scgf said:I have both. The picture quality to my eyes on my 42" plasma monitor is very similar on both formats. If someone showed me a film playing and asked me to say whether it was HD-DVD or Sky HD I'd be hard pressed to say with any degree of certainty. If you will be using your 32" Bravia you will be even more hard-pressed to tell the difference, given the smaller screen size.
Sky HD does tend to be a little more variable in quality terms - some HD films can look like very good SD, others look stunning. There again, I have 16 or so HD-DVDs and find the quality is not consistently high. The other factor is that Sky could reduce the bitrate at any stage and the quality would suffer.
The big benefit of SkyHD, of course, is the sheer range of films. Spoilt for choice and at £10 extra a month an absolute bargain IMHO.
spikerules said:The difference is amazing on my PJ. HD-DVD far surpasses SkyHD pq by a looooooong way. You get no visible macro blocking/mpeg noise with HD-DVD, it's a superior format in every way! Sky HD has many common mpeg issues and is compressed heavily to keep much needed bandwidth to a minimum.
hottstuff said:Even though i haven't tried HD-DVD , this is exactly how i imagine it would be.
I watched a dvd for the first time last night since getting HD , and while the picture seemed slightly fuzzy , out of focus (lower resolution ) the screen noise & artifacts was so clear , i didnt notice one pixel at all , compared to SkyHD and even BBCHD.
I think the problem we have is about the words we use to quantify differences. The difference between a good Sky HD picture and HD-DVD is is absolutely not 'amazing' or better by a long way.spikerules said:The difference is amazing on my PJ. HD-DVD far surpasses SkyHD pq by a looooooong way. You get no visible macro blocking/mpeg noise with HD-DVD, it's a superior format in every way! Sky HD has many common mpeg issues and is compressed heavily to keep much needed bandwidth to a minimum.
spikerules said:The difference is amazing on my PJ. HD-DVD far surpasses SkyHD pq by a looooooong way. You get no visible macro blocking/mpeg noise with HD-DVD, it's a superior format in every way! Sky HD has many common mpeg issues and is compressed heavily to keep much needed bandwidth to a minimum.
rentagas said:Jools Holland in HD with dolby digital is worth £10 per month!-
This will effectively be here soon. You'll find pretty much all HD Ready TV's here in the UK support 720p, 1080i and if they do it 1080p at 50 and 60Hz. What's not yet here in many screens is the ability to do a native 24 or even 48 interlaced input. (Don't forget films are easier to put back together again, hence you won't see too many HD-A1 owners complaining at the lack of 1080p output.) However...Neil Sumner said:Why couldn't they have taken the oppertunity on drawing up a spec for HDTV that the panels can refresh at multiples of either 24, 25 and 30. That way the whole issue of differing frame rates between US, UK and film could have been solved.
PAL Standard Definition DVD's are normally encoded at 25fps, you'll see plenty of references to something call PAL speedup which is what this is. You can't output 24p stuff at 25p as the process of doing the conversion properly is a bit intensive and would require audio pitch correction as well. Doing this realtime would be very expensive.richard plumb said:Ian_S, why will there still be juddering on Studio Canal stuff?
If its recorded at 24p, surely it depends how its output? If they output at 60Hz, then you'll get judder, but can't they output at 50Hz? Or are PAL DVDs normally preencoded at 25p?
richard plumb said:Ian_S, why will there still be juddering on Studio Canal stuff?
If its recorded at 24p, surely it depends how its output? If they output at 60Hz, then you'll get judder, but can't they output at 50Hz? Or are PAL DVDs normally preencoded at 25p?
I'm inclined to agree. I have both and HD DVD consistently looks significantly better than SkyHD. The latter flucuates quite dramatically in quality - when it's good it's comparable but, for the most part, HD DVD looks significantly better. BBC HD sets a higher standard though and is much closer to HD DVD in performance IMHO - I'd still rate HD DVD as the best though.I also have both and think HDDVD blows SKYHD away
Rasczak said:I'm inclined to agree. I have both and HD DVD consistently looks significantly better than SkyHD. The latter flucuates quite dramatically in quality - when it's good it's comparable but, for the most part, HD DVD looks significantly better. BBC HD sets a higher standard though and is much closer to HD DVD in performance IMHO - I'd still rate HD DVD as the best though.
They are 25fps: firstly because they are 50Hz, secondly because one can hear the PAL speed-up, thirdly check the running time (4% shorter).Ian_S said:It would also be interesting to know if the HD films on Sky HD Movies and BBC-HD are effectively 25fps or 24fps. Perhaps someone with a decent video processor would be able to confirm that. If studios have given BBC/Sky 25fps masters for broadcast that could be a good indication...