Upgrade To HD?

nedd

Hi,

I got connected to Sky+ lately and love it. Then Saturday gone i went a little crazy and bought myself a HD tv. But i have nothing HD to watch on it

So will i have to fork out €450 to upgrade to a SkyHD box?

Cheers

watty

yep.





And then according to Byte there is still nothing to watch once the carosel of the few HD Nat Geo & Discovery programs has spun around in a few weeks.

BBC service is only a trial, till end of April. Who knows what they doing then. They have 2 to4 programs a day on HD.

You'd need a Blu Ray DVD player, but no titles in the shops yet here.

And this is the worst bit...

Unless you have a TV larger than 40" and it is really 1080 line resolution natively you won't get full quality, it would be like watching DVDs or VHS on a 7" LCD, you won't easily tell the difference!

HD Ready just means it displays HD, not that it displays it pixel for pixel.

The good news.
The non-HDready Plasmas & LCDs are terrible for ordinary TV. You only get a picture similar to a really good CRT with an HD LCD/Plasma for ordinary TV!

There is a very good technical, mathematical proof as to why (which I won't bore you with), but if you compare the picture on a variety of content:
* 4:3 pictures
* 16:9
* different Sat channels (they are not all same resolution)
* DVD
* VHS
* Analogue TV aerial pictures

Then any HD set on ordinary Defintion beats a standard LCD/Plasma hollow.

nedd

thanks for letting me know about upgrading.

as for the shortcomings of HDTV's i know that already. i didnt speand over a grand on a tv without doing research

1080p tv's at the mo are an amazing amount of money but i only got 32" so the difference between 1080i and 1080p is nothing on such a small screen.

but i have to say even though i dont have anything HD to watch, the HDTV is much better than my CRT was. the colours are brighter and the image is much sharper.

i wont be getting either HDDVD or Blu-Ray until the so called "Format War" has been resolved one way or the other.

Thanks again

happyhammer

from what i understand, some people may be better off getting a 720p HD tv. reasons are:

1. If you like fast action TV viewing (sport) a 720p refreshes faster than a 1080i

2. At a normal living room viewing distance, you may find it hard to determine the difference between full HD resolution and 720p.

3. because 1080i is all the rage, you can get 720p TV's for a good price now.

bsj

Check around, sometimes there are deals on the sky hd boxes from some of the electrical retailers or independents, I paid €300 before Christmas, but didn't go throught sky.
I watch HD on a 42 inch 720p LCD, and the picture on the HD channels is amazing, check out some of the comments about Sky Hd on avforums or digital spy.
In terms of the amount of HD content available, its worth it if you watch sports, the HD movie channels are good and if you watch Lost , 24 etc etc, they're all shown in HD on Sky One.

Mossy Monk

my 720p tv works wonderfully with my pc. the higher resolution video files i have are amazing on it

Pat Gleeson

happyhammer wrote:

from what i understand, some people may be better off getting a 720p HD tv. reasons are:

1. If you like fast action TV viewing (sport) a 720p refreshes faster than a 1080i

2. At a normal living room viewing distance, you may find it hard to determine the difference between full HD resolution and 720p.

3. because 1080i is all the rage, you can get 720p TV's for a good price now.

1. Picture wise 1080i and 720p will both give you pretty much the same thing, one's interlaced the other's progressive. What you gain in lines (1080i), you lose in scanning, and vice versa. I've had Sky HD since June, and on my Pioneer 43" I saw no difference between the two when I set the box to 1080i or 720p.

Leave the Sky HD box on 'Automatic' and TV selects the picture format - Sky HD has'nt changed from 1080i any any channel so far. Maybe Sky Sports will revert to 720p in the future.

2. Even closer than that, and I can't see any difference.

3. I think maybe you mean 1080p. Those TV'S are really expensive, and you will only see the difference when outputting a 1080p signal, either via PC, HD-DVD or BluRay. The picture quality of 1080p is exceptional.

Two TV's (1080i / 1080p) side by side showing SkyHD will show very little, if any difference.

1080p broadcasts are a long way off. Sky say they have no plans, and across the Atlantic it's the same story.

Ice_Box

Picked up a 42" sharp 1080p LC-42XD1E tv last night for 1899 at DID. So far I've only tested it with a normal JVD DVD and its just stunning. Ill give more info next week. Going to order sky HD at the weekend. I find the various packs and options confusing and its hard to find the info in the sky website.


http://www.didstore.com/store_detail.asp?modelcode=LC42XD1E&catid=14&subid=195

lynchie

Ice_Box wrote:

Picked up a 42" sharp 1080p LC-42XD1E tv last night for 1899 at DID. So far I've only tested it with a normal JVD DVD and its just stunning. Ill give more info next week. Going to order sky HD at the weekend. I find the various packs and options confusing and its hard to find the info in the sky website.


http://www.didstore.com/store_detail.asp?modelcode=LC42XD1E&catid=14&subid=195

Thinking of picking up that tv too.. Have you had a look at the thread over on avforums? Can you check if you have any of the banding issues they have been going on about. Also, what serial number is the set u got? i.e. is it a dec 06 / jan 07 build?

watty

happyhammer wrote:

from what i understand, some people may be better off getting a 720p HD tv. reasons are:

1. If you like fast action TV viewing (sport) a 720p refreshes faster than a 1080i

2. At a normal living room viewing distance, you may find it hard to determine the difference between full HD resolution and 720p.

Especially since the Transmission is 1080i, the screen is too small and is natively 768 lines

3. because 1080i is all the rage, you can get 720p TV's for a good price now.

All total rubbish.

The broadcaster decides the resolution, not the viewer. All HD in Europe is 1080i. A 720p display will signifcantly degrade it. 720p is good for Xbox or Playstation games. Poor for Sky.

There are almost no 720p native TVs. They are mostly 768p and rescale both 720p50 or 1080i25

Even in US the majorty is 1080i30. Only some dedicated sport channels in USA is 720p60

watty

nedd wrote:

thanks for letting me know about upgrading.

as for the shortcomings of HDTV's i know that already. i didnt speand over a grand on a tv without doing research

1080p tv's at the mo are an amazing amount of money but i only got 32" so the difference between 1080i and 1080p is nothing on such a small screen.

but i have to say even though i dont have anything HD to watch, the HDTV is much better than my CRT was. the colours are brighter and the image is much sharper.

i wont be getting either HDDVD or Blu-Ray until the so called "Format War" has been resolved one way or the other.

Thanks again

The difference between 1080p25 and 1080i25 dosen't much exist.
The problem is with 1080p30 and 1080i30, the famous 3:2 pull down artifacts from 24fps flim source.

Except for computer games there is NO advantage in Europe for 1080p. I doubt you will ever see braodcast 1080p in Europe, it doubles the bandwidth for no increase in quality at all.

In USA there is a slight advantage. And a big one for Film source. So just like 480p popular DVD in USA, so will 1080p30. It's irre;levent here

Supercell

Jeepers Watty, I know who I'll be consulting before I splash out when HD programming (or the DM8000 is released ) becomes more mainstream here!!

watty

Well I did used to work in BBC Communications and was trained in Evesham / Woodnorton.

Also I have been evaluating various TV systems as part of my job. (You don't think I have 9 sat tunerheads/receivers and 4 dishes for fun? Don't answer that!). I have a Philips HD Ready set in work. A real CRT at home