Sky HD ad channel

Charlie

When I was over at DigitalSpy a while ago they posted information to input into the other channels which would allow you to select a channel called 4604. Its purpose was test transmissions for the upcoming Sky Movies 10 channel. However today I was having a gander at it and it was running ads for the 6 different HD launch channels. The footage must have been shot in HiDef becuase even on a standard t.v the picture looked better than what you usually recieve from sky. Anyway just that a few mught be interested so heer is what you need yo put into other channes

12285
v
27.5
2/3
Then just select "find channels" and add channel 4604 when it comes up.

p.s whats running on 4604 at the moment seems to be a test transmission for Sky movies 10 again but i'm sure the HD stuff will be running again.

Mossy Monk

Spiderman 2 is showing on it now with Digital Test Transmission written on the screen

watty

I suppose if you crop to one quarter screen you can show HD on regular TV. Otherwise its just regular TV.

Four digiboxes and four screens 2 x2 on four channels

Mossy Monk

charlie mchugh wrote:

The footage must have been shot in HiDef becuase even on a standard t.v the picture looked better than what you usually recieve from sky

there is lots of programmes on tv being shot in HD. doesnt necessarily mean for better picture

Charlie

I knew that I would get this sort of response but I was just merely sending in an observation that I thought others would be interested in. Possibly an explanation is that this channel broadcasts at a very high bit rate, but definitley the picture was sharper, brighter, and clearer than what I have seen on sky digital before (and that includes rte sky sports and bbc). People have been complaining that they think sky have been reducing bit rates for the launch of sky HD, so maybe these ads are in a high bit rate in the hope of giving people an immediate picture of what it would be like to swithch to sky HD

Charlie

Mossy Monk wrote:

Spiderman 2 is showing on it now with Digital Test Transmission written on the screen

I realise that and thats why I posted that at the moment the channel seems to be back to doing test transmissions for sky movies ten, but check back tommorrow at anytime before 5(I believe thats when the sky movies 10 test transmissions begin)

radiospan

Any idea what it is?

The ID there just before a film said it was "Sky Movies 9" but it's different from the Sky Movies 9 on the EPG (different films)

_Kaiser_

It's showing "Suzie Gold" now with a Sky Movies 9 ident. Interestingly this is a 15 rated film.. guess watershed rules don't apply to test channels.

_Kaiser_

plazzTT wrote:

Any idea what it is?

The ID there just before a film said it was "Sky Movies 9" but it's different from the Sky Movies 9 on the EPG (different films)

damn.. beaten to it

Sparky

But you cant really receive HD transmissions truely with the current broadcast system as i doubt the digibox would handle it, and i know you know

but with so little channels on the transponder, yes they may have increased the bitrate, im viewing a film now on an LCD tv thats HD and while the picture looks slightly better, i cant say its not much different than the rest of the movie channels.

I would believe sky will use better bitrate for the HD ads to entice people into getting HD for better PQ, i know i am, when its here because i want to put my tv to full potential

Charlie

The reason that it says sky movies 9 is that in a sense its also doing a test transmission for sky movies 9. The plan is to change the viewing hours of sky movies 9 to start broadcasting from 5pm till early in the morning. The same will apply for the new sky movies 10. Both stations will show 15 rated films as soon as they broadcast from 5pm. While its seems that they arent in fact giving us a new channel just splitting an old one into two, the reason is so that there will be two channels availble for people to watch 15's films before the watershed.

Charlie

Sparky-s wrote:

But you cant really receive HD transmissions truely with the current broadcast system as i doubt the digibox would handle it, and i know you know

but with so little channels on the transponder, yes they may have increased the bitrate, im viewing a film now on an LCD tv thats HD and while the picture looks slightly better, i cant say its not much different than the rest of the movie channels.

I would believe sky will use better bitrate for the HD ads to entice people into getting HD for better PQ, i know i am, when its here because i want to put my tv to full potential

True. But is it possible that SD t.v is never really "truely" SD, that its impossible to get the full SD quality available, but if something is in HD then you'd at least see "full" SD quality on a SD t.v. Similiar to the way that 1meg bb is never really 1meg. But if you were to get 2meg broadband you'd definitley get at least 1meg. I'm probably way off, but I think those ads are in HiDef to entice people who have HiDef t.v's to get Sky HD, but people with SD t.v's viewing the ad see an improvement in their general picture quality.

Mossy Monk

charlie mchugh wrote:

I realise that and thats why I posted that at the moment the channel seems to be back to doing test transmissions for sky movies ten, but check back tommorrow at anytime before 5(I believe thats when the sky movies 10 test transmissions begin)

did i say otherwise?

Charlie

Mossy Monk wrote:

did i say otherwise?

