Is HD (specifically Sky) really any good?

JHMEG

Haven't got HD myself but can't help noticing when I see it on display in shops that it looks to me to be pretty awful. I was in DID yesterday and Discovery HD was on a 37" TV. Lots of mpeg artefacts/blocking etc, a bit like a poorly encoded divx.

OTOH a Blu Ray demo disc was playing on several TVs and it looked fantastic.

Am I missing something, or are all the shops doing something wrong?

DMC

It's often the shops set-up that's to blame.

Why can't they set a TV up correctly, when, after all, they are trying to sell it?

IMHO, when it is set up correctly, it looks pretty good, but I won't get it until the price of both the TV's and a receiver/pay-tv subscription comes down and more content comes on stream. I'm seriously not tempted by it.

byte

At work there is currently 6 LCD's connected via HDMI to a SkyHD box.

Don't notice much artefacting, though if you're up very close to the screen and there is a lot of one colour (eg football pitch) you can see the MPEG blocks of colour. Of course, Sky Sports HD1 is useless during the work hours, as most of the programming is not HD, so we're usually stuck with DiscoveryHD or NatGeoHD.

givecredit

Why not show BBC HD as a demo in shops?. The Preview the show during the day is ideal material for showing off HD pictures.

Your comments re Sky Sports are right. Of course you could record some matches and show them during the day..

jimbob

Are you sure it was a HD channel they were showing?

It may of been a HD television, but most shops I have been in don't have HD channels on view, just the normal digital channels.

mustang68

When I was shopping for my HD TV most of the "HD" content looked terrible, from bad VHS to real player on a dial up connection, when I did some digging I found that the reason was the very poor set ups that were in the shops, such issues as:

"HD Ready" TVs are not HDTVs, they just have a HDMI input
Plasmas on set up have the contrast set to 100%
Scart is not equal to HDMI
Analogue outputs cannot be split 17 ways without amplification
Scart outputs cannot be split 17 ways without amplification

Most of the assistants only read what was on the stickers and knew nothing else.

When shopping you have to get the assistant to plug the same player with the same cable into the different TV's then you'll start to be able to see the difference.

JHMEG

givecredit wrote:

Why not show BBC HD as a demo in shops?. The Preview the show during the day is ideal material for showing off HD pictures.

Actually, last time I was in electroplus they were showing the BBC HD trial. In fast motion or complex scenes there were artefacts all over the place!

jimbob wrote:

Are you sure it was a HD channel they were showing?

Yeah, Discovery HD logo in the top corner. Again, same a BBC HD: not much movement, the picture was great, but show a complex/fast moving scene and artefacts and blockiness all over the screen.

Could it be a case that my eyes didn't deceive me, and maybe the mpeg4 encoders that these channels are using haven't enough muscle to produce good results?

Rick_

Same for me, it seems electrical shops can't even get their set-ups right, so how do they expect people to buy their products if they can't make them work correctly?

A telly shop in Armagh (and there aren't many) has 3 TV's in their front window display, all showing BBC HD as a demo. One TV has a really bad picture which I assume is coming from an RF cable, and the other has roughly the same. Now, the third TV has a really good looking picture, only the TV has been zoomed in with the 14:9 zoom function, so the picture looks streched and the BBC HD logo is half off the screen. Muppets.

mustang68

Maybe there is a market for someone who actually knows how to set these things up properly to do it for these smaller shops.

BigMoose

It's not just the smaller shops! I've seen some shocking TV setups in Powercity, PC World, Dixons/Curry's etc...

mustang68

actually, you're right, the big shops are where the worst set ups are

LFCFan

Was watching Sky HD on a 42" Phillips the other day and I have to say I was well impressed. The Picture is so clear and the detail is amazing. I can only imagine what 1080P Blueray or HD-DVD would look like.

Headshot

LFCFan wrote:

. I can only imagine what 1080P Blueray would look like.

unreal

pure class

got a 1080p tv and tried kingdom of heaven blue ray at 1080p,it was brilliant

watty

Badly aligned dish will increase artifacts.
I was in one shop allegedly showing BBC HD. But it was all via RF (Downsampled SD).

BBC has no service yet only a trial.

There is little good English HDTV content yet.

Almost all the "HD ready" sets if 1/2 way decent are 1366 x768, the cheaper ones worse.

HD is ALL 1920 x1080. The resampling will either blur or create artifacts.

