Anyone Go The IDeal Home To See Sky HD

[RyanK]

Has anyone gone to the Ideal Home at Earls Court to see Skys HD demo?

Any tasty nuggets of information

 

[Howard Pitfield]

If Sky HD is definitely there I'd go along at lunchtime to have a peek - but not interested in stuffed cushions....

H

 

[HeweyBoy101]

Don't know about Ideal Home, but I am going to the What HiFi Sound & Vision Show on 4th November in London. The marketing blurb mentions this as being the first opportunity to see Sky HD - I think I read something about test broadcasts being used as demo's at the show.

 

[vgrade100]

Hi Guys,

Went along today with my wife to get a look. I was approached by a dude who asked if I had Sky, and I asked about HD. He showed me through to the middle of the stand where a loop was being shown on one of the new Sony displays. (KDL series) Bravia?. In the loop it had the following clips.

Liverpool winning the champions league . Very good PQ

Spiderman clip. I have seen this in HD elsewhere and it was better PQ.

Under water clips of fish and coral etc. The LG HD loop in Curries/Comet (can't remember which) was miles better than this.

No information was forthcomming about what was driving the demo but i sneaked a look around the back and it was a 3 lead component connection.

First quarter 2006 was the launch date given but no pricing info given.

The PQ did not blow me away like the LG demo but the football did look good.

Aftrer the show we visited John Lewis on Oxford st as rumour had it the Sharp 65" LCD was on view. Now this did have the WOW factor. What a display. Running a demo loop with all types of programming has me transfixed for around 20 mins. The price £13500.

TTFN martin

 

[RyanK]

Hi Guys,

Went along today with my wife to get a look. I was approached by a dude who asked if I had Sky, and I asked about HD. He showed me through to the middle of the stand where a loop was being shown on one of the new Sony displays. (KDL series) Bravia?. In the loop it had the following clips.

Liverpool winning the champions league . Very good PQ

Spiderman clip. I have seen this in HD elsewhere and it was better PQ.

Under water clips of fish and coral etc. The LG HD loop in Curries/Comet (can't remember which) was miles better than this.

No information was forthcomming about what was driving the demo but i sneaked a look around the back and it was a 3 lead component connection.

First quarter 2006 was the launch date given but no pricing info given.

The PQ did not blow me away like the LG demo but the football did look good.

Aftrer the show we visited John Lewis on Oxford st as rumour had it the Sharp 65" LCD was on view. Now this did have the WOW factor. What a display. Running a demo loop with all types of programming has me transfixed for around 20 mins. The price £13500.

TTFN martin

well that saved me £12 plus travel cost

 

[kwijibo]

I went and saw it too. Quite disapointing I thought. I have seen standard DVd look better than this. (i hope) they obviously had not put much effort into getting the best picture from it.

 

[ArcticFox77]

I'm going to the ideal homes in Glasgow this weekend, hope they have it there Although i'm not too impressed that Sky HD service is coming with sky+ What a let down

 

[andrewjh009]

I'm going to the ideal homes in Glasgow this weekend, hope they have it there Although i'm not too impressed that Sky HD service is coming with sky+ What a let down

whys that they'd lose loads of customers if they made the box HD only without recording facilities, i'd rather be able to reccord than view HD material, if i was forced to choose.

 

[neilmcl]

I'm going to the ideal homes in Glasgow this weekend, hope they have it there Although i'm not too impressed that Sky HD service is coming with sky+ What a let down

So you rather have Sky charge you £400 for a box + subs and remove the PVR functionality.

 

[ArcticFox77]

I've heard of a lot of problems with the sky+ boxes. I've also been recommended against buying sky+ when i was first looking to get sky installed. So do you see where i'm coming from now??

 

[Piers]

Whilst there have been some reliability issues with Sky + boxes and some glitches with new versions of software, every customer that I have dealt with swears by them. Personally I would say that it is one of the best bits of kit that I have ever bought (and BTW, I don't sell Sky + !).

 

[Starburst]

I've heard of a lot of problems with the sky+ boxes. I've also been recommended against buying sky+ when i was first looking to get sky installed. So do you see where i'm coming from now??

There have been problems with SKY+ but no more than NTL/TW hardware or Freeview DVR's when it comes to reliable code and problem free recording from the EPG
Forums and newsgroups tend to be full of people posting problems which can create a warped view of the hardware.

Pity you didn't get SKY+, some good deals on it and once you use it you will understand how good it is and a SKY+ HD is essential for High Def since there is no other practical way to record HD content and who wants to have to be in front of the telly when SKY tell you too

 

[Starburst]

I went and saw it too. Quite disapointing I thought. I have seen standard DVd look better than this. (i hope) they obviously had not put much effort into getting the best picture from it.

I do wonder if these are true DVB-S2 and mpeg4 broadcasts or just mpeg2 broadcasts or HD spun from a non-broadcast source.
Are they infact a demo of SKY HD or just HD in general and if so what resolution/bitrate and what sort of panels are they using?

Those are the questions I don't believe SKY are willing to answer at this point

 

[vgrade100]

The OP asked about Syk HD (High Definition) not SKY +

 

[Starburst]

The OP asked about Syk HD (High Definition) not SKY +

Since the only hardware SKY will be supplying that will be able to receive their HD service is a SKY+ HD then perhaps it plays a part in the thread

Any demo of HD that doesn't come via satellite through a SKY+ HD would I suspect be irrelevant at least from a consumers point of view.

 

[vgrade100]

I agree that any demo should represent as near to the eventual service and hardware as possible.

If this was indeed a 'canned' demo then surely Sky would have made sure the PQ at least matched the other HD demos in store at the moment. If it was a real live demo feed with real hardware then we will all be dissapointed with Sky + HD.

Which would you prefer?

TTFN martin

 

[vgrade100]

This was a SKY HD titled demo. Not just on the stand but as part of the video loop. It was being played via component on a new KDL series Sony Bravia LCD panel.

TTFN Martin

 

[richard plumb]

I'm guessing it was canned. The HD demo loop in Comet - impressive as it is - is running off a PC and has some pretty poorly encoded sections. A clip of Battlestar Galactica has huge amounts of noise in the space background. If that is even remotely the state of Sky HD then I'll save myself quite a bit of money.

 

[StooMonster]

I've heard of a lot of problems with the sky+ boxes. I've also been recommended against buying sky+ when i was first looking to get sky installed. So do you see where i'm coming from now??

That was a terrible recommendation, Sky+ is excellent.

Everyone I know who has it has said that it changes the way they view tv (for the better), and problems are no more than regular Sky/NTL/etc.; and I agree with them all.

StooMonster

 

[Stephen Neal]

That was a terrible recommendation, Sky+ is excellent.

Everyone I know who has it has said that it changes the way they view tv (for the better), and problems are no more than regular Sky/NTL/etc.; and I agree with them all.

StooMonster

Sky + is good - but it isn't perfect. The "it changes your life" quotes do also apply to other PVRs. Sky+ obviously offers the best picture quality solution for Sky as it doesn't require decoding and recoding, and is simple to set-up, but other PVR solutions like Tivo, Media Center, Freevo and MythTV have advantages in other areas. (30 second ad skips, wishlists, season passing, coping with +1 channels intelligently etc.)

In particular the series link functionality is not as advanced as the Tivo's season pass system - and the Sky version seem to be quite fragile, and heavily dependent on broadcasters. There are also issues with one or t'other of the tuners playing up on a number of V1 Sky+ boxes I've come across, where sporadic rebooting of the box is required to get the tuner to work.

Sky + is good, but it isn't perfect. Tivo is good, and it isn't perfect either.