Sorry bout that, i thought you were implying that I hadn't pointed out that the HD ads were'nt on.

watty

charlie mchugh wrote:

True. But is it possible that SD t.v is never really "truely" SD, that its impossible to get the full SD quality available, but if something is in HD then you'd at least see "full" SD quality on a SD t.v. Similiar to the way that 1meg bb is never really 1meg. But if you were to get 2meg broadband you'd definitley get at least 1meg. I'm probably way off, but I think those ads are in HiDef to entice people who have HiDef t.v's to get Sky HD, but people with SD t.v's viewing the ad see an improvement in their general picture quality.

But is it possible that SD t.v is never really "truely" SD, that its impossible to get the full SD quality available
No, no, not at all!


This is on level of OFC and Litz wire for loudspeakers.

HD can't be shown at all on a regular Digibox.

EVERY film is effectively "HD" downsampled to SD (Though Sky Box office & Sky Movies seem to be much lower quality than Sky1 or BBC1).

There are various different DVB resolutions. The highest one is used by various channels and is IDENTICAL to regular DVD. Some channels use SVCD comparable resolution and some VHS commparable resolution. A lot of pure advertising channels and some interactive uses 1/4 PAL resolution, much worst than VHS and somewhat worse even than VCD.

Some channels use too low a bit rate, plenty use comparable or even higher bit rate than DVD typically uses. This affects movement only. Not stills.

A lot of TV sets don't do full quality!

The adverts wil be specially selected material in some cases.

Quote:
Similiar to the way that 1meg bb is never really 1meg. But if you were to get 2meg broadband you'd definitley get at least 1meg.

A totally false proposition and false analogy.

Do you normally watch ITV3 (old analog video tape shown at 544 x 576 instead of 720 x 576) or shopping channels (many 384 x 288)?

Charlie

Those HD ads are up and running again.

ixtlan

watty wrote:

But is it possible that SD t.v is never really "truely" SD, that its impossible to get the full SD quality available
No, no, not at all!


This is on level of OFC and Litz wire for loudspeakers.

Hi Watty!

Back to the discussion that we were having on another thread! I think that while your comment here is correct, it's not the whole story... Yes, it is possible to get true SD on a broadcast, however that rarely happens.

As I was saying, I find the picture quality on Sky One dreadful. From viewing distance it looks OK but is not sharp, and if you move a bit closer you can see the compression artefacts that are causing this. I have taken on board your comments about HD, with 32" screens and a normal viewing distance, not being a huge improvement over DVD, however... the reality is that DVD is a huge improvement over SD because of the compression. So while Charlie's comment about "true SD" is not scientifically correct... it's kind of subjectively possible...

If Sky say double or triple the bitrate on a normal channel, it would start approaching DVD quality and the picture would appear much sharper, and if Watty is correct, then on a 32" screen at 9' you would be getting as good as HD. What I am certain of is that the picture I currently get could be a lot lot better even with SD. On RTE last year I was impressed how clear "Lost" was compared to Sky 1 shows...

So is SkyHD worth it? Well, even if Watty is correct, DVD quality viewing might be worth a premium, and 37" TVs would certainly benefit.

So Sky could indeed sell HD with higher bitrate SD ads!

Ix

ixtlan

I watched this channel for a few minutes this morning as they were showing some movie and sports clips.

The bitrate is definitely very high. In fact they were choosing scenes to show that off, some sports with rain and confetti, and spiderman swinging through the skyscrapers. Normally you would see significant macroblocking on such scenes, where the encoder doesn't have enough bits to show all the detail, so it basically gives up on a patch of pixels and makes it kind of a blurry amalgam of the contents.

So, it looks like this is their intention. Made SD look better to show you what you could get with HD. It's kind of funny though!

Ix.

watty

Also if your signal is poor you get more frequent pixellation on lots of movement.

Sparky

id swear they have increased the colour depth on those National geographic shots, and its true how they are selected shots, underwater scenes flowers etc.
Mixures of blue and yellow work well in trying to show HD, along with increasing background detail.
The only thing is how amazed some people are going to be when they think what they are seeing is HD, wait till they see it for real when they get it

Ive seen true HD pictures, so i know its a false sence of HD, The big giveaway is the text and channel logo

I just wonder is that a sky playout of the video they have sent to retailers to show in full HD on their HD displays?

Charlie

well at least now that some people have the seen the clips that I was originally referring to they can see how I came to the conclsuion that the picture that I was seeing was far better than what was usually put out by sky digital. By the way I had seen Hidef before so I knew what I was seeing wasn't HD, but on the other hand i knew that it was better than what I was usaully seeing.

Rick_

The pictures did look a better quality, I agree. But I thought you couldn't view a HD picture on a normal TV. What are Sky doing to the picture so we can see it? Is the test itself a HD picture or just Sky using the proper bit rate for a channel, instead of their crappy ones like now? LOL

Paddy

L1011

They're using the proper bit rate, proper resolution, and sourcing from HD material.

Mossy Monk

perhaps we should lobby Sky and all other broadcasters to have the same quality on all channels

some channels are absolutely shocking