shows and movies for many years, it's just that nowadays viewers are a lot more critical, especially when we've seen what is possible with current technology.

[mike7]

I was hoping the series Kevin McCloud's Grand Tour would be in HD on Channel 4 (HD),but alas it isn't. I cannot believe that a show like this was shot in SD. When Stephen Fry's America is shown on TV it is always in SD, yet a few days after the series finished its first showing a BluRay was released. I hope this is not a growing trend for independent production companies to make extra money from us customers by only allowing HD versions of shows to be on BD.

[wednesday83]

Sky1HD a few months ago did struggle and there was a poster that posted photos of major blocking. I think thats sorted itself out now and Stargate was a fine example of how good it can be.

The movie channels are the channels that tend to struggle the most at the mo, but with 4 channels on one transponder I guess you have you have to expect inconsistancy.

[Timh]

Stargate Universe on a 7ft screen on Sky1HD looked like DVD quality to me
I remember when I first got Sky and Stargate Atlantis blew me away, it really was like looking through a window.
They should change the name to SkyDVD as that's about as good as it looks

[eiren]

There definitely must be a conspiracy between Sky and BBC to slowly reduce the quality of HD broadcasts...

[mike7]

Thinking about my earlier post about prestige series only being shown in SD on TV and then released later on BD. Could it be that production companies are aware of the drop in quality of HD from the BBC and Sky? A poor quality HD picture is not going to sell many Disks is it?. Give the punters a taster on SD and then they will flock to buy better quality on Blu Ray Disk....just a thought.

[derek500]

If Sky show a film in HD and the quality is questionable, I do a Google for - film title, blu ray review.

The vast majority of the time, the review matches what I've watched on the TV. Bad on SkyHD = bad on Blu Ray and vice-versa.

[HDCriticalFan]

Originally Posted by mike7

I was hoping the series Kevin McCloud's Grand Tour would be in HD on Channel 4 (HD),but alas it isn't. I cannot believe that a show like this was shot in SD.

Agreed. When it is entirely new material (shot mostly outdoors in good light) there seems little or no reason NOT to go HD. Portable camcorders are "good enough" for HD. Look at Sky's Road Wars for instance.

Great show Kevin. It knock spots off the similarly themed show Suggs did for Sky Arts. I think the fact that Kevin chose a Fiat and Suggs a Mini tells the difference (and that Kevin speaks fluent Italian ... and has lived there ... and is an architect).





Regards

[Starburst]

Originally Posted by derek500

If Sky show a film in HD and the quality is questionable, I do a Google for - film title, blu ray review.

The vast majority of the time, the review matches what I've watched on the TV. Bad on SkyHD = bad on Blu Ray and vice-versa.

Indeed.
Very rarely is a poor HD image the result of choices by the broadcaster, most of the time it's the master and by extension choices or limitations in production . This is still very much the case even on Blu-ray.
That's not to say that bandwidth can not be squeezed especially as stat-muxing is at the core of digital broadcasting but thankfully the more demanding stuff like sports tend to be offset with highly efficient to compress content.

A recent example was Outpost, a very "dull" HD image easily seen by casual viewers as a poor broadcast but the movie looked that way in the theatre and on disk.

[Martin J.]

Originally Posted by HDCriticalFan

Agreed. When it is entirely new material (shot mostly outdoors in good light) there seems little or no reason NOT to go HD. Portable camcorders are "good enough" for HD.

Portable camcorders are actually pretty amazing these days. For example, there are a lot of documentary makers using Canon HF S11, 11 and 100 in their productions (filming at 24p, 25p and 30p with x.y.Colour) and even elements of feature films are being shot on the Canon 5D Mk.II, which is an SLR for heaven's sake.

There are a number of manufacturers selling small, portable recorders that are able to take the uncompressed HDMI output from a Canon HF S10, for example, and either use modest compression (Cineform) or even store the video losslessly, thus avoiding either HDV or AVCHD compression. The results are outstanding.

So no... no reason whatsoever not to film in HD.