Are there ways to improve picture quality from sky?

[Hoddle63]

Hi,

I live in North Wales and the picture quality here is ok, but I would love it to be a lot clearer especially on the football games where the picture looks like a computer game.
Could it be my system ie; Panasonic tv and digibox. They are connected by RGB scart. Or is it just from the signal strength, and if it is can you buy anything to increase picture quality?

Cheers,
Phill

 

[gringottsdirect]

Football on Sky often looks poor, it's not related to your distance from Astra, it's more the channel bandwidth used.
You could try Ixos or QED Sqart cables to offer a slight general benefit, but football will probably still disappoint.
Has your supplying dealer optimised your settings for Sky and your television ? Panasonic " moire " characteristic often increases the effect.

 

[Lex]

You could also try a bigger dish and better quality cable.

 

[jim.rae]

Sorry the advice you have received so far is not going to help...

A bigger dish or a change of cable will make absoutely no difference if you are receiving steady and uninterrupted pictures - check your signal strength/quality in the set up menu of the box and if it's more than say 60 per cent, all is well..

If you are feeding the TV with RGB signals though a SCART lead, make sure you switch off all picture enhancement features on the TV as they are a menace to good reception.

And make sure that your brightness and contrast settings are not to high.

The only thing better than RGB is a component feed which you won't get from a Digibox.

 

[Lex]

Originally posted by jim.rae
Sorry the advice you have received so far is not going to help...

I don't wish to start an argument (I just want to help Gadjet) but I don't know how you can say that a bigger dish and better cable will not improve the signal quality. Of course if his signal strength/quality is already high, then he has a different problem, but it sounds to me like his signal isn't very strong.

 

[jim.rae]

Let me explain...

For traditional analogue signals from either a dish or a TV aerial, increasing the size of the array could enhance reception and deliver a more robust signal.

Typical symptoms of poor analogue reception are sparklies on satellite and grainyness or ghosting on terrestial.

However for Digital reception it doesn't work like that.

You need a given quantity of signal to deliver pictures and sound and beyond that point, no difference will occur in quality.

It's the all or nothing effect - or the cliff face syndrome - either you are safe at the top of the cliff, or you are done for at the bottom!

So if you have the correct size dish pointing the right way with good cable connections getting adequate signal quantity, that's it.

As for SCART cables, providing they are shielded internally, there's no need to spend a fortune on them because it won't make any noticable difference to the picture.

As I said, most poor performance on modern TVs is due to various picture enhancements on board - some meant for analogue only - so go into the menu and switch them off.

RGB is a pure picture output and shouldn't cause any bother on a properly set up TV.

 

[juboy]

Originally posted by jim.rae
As for SCART cables, providing they are shielded internally, there's no need to spend a fortune on them because it won't make any noticable difference to the picture.

I've tried four SCART leads from my Sky box to my TV and they all showed noticeable differences:

£10 Unbranded 'standard' SCART lead - average to OK picture
£29 Profigold SCART lead - OK to good picture
£71 Ecosse Armageddon RGB only SCART - Good picture
£69 Supra AV6 RGB only SCART - Good picture/exceptionally clear (arguably TOO clear as regards Sky's EPG graphics).

 

[deets]

just sounds like one of the side issues of digital TV, not enough bandwidth. The Sky Sports channels through NTL are pretty darn good with little pixelation, whereas other channels with less bandwidth, such as the ITV news channel for last night Newcastle game, show considerable pixelation. Probably due to the speed of the game and how the mpeg encoding is pushed to the limit resulting in the blockyness.