Raising Awareness On The Quality Of HD Broadcasts

Most of sky ones HD content is very poor I have a A1 HD player and sometimes the comparisons like VHS to DVD I dont think its the sourse material because I watched some episodes of Invasion in HD and quality was better than anything Ive seen on sky excluding BBC HD though
 
Recorded Monster in law from movies 9 or 10 HD cant remember which, & the picture quality is no better than good SD, but its the sound that got me, it was DD 5.1 +1 with a female voice at low level but just audible that sounded like the directors notes track on a DVD.
Do Sky upconvert a SD DVD to play on a HD channel??
No wonder the oicture quality is so variable.....
 
Recorded Monster in law from movies 9 or 10 HD cant remember which, & the picture quality is no better than good SD, but its the sound that got me, it was DD 5.1 +1 with a female voice at low level but just audible that sounded like the directors notes track on a DVD.
Do Sky upconvert a SD DVD to play on a HD channel??
No wonder the picture quality is so variable.....
 
mickbirch2000 said:
Recorded Monster in law from movies 9 or 10 HD cant remember which, & the picture quality is no better than good SD, but its the sound that got me, it was DD 5.1 +1 with a female voice at low level but just audible that sounded like the directors notes track on a DVD.
Do Sky upconvert a SD DVD to play on a HD channel??
No wonder the picture quality is so variable.....





No problems with the audio when I watched the movie but that's not to say there were not specific issues on that particular broadcast especially if you have no trouble with your amp on other movies.

The HD movies are all taken from HD masters.
 
I complained to sky about this.....all they said was "call us up to talk through your TV settings, as something must be wrong your end"

Completly ignored my comments about HD-DVD and downloaded MPEG2 looking miles better then their service on the same screen.
 
The number of posts on this forum voicing disappointment about the quality of HD pics is rather worrying.

I voiced concerns about Sky lowering bitrates before the WC2006, as they did with SD, and said that how they handle and market HD post WC was going to be critical as a lot of people (myself included) were waiting to see if it was worth investing in.

Now that the hype about the WC is gone, we really need to see a quick increase in the number of HD channels - but its important that these are of proper HD quality. No point in providing a water-down service that is not much better than SD.

The likes of BBC/Sky now have a great opportunity to push the quality of TV in this country - lets hope they don't make a balls of it.
 
mickbirch2000 said:
Recorded Monster in law from movies 9 or 10 HD cant remember which, & the picture quality is no better than good SD, but its the sound that got me, it was DD 5.1 +1 with a female voice at low level but just audible that sounded like the directors notes track on a DVD.
D'Oh! You had the Audio Description channel turned on, press the help button on the remote and turn it off! ;)
mickbirch2000 said:
Do Sky upconvert a SD DVD to play on a HD channel??
No wonder the picture quality is so variable.....
No, I don't believe they do.

:smashin:
 
I have to agree with the thoughts above. I got Sky HD only recently. On Sunday I compared the footie on Sky Sports HD to SD Sports - I couldn't see any difference in quality. I checked the info to see if it was going out in HD - and it was - allegedlly. Yes, maybe its time to gather mass opinioon and let them know we won't stand for poor output for £50/month.....
 
eiskurve said:
I have to agree with the thoughts above. I got Sky HD only recently. On Sunday I compared the footie on Sky Sports HD to SD Sports - I couldn't see any difference in quality. I checked the info to see if it was going out in HD - and it was - allegedlly. Yes, maybe its time to gather mass opinioon and let them know we won't stand for poor output for £50/month.....


To be quite frank.....if you could not see a difference you really need your eyes tested.

The difference was very clear.

perhaps you don't have an hdtv................?
 
kingsize said:
To be quite frank.....if you could not see a difference you really need your eyes tested.

The difference was very clear.

perhaps you don't have an hdtv................?


i ahve to agree, there is hell of a difference to my eyes,even the wife sees it
i compared the wales game tonight,the standard broadcast looks terrible now, blurred and blocky, the improvment is massive
 
You don't want to insult people when they are (we assume) giving an honest opinion of what they see when comparing HD to SD on SKY but you've got to question their own setup, eyesight or simple channel selection when they can't see any difference:)
 
Ragnarok said:
A properly fitted dish won't suffer from the wind anyway, and 85cm should be enough for error free reciption whatever the weather unless snow collects on the LNB.

I'd be inclined to beleve Squirelly when it's a encoding artifact issue rather than a signal quality issue.

Commented was directed at reported audio dropouts on a specific screening of blade trinity, nothing to do with video quality.
 
MrFurious said:
i ahve to agree, there is hell of a difference to my eyes,even the wife sees it
i compared the wales game tonight,the standard broadcast looks terrible now, blurred and blocky, the improvment is massive

Has anybody tried their old sky boxes with the sd channels currently being put out as It would be interesting to know if the SKYHD box is worse with the SD channels making the HD look better. I can remember the Carling cup final last season in SD on my old box looking very good, very close to the HD now being broadcast.

Just a thought.
 
MrFurious said:
i ahve to agree, there is hell of a difference to my eyes,even the wife sees it
i compared the wales game tonight,the standard broadcast looks terrible now, blurred and blocky, the improvment is massive

The Wales game on SD? Sky Sports (non HD) show very little SD IMO. Their quality has degraded so much it cant even be called SD. I have no doubt as I said earlier in the thread, the quality of Sky's HD will probably be marginally better than proper SD. If you want to compare the current HD to the rubbish SD channels well so be it, it only enhances the impression of HD comparing to that sh!t they serve up. It's so bad one wonders to him/herself did they do it deliberately to enhance HD sales. But I have no doubt that HD will soon discover the same fate.
 
