Poor quality sky channels

[square-eyes-baz]

Why do so many channels have low bit rate and bad PQ? I go through a cycle of adjusting the settings to try and get a decent picture on all channels when its not the tv causing it. Considering how much we pay for sky its not unreasonable to expect decent pq . I spent 3 weeks in Canada recently and the sister in law had digital cable and about 900 odd channels (I think) . Picture quality on all the ones i checked were spot on.
Will we ever get that quality here?

 

[mkcurtis]

Agreed and no idea how the bandwidth, bit rate process works.

I watch a lot of HD stuff because I pay for it, so go out my way to watch it! Then Ill switch to UK Gold to watch Only Fools and Horses (I could watch that all day) and the quality is very very poor.

Yet some of the free Asian channels are pretty good PQ. No idea who decides which channels get which treatment.

 

[Techno]

I watch a lot of HD stuff because I pay for it, so go out my way to watch it! Then Ill switch to UK Gold to watch Only Fools and Horses (I could watch that all day) and the quality is very very poor.

Which is why I'm holding back on not getting HD - surely any SD channel will look poor after HD!

I don't find the need to adjust any settings on mine, quality seems OK, obviously watching old programs means the quality isn't quite as good anyway.

 

[Starburst]

Agreed and no idea how the bandwidth, bit rate process works.

I watch a lot of HD stuff because I pay for it, so go out my way to watch it! Then Ill switch to UK Gold to watch Only Fools and Horses (I could watch that all day) and the quality is very very poor.

Yet some of the free Asian channels are pretty good PQ. No idea who decides which channels get which treatment.

The decision not to buy enough bandwidth to support a high res ( in SD terms) and high bandwidth channel rests with the broadcasters themselves, they buy Dsat capacity direct from SES and/or Eutelsat since SKY do not own the satellites.
As for the Asian channels they must have simply bought enough capacity to support the number of channels at the resolution/bitrates they provide.

It's a common misconception that SKY has any say in the hundreds of channels they don't own, they don't have any legal right to impose Picture Quality levels for channels that broadcast on satellite (even OFCOM don't do that) and it's doesn't matter if they are FTA/FTV or PAY channels.


Moving to a HD display and watching HD really does make a lot of SD look awful and even good SD simply doesn't match HD.