Suspicious about SKY and HD

YoYOPowder

I have noticed on some friends Sky Broadcasts some interesting observations and would like to know other peoples opinion on them. I realise the basics that source is every bit as important to a good picture as the actual viewing device, i.e. plasma, lcd etc but this is not my point, nor is it lcd is better than plasma and crt or vice versa. I have noticed a deterioration on the service of Sky One, grainy to some effect, but I can put up with that. But recently I have been watching Football and Rugby matches on Sky Sports ( a lot of them in fact) and noticed how bad the picture was once the camera angle had zoomed out. Now I put this down to my friends newly acquired LCD at the time. Im not so sure, I switched to BBC, and the same match was on, but the picture was perfect. I didn't really pay that much attention to it, until I noticed the same on a Samsung Plasma, BBC and RTE's football was perfect, but Sky was just woeful, the players appeared smudged. You really notice during a game, as you will have different camera angles and fast moving pictures, however I am not being paranoid when noticing it on Sky One also, and some Movie Channels. I cant be positive but I haven't noticed this until recent months. Could it be that Sky are somehow deliberately affecting their broadcasts with the advent of HD? I actually think so, I wouldn't put my mortgage on it, but I genuinely believe they might be up to something. Anybody else notice?

Mossy Monk

yes it is something which i have noticed aswell. the picture seems to be getting worse over the last few months

CL7

I noticed this on Sunday while watching the Liverpool game at home. I usually watch Liverpool matches at the pub and the picture has been pretty poor there for quite some time. I always thought that the pubs TV was to blame but now I'm not so sure. When Sky switched from analogue to digital the difference was incredible, crystal clear picture etc. Do I think Sky is capable of deliberately reducing the quality of broadcasts to coerce people into switching to HD?............yes, yes I do.

watty

Maybe some peoples dishes are off? I don't know. Poor quality level on signal due to dish mis-alignment really does make the picture "blockier"

I never watch sport and infrequently watch any actual Sky channel, More BBC. ITV, Discovery, Nat Geo (Film on Fx the other day). I havn't seen any change at all in quality.

My % Quality bargraph is over 90% (offset to west Sky minidish Quad LNB on an 80cm multi-LNB dish).

The BBC/ITV are also unchanged on my motorised FTA 80cm dish.

Could it be some feeds are poor? I noticed huge change in quality from studio to "footage" on Sky news the other day.

Or perhaps it is particularly Sky1 and Sky Sports (never watch) as these will be HD.

byte

It is indeed odd. I notice on Lyngsat, that there are 7 channels on the SS1 IRL transponder. The SS1 UK tp only has 6 channels [12110H]. The Sky One IRL transponder carries 8 channels. Most ITV tp's have only 6 channels (one tp carries 7). I must be misreading but I'm pretty sure Sky Sports 1 In The Pubs is sharing a tp with 10 other video channels!

Is 7 channels just too many for a transponder? I think 8 is really pushing the boat out.

I wonder if SS1 UK can be watched with an Irish Sky Sports subscription?

DMC

How many genuine widescreen channels are also on those transponders, byte?

Sparky

SS1, England, can be viewed on a Irish card, its just the SS1 for pubs that are blocked.
I find this aswell. I was watching 'Lost' last night on rte2 and the quality was brilliant, but then when I watch material on sky one, like 'Over There', it's crap to say the least.
I have always seen BBC as having high quality, and I do reckon Sky are reducing bitrate on their channels.

radiospan

You can definately notice this on the live soccer, when the camera quickly moves across the fans become very blocky.

Also, if you look at the "Sky Sports Live" logo, you can see pixelating around it when there is a fast camera pan.

Is there some way of checking what bitrate they're using? I know you can do this on an FTA box.

Sparky

plazzTT wrote:

Is there some way of checking what bitrate they're using? I know you can do this on an FTA box.

I would say there is a way. Maybe if someone had a pc card they could tune in the channel (encrypted) and get the transmission info.
I think this is possible.

zt-OctaviaN

yes some broadcasts are heavily Compressed looking!

I do have a question not getting into the fact that your NOT comparing screens BUT

How many of you questioning the broadcast quality are viewing Sky on screens larger than 32" ?
Every blocky pixel is gonna be stretched the bigger the screen you use!
Its just that first poster seemd to be referencing this LCD and that Plasma?

Ill have a look out...Friends episodes you say?

Just one thing you have your sky units plugged in via Scart?
Then press the AV button on remote to switch to the AV scket the box is using on telly and it may improve the picture e.g. less grainy I can create a grainy image if I do not use the AV scarts. But this just depends on yer setup.

But about the screens sizes? how many over 32" cos I havent really noticed much change im using a humble 28" and 32" CRT

watty

Sparky-s wrote:

I would say there is a way. Maybe if someone had a pc card they could tune in the channel (encrypted) and get the transmission info.
I think this is possible.

