Paul_J_Smith
Standard Member
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2002
- Messages
- 37
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- Points
- 19
Hi,
I about to ditch Sky HD as I cannot justify the ongoing monthly costs and I am in a bit of a dilemma.
I was about to go ahead and get the Humax Foxsat HDR or the Humax FreeTime HDR-1000S as a direct replacement but I was playing around with the TV the other day and noticed that the built-in Freeview (SD) picture on BBC1 was rather nicer looking than the HD picture from my Sky HD box on BBC1 HD. I messed about for about 1 hour before I came to the conclusion that I should reconsider Freeview HD via a Humax HDR-FOX T2
By the Way I have a panasonic TX-P37X10B Plasma TV that is 720p (1024 x 720).
Bit of history....
When I first got the Sky HD box I do remember being rather underwhelmed by the picture quality from the HDMI output (flat and washed out looking) compared to my old Sky+ box (Scart). This seemed to be a common thing on the forums and the consensus seemed to be "that is Sky hardware for you". I fiddled and fiddled with the settings (colour balance, sharpness, noise reduction, output mode from Sky HD (best was 1080i rather than auto) and I guess I just got fed up with fiddling around and just got used to it. I even bought my own box to make sure I could get (what was at the time) the box with the "best" picture quality (Pace 9F3005).
I suspect the culprit is/was the poor output inside the SKY HD box to it's HDMI port. I did some testing with a DVD player using the same HDMI TV input and lead and the picture was just fine. the DVD player was set to 1080i and 720p and 1080p during my testing - all output resolutions looked significantly better then the SKY picture which I tried on Auto, 1080i and 720p).
Problem is that I know about the limitations of the Freeview platform (limited bandwidth meaning future HD channels unlikely, higher compression leading to a theoretically worse picture than freesat, etc.) but I just can't get away from the fact that the Sky box is so poor.
so...... to the question....... Is the Humax Foxsat HDR or the Humax FreeTime HDR-1000S HDMI output any better/different to the Sky HD boxes? If not then I guess I will move over to the Freeview HD platform.
Doing this does have some other upsides too (like Dave, Yesterday). Problem is it niggles me that in 1 year Freesat might have 10-20 HD channels whereas I know Freeview never will.
What a dilemma - what is one to do? If I don't have Dave how can I watch things like the new Red Dwarf? If I go with Freeview will I always regret not going with Freesat as the artifacts are meant to be worse on that platform?
Wish I could afford both and then the problem would be solved.
Cheers,
Paul
I about to ditch Sky HD as I cannot justify the ongoing monthly costs and I am in a bit of a dilemma.
I was about to go ahead and get the Humax Foxsat HDR or the Humax FreeTime HDR-1000S as a direct replacement but I was playing around with the TV the other day and noticed that the built-in Freeview (SD) picture on BBC1 was rather nicer looking than the HD picture from my Sky HD box on BBC1 HD. I messed about for about 1 hour before I came to the conclusion that I should reconsider Freeview HD via a Humax HDR-FOX T2
By the Way I have a panasonic TX-P37X10B Plasma TV that is 720p (1024 x 720).
Bit of history....
When I first got the Sky HD box I do remember being rather underwhelmed by the picture quality from the HDMI output (flat and washed out looking) compared to my old Sky+ box (Scart). This seemed to be a common thing on the forums and the consensus seemed to be "that is Sky hardware for you". I fiddled and fiddled with the settings (colour balance, sharpness, noise reduction, output mode from Sky HD (best was 1080i rather than auto) and I guess I just got fed up with fiddling around and just got used to it. I even bought my own box to make sure I could get (what was at the time) the box with the "best" picture quality (Pace 9F3005).
I suspect the culprit is/was the poor output inside the SKY HD box to it's HDMI port. I did some testing with a DVD player using the same HDMI TV input and lead and the picture was just fine. the DVD player was set to 1080i and 720p and 1080p during my testing - all output resolutions looked significantly better then the SKY picture which I tried on Auto, 1080i and 720p).
Problem is that I know about the limitations of the Freeview platform (limited bandwidth meaning future HD channels unlikely, higher compression leading to a theoretically worse picture than freesat, etc.) but I just can't get away from the fact that the Sky box is so poor.
so...... to the question....... Is the Humax Foxsat HDR or the Humax FreeTime HDR-1000S HDMI output any better/different to the Sky HD boxes? If not then I guess I will move over to the Freeview HD platform.
Doing this does have some other upsides too (like Dave, Yesterday). Problem is it niggles me that in 1 year Freesat might have 10-20 HD channels whereas I know Freeview never will.
What a dilemma - what is one to do? If I don't have Dave how can I watch things like the new Red Dwarf? If I go with Freeview will I always regret not going with Freesat as the artifacts are meant to be worse on that platform?
Wish I could afford both and then the problem would be solved.
Cheers,
Paul