Have to agree. Ive noticed the difference over the last few days. Spiderman 2 on sky movies looked appalling. A "painting by numbers" effect was very evident on skin tones.I'm sure it looked better the last time it was on.

The HD channels are also below what they were. They used to pop out of the screen at you, but seem to have lost that edge. OK so you could say its because you get used to it, but I watched Million dollar Baby last night (recorded a couple of months ago) and it was clearly superior to whats been on lately.

I, like others will be keeping an eye on what happens. Could it be Sky are shafting us again ? Surely not ;)
 
Hi Guys,

Sorry been away on holiday for a week so not had a chance to check back and reply! ha!

Anyways thought you might be interested to know i sent an email to the register this morning regards this problem and hopefully they will look into this and maybe take it further. Hopefully this may get sky's attention a little more.

A copy of the email as follows:

Dear Sir / Madam,

I am writing this email to bring to your attention a situation regards Sky and there recently released HD service.

Recently Sky released the UK’s main high definition broadcast service across the UK and a lot of HD customers are very unhappy with the service sky is providing at this time. I shall explain:

Basically Sky are charging a premium for this service (£299 for the box plus £10 a month additional to your package) to receive the HD broadcast but the quality of the picture and the service levels are, quite frankly, appalling at this time. They appear to be using a very low bitrate on the channel feeds compared to when they first launched the service and, therefore, reducing the quality of the broadcasts. This is an unacceptable situation as sky is charging a very high price for this service and is currently defeating the object of HD broadcasts (improved picture quality!).

Furthermore to this the boxes they are providing to people for this service appear to be very buggy to say the least. The boxes keep crashing and locking up on a very regular basis.

Now a lot of people have voiced there concerns to sky regards this but appear to be getting no where on there own so, collectively as a group, we thought raising this issue and possibly including a highly regarded news company like yourselves would raise the public awareness of this and maybe in effect cause sky to look at this concern more seriously and address it.

Further information on this issue can be found over at AV Forums where many current subscribers are voicing there concerns over this very same issue.

 
A good example of how it can look was Enemy of the State on BBCHD last night, it used 13% even with only stereo, it's the best looking film I've seen on SkyHD. I've posted this in the Enemy of the State thread. I compared it with Hotel Rwanda which I found to be a "good" Sky Movies picture and it put it to shame.
 
Perhaps we could just get people to post the size of their recordings which would give a good idea whether the bitrate is changing - also to compare them to BBC broadcats like for like. e.g.

1. Compare BBC "Enemy of the State" to Sky version.

2. Compare release versions (a few months back - if anyone still has these on their hard drive?) of programs/movies that sky have broadcast with current versions.

This would provide some evidence that sky are (a) Providing an inferior service at a premium rate and (b) Have reduced picture quality since launch therefore misleading customers into buying something they are not getting.

What do we think?
 
I have had SKY HD for a couple of days now.

The PQ is really variable. Some HD content is fantastic worth every penny but an equal amount is bloody awful.

I am regularly seeing blocky pixelation. This seems to occur most often when the background is a plain colour with small graduations in colour over a large area especially if the scene is not brightly lit.

I am surprised there are not more responses to this thread.
 
RMCF said:
The likes of BBC/Sky now have a great opportunity to push the quality of TV in this country - lets hope they don't make a balls of it.

Good point. Lets hope the consumer mags pick up on this - as it would appear for most people these magazines set the standards of what is acceptable or not.

I hope it doesn't go the way of DAB. It started off as a reasonably promising format - and now has been squandered with poor quality helped in part with ridiculously low bit rates.
 
Karlmac said:
I am surprised there are not more responses to this thread.
Perhaps people are afraid to post and say that the service that they paid big money for and which they got so excited about, is actually dung.

Once a lot of people start ringing Sky and telling them to take back their HD boxes they might improve the service.

But then again, they probably have you legally as your HD contract is probably 12 month minimum so you can't cancel it!!
 
RMCF said:
Perhaps people are afraid to post and say that the service that they paid big money for and which they got so excited about, is actually dung.

Once a lot of people start ringing Sky and telling them to take back their HD boxes they might improve the service.

But then again, they probably have you legally as your HD contract is probably 12 month minimum so you can't cancel it!!

We can't cancell it. We have a months grace after install and that is that; but I am sure that if enough people have serious doubts that the quality is not up to scratch, then something could be done. I for one looked into cancelling movies last night, and know a couple of other's that are doing the same. Maybe a signed petition of all the people who are now unhappy with the quality we are getting? :rolleyes: Power to the peolple:D
 
Now there's an idea.. another petition...

If the quality of the movies doesn't improve I'll definitely be cancelling and going down to the bare minimum package (not interested in sports really). For people that want the sports channels then it's not really worth losing the movie channels as there's not much difference in price.
 
I had a horrible feeling the quality of HD broadcasts would attract the same criticisms as SD digital broadcasts with regards to picture resolution and bitrate.

I'm just not buying into it and it looks like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will have the same problems as DVDs too, i.e. PAL speedup, different releases, cost... I'm sure Joe Public won't be happy when he sees reduced bitrate HD broadcasts in ASDA or perhaps the quality of the SDTV channels will be so bad by then it'll manage to amaze him in comparison.
 

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