Sky HD trailers - are they in HD?

andrewf

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Afternoon

I assumed perhaps wrongly now I think about it, that if Sky are advertising HD they must be plugging with actual HD content in those moving ads we see.

It has however occured to me that my Sky + doesn't do HD, so am I missing something here or are the HD ads pointless?
 
They are as pointless as a company advertising a TV and proclaiming it's quality when the advert is being viewed (according to them) on inferior displays not upto the standard of the new product:)

Anything you see via the current SKY hardware is SD, it may be downscaled HD but it's broadcast as SD. Even the trailers you can download off the website are not the same spec as the upcoming broadcasts.
 
There's kind of a point in these ads... but a rather sad one...

On the demo ones I saw on the test channel (test SD channel), I saw what a huge improvement an increase in bitrate can make to SD...

I expect a big improvement from HD, but I could get a good portion of that from higher bitrates if they were available to SD.

Ix.
 
am i right in thinking that the world cup is going to be screened in hd this year!
mark b
 
It's like trying to advertise colour TV's when everyone has black & white TV's.

am i right in thinking that the world cup is going to be screened in hd this year!
mark b

There's a million and one threads on here discussing that subject. Upshot is no one knows either way. There's a chance put it that way.
 
For those watching in black and white, the brown is behind the pink........:hiya:
DH Dove
 
Reminds me of an old snooker/sex joke featuring Alex Higgens, good old days when humour was pure smut:)
 
When you see an ad for HD, and yu think 'wow that looks nice!' they've probably upped the bitrate for the ad, and are actually showing you what they could do with SD broadcasting if they could spare the bandwidth. Cut out 100 shopping channels, nobody would miss them. Up the subs by £5 to replace lost income, and hey presto we all have near HD quality. Where's the flaw in my plan?
 
Absolutely, is there really going to be that great a difference between a Sky HD picture and an upped bitrate SD picture? Me thinks not but am prepared to be wrong (as usual).
 
We'll just never see the high bitrate SD to compare it to, except for DVD playback. I'd love to be wrong there, unfortunately I rarely am. Brain the size of a planet, you see.
 
ah but are you comparing high bitrate SD to low bitrate HD or high bitrate SD to high bitrate HD?

the difference between the latter will still be huge!
 
You wish, mate! And who is to say that we won't all be whingeing about bitrates in a year's time when the novelty has worn off. MPEG4 is just as prone to over compression as any other method of delivery. It just takes up a bit less room in the 1st place, all else being equal.
 
MAW said:
MPEG4 is just as prone to over compression as any other method of delivery.

I presume that you meant to say, "compression artefacts". H.264 is designed to be less susceptible to the kind of blockiness that plagues MPEG-2, though some blockiness is still sometimes visible.
 
MAW said:
You wish, mate! And who is to say that we won't all be whingeing about bitrates in a year's time when the novelty has worn off. MPEG4 is just as prone to over compression as any other method of delivery. It just takes up a bit less room in the 1st place, all else being equal.

ah but sky+ etc werent marketed as making the picture better as such (obviously there was touting of it being better than analogue) but with HD its ALL about quality, so as soon as the quality stops then people will tell sky where to go.

each HD channel has to market itself as being "upto scratch" otherwise it will be shunned
 
Whilst the price of the box is high and the HD Sub is around I doubt bitrates will drop as subcribers will mainly be HD fans who will not accept anything other than close to the best.

Once the masses come aboard and the subs have gone and they are giving away the box then bitrates may suffer as they try to save costs.

I doubt this would happen for a while though. I did read somewhere though that this has happened in the US where some channels are broadcasting a 10mbps where as they started at between 15-18mbps MPEG2 and therefore the picture is not great.

As I say though I think it would be a few years before this may happen.
 
Sky has started with HD bit rates of between 8 and 9Mbit/s, which approximately equates to an equivalent for MPEG2 of 16-18Mbit/s. Let's see if these are maintained...........
 
MAW said:
When you see an ad for HD, and yu think 'wow that looks nice!' they've probably upped the bitrate for the ad, and are actually showing you what they could do with SD broadcasting if they could spare the bandwidth. Cut out 100 shopping channels, nobody would miss them. Up the subs by £5 to replace lost income, and hey presto we all have near HD quality. Where's the flaw in my plan?

you would need to pass that by my mother first...
 