Yes. There is even a standalone analyser that runs on SkyStar1 or Skystar2 and compatibles. Works fine on encrypted channels. You just can't see or hear them

watty

I mentioned before my son complained about Sky quality at his house now. His bargraph is about 1/3.

The same channels looked fine on our TV which is larger. (90%+ quality bargraph).

LCD /Plasma will distort /artifact on any picture not native pixel resolution.

I think it likely some OB feeds have been poor to save money.

Some transponders have had ten TV channels for a very long while. I agree that 6 is better limit for quality.

Some channels only use 1/4 to 1/10th the normal bit rate (Audi channel, Broadband channel). Some shopping and cheap channels are only 1/4 screen 384 x 288 and automatically rescalled to 720 x 576. Those channels look MUCH worse on PC screen than on TV screen.

While a conspiracy sounds exciting, I'd want more evidence.

Daavid

I don't know much about this sort of thing, but is it possible that in order to facilitate the extra "weight" of the HD content, sky are reducing the amount of bandwidth or whatever to the SD channels that they own.

Mossy Monk

i wouldnt think thats the case. there are loads of free transponders up there

ffocused

RTE/BBC/TV3 have always been better then the Sky channels, anyone with Sky+ just has to check the percentage of disk space used on a recording on each channel to see this.

RTE uses 8% an hour
BBC and TV3 use 7% an hour
Sky One uses 4% an hour
Sky Sports however uses 7-8% an hour too.

this has always been the case.

I have a 37" LCD in the living room and notice pixellation on Sky One/Sports too, but on a 32" CRT in the bedroom i do not, but i find Sky Sports has a better picture then RTE for the football on both tv sets.

Zaphod

YoYOPowder wrote:

Could it be that Sky are somehow deliberately affecting their broadcasts with the advent of HD?

That suggestion is devious, duplicitous and downright underhanded.


Have you considered applying for a management position with News Corporation?

YoYOPowder

zt-OctaviaN wrote:

yes some broadcasts are heavily Compressed looking!

I do have a question not getting into the fact that your NOT comparing screens BUT

How many of you questioning the broadcast quality are viewing Sky on screens larger than 32" ?
Every blocky pixel is gonna be stretched the bigger the screen you use!
Its just that first poster seemd to be referencing this LCD and that Plasma?

Ill have a look out...Friends episodes you say?

Just one thing you have your sky units plugged in via Scart?
Then press the AV button on remote to switch to the AV scket the box is using on telly and it may improve the picture e.g. less grainy I can create a grainy image if I do not use the AV scarts. But this just depends on yer setup.

But about the screens sizes? how many over 32" cos I havent really noticed much change im using a humble 28" and 32" CRT

Fair point, but whilst watching that same LCD or Plasma, I can flick between Sky Sports and BBC, SS is rubbish compared to the BBC, the same match. Im not going from SS on Plasma over to BBC on 32" CRT, otherwise I could explain the discrepency.

Gargantuan

I have noticed this problem aswell and it too has been manly on Sky sports.
One major thing was on Sky Sports news after midnight the picture totally
deteriorate so much that in fact it looks like it was copied on to a VHS (not even digital) and rebroadcasted.

radiospan

Gargantuan wrote:

I have noticed this problem aswell and it too has been manly on Sky sports.
One major thing was on Sky Sports news after midnight the picture totally
deteriorate so much that in fact it looks like it was copied on to a VHS (not even digital) and rebroadcasted.

Yes, that is a separate problem actually. I used to notice this on the "old" Sky News (before it got the widescreen redesign a few months back). After midnight they used to repeat the sports headlines at 20 past every hour. It really did look like it was an analogue tape they were using (not digital anyway).

I'm guessing this is the same thing on Sky Sports News.

JBoyle4eva

Ok, I've got a bog standard 21' TV that's been around for nearly 10 years and I notice it constantly every time I watch 24! Really bothering me!

I say it's a ploy by Sky to get more people to go HD :rolleyes:

Valentia

There is no doubt thet SKY sports has deteriotated in quality. It is as blocky as hell lately and that is not due to mis allignment of the dish. Greedy hoors thinking that most people will not notice..unfortunately they are right!

ixtlan

Valentia wrote:

There is no doubt that SKY sports has deteriotated in quality. It is as blocky as hell lately and that is not due to mis allignment of the dish. Greedy hoors thinking that most people will not notice..unfortunately they are right!

It all comes down to money. It seems that the addition of Sky 3, reduced quality for Sky one in Ireland because they shared the same transponder. Sky could have chosen to pay more money for more transponder space but they obviously decided that people would live with it.

I'm not sure about Sky sports, maybe some channels were added to it's transponder too. It is unfortunately completely up to Sky what bitrates they use on their own channels, and unfortunately for me a lot of my viewing is on Sky one (sci-fi).

This is why I want HD, even though we could get close to the same quality on SD with a higher bitrate.

Ix

for the money we pay every month and seeing that we pay a dearer price too than UK customers, wouldn't you at least think we could get a top quality service.

Mossy Monk

as long as people are paying then why change anything