JagoPlasma said:
ah but are you comparing high bitrate SD to low bitrate HD or high bitrate SD to high bitrate HD?

the difference between the latter will still be huge!
It amuses me somewhat that a lot of people are expecting such a massive difference in picture quality between a good SD picture and HD, yes there will be an improvement and the bigger the screen you'll have the more noticeable it will be but I wouldn't say it was "huge". Some guy from LG whilst interviewed on the BBC news last night said that the difference between SD and HD was comparable to the difference between B&W and colour, I mean c'mon :rolleyes: lets get real about this.
 
neilmcl said:
It amuses me somewhat that a lot of people are expecting such a massive difference in picture quality between a good SD picture and HD, yes there will be an improvement and the bigger the screen you'll have the more noticeable it will be but I wouldn't say it was "huge". Some guy from LG whilst interviewed on the BBC news last night said that the difference between SD and HD was comparable to the difference between B&W and colour, I mean c'mon :rolleyes: lets get real about this.

ah, but wasn't that dude colourblind?
 
No, not clourblind, but he did work for LG. I have not formed a high opinion of LG's staff. I did once see a list of terms used in perfomance reviews that might be appropriate to a number of them, about picnics, snadwiches, sharp knives, depriving villages of traditional figures, etc.
 
neilmcl said:
It amuses me somewhat that a lot of people are expecting such a massive difference in picture quality between a good SD picture and HD, yes there will be an improvement and the bigger the screen you'll have the more noticeable it will be but I wouldn't say it was "huge". Some guy from LG whilst interviewed on the BBC news last night said that the difference between SD and HD was comparable to the difference between B&W and colour, I mean c'mon :rolleyes: lets get real about this.

its funny that you think like that IMO.

on my HDTV, i have seen:-

SDTV obviously sometimes good bitrates mostly crap tho.
DVD thru 576i/p, upscalled to 720P, 1080i and 1360x768(last being superb)
HDTV 720P and 1080i/p footage thru a 360 extender at 720P and 1080i and also on PC at 1360x768

and i have to say all in all that 720P and 1080i is LOTS better than any SD source i can throw at it.

so all in all after seeing HDTV footage on my TV i cannot wait for it to start being broadcast to my TV :D
 
BIGMAX said:
Absolutely, is there really going to be that great a difference between a Sky HD picture and an upped bitrate SD picture? Me thinks not but am prepared to be wrong (as usual).


There certainly would be on a real HD capable display. A total waste of time on an SD display, though.


As for 'High-bitrate SD', just look at some of the better quality DVDs out there. They are definitely ahead of Sky digital pictures but not in the same league as a decent quality HD picture (judging from the HD pictures that I have seen demoed from the Euro 1080 satellite).


gav
 
JagoPlasma said:
its funny that you think like that IMO.

on my HDTV, i have seen:-

SDTV obviously sometimes good bitrates mostly crap tho.
DVD thru 576i/p, upscalled to 720P, 1080i and 1360x768(last being superb)
HDTV 720P and 1080i/p footage thru a 360 extender at 720P and 1080i and also on PC at 1360x768

and i have to say all in all that 720P and 1080i is LOTS better than any SD source i can throw at it.

so all in all after seeing HDTV footage on my TV i cannot wait for it to start being broadcast to my TV :D
Yes, but you're comparing both SD and HD on a HDTV, which of course the SD will look worse off. The Best comparison would be to have a similarly sized SDTV and a HDTV side-by-side, one showing a good SD copy and the latter showing the same in HD and then lets see how much difference there is. Probably the best way to do this is to wait until Sky start broadcasting so we can actually see a simulcast show both on SD and HD at the same time.
 
To be honest I'd be surprised if Sky HD was any better that a high quality DVD via component. Of course this will look excellent compared to ITV etc but not such an improvement compared to Sky Movies, National Geo, Sky Sports etc.

Skys Presentation suggests difference as between VHS and DVD which is closer than LG's opinion. The comments in the presentation about people expectation is interesting as I assume Sky may be worried that some are expecting the quality of some of the HD feeds that some manufacturers have produced. I would be really impressed if Sky HD was up to those if the Premier HD demos Ive seen are anything to go by.
 

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