Many displays are progressive. You can convert from Progressive to Interlace perfectly (unless it is 24 fps film to 30fps NTSC, which is bad) but the reverse will either give artifacts or blur on motion.

vsat

Sounds like the good old days all over again,

Sky / BSB : Sky won
D Mac / D2Mac : D2Mac won I think
VHS / BETA MAX's : VHS won
Hi Def / ? :

Headshot

watty wrote:

BBC has no service yet only a trial.

There is little good English HDTV content yet.

.

would you think bbc hd will start a hd service
what i mean is i might get a fta hd receiver in the future and dont want to be stuck without any hd channels

zilog_jones

They seem to have a half-decent setup in Harvey Norman's in Limerick. They're usually showing BBC HD on most the bigger TVs and it's definately actual HD - I do notice a lot of blocking close-up but at a reasonable distance from the screen it's quite decent. The demo videos they have look very good.

Dixons, Currys at all in Limerick *NEVER* show any HD content - they're either connected to Sky through RF or just a DVD player. What's the point in having all these HDTVs on display if they couldn't be arsed to show them off properly?

The first HD video I ever saw was in the Panasonic shop (back of Savins) - they had one big plasma TV connected to some crazy decoder/HDD recorder covered in Japanese (it said something about "Hi-Vision" on it, which is what they call HD). It was just some Panasonic demo video with flowers and crap but it looked good. After a few weeks they had the same demo video, only on a DVD

Villain

Oh it really is good alright, I just watched 3 matches on HD Chelsea V Spurs on BBC HD then England V France on BBC HD and finally Blackburn V Man City on Sky HD and the picture on my HD projector would just blow you away, as others have said the poor quality is stores is usually down to poor setups.

byte

givecredit wrote:

Why not show BBC HD as a demo in shops?. The Preview the show during the day is ideal material for showing off HD pictures.

Your comments re Sky Sports are right. Of course you could record some matches and show them during the day..

We did have BBC HD running for a while, but the loops got boring. There are some HD matches on the harddrive and some HD movies for handiness.

DiscoveryHD during the daytime this past while has been showing wildlife and scenic videos which look very good IMO.

johnnyflav

watty wrote:

Almost all the "HD ready" sets if 1/2 way decent are 1366 x768, the cheaper ones worse.

HD is ALL 1920 x1080. The resampling will either blur or create artifacts.

I think you've got it a little mixed up, 'HD ready' is anything with at least 720 horizontal lines on the screen (doesn't neccessarily have HDMI), 'Full HD' is 1080 horizontal lines. With Sky HD, they only currently broadcast in 720P or 1080i, both of which will look as good on 'HD ready' as 'Full HD', any difference seen will be in the upscaling of the individual television. AFAIK there are no plans to upgrade Sky HD to 1080P, as the bandwidth required would be too large.

The only place you are likely to find 'Full HD' or 1080P in the near future is PS3, HD DVD or Blu-Ray.

ixtlan

johnnyflav wrote:

I think you've got it a little mixed up, 'HD ready' is anything with at least 720 horizontal lines on the screen (doesn't neccessarily have HDMI), 'Full HD' is 1080 horizontal lines. With Sky HD, they only currently broadcast in 720P or 1080i, both of which will look as good on 'HD ready' as 'Full HD', any difference seen will be in the upscaling of the individual television. AFAIK there are no plans to upgrade Sky HD to 1080P, as the bandwidth required would be too large.

The only place you are likely to find 'Full HD' or 1080P in the near future is PS3, HD DVD or Blu-Ray.

"HD ready" is a standard. 720 lines minimum and a port that can accept a copy-protected HD signal, either HDMI or DVI.

"Full HD" is a made up term to specify 1080 lines, and all "Full HD" TVs are of course "HD ready" too. I'm not knocking it... except in so far as the fact it's not a standard means that there's a certain vagueness to it.

Watty has a point that SkyHD is completely broadcast in 1080i (they decided not to use 720p)... and therefore in theory a Full HD set will give a better picture because it won't have to scale to 720/768 lines. Yes... that's 1080i not 1080p but even so the Full HD set can show the 1080i signal without scaling (maybe).

Having said that, most 1080 "Full HD" TVs will scale a 1080i signal anyway to generate overscan! And there are strong arguments that most people at normal viewing differences will not be able to tell the difference between 720 and 1080 line signals or TVs. So whether you are better off with a cheaper 768/720 TV is up to your budget and your fussiness factor.

Bluray/HD-DVD will be 1080p rather than 1080i and will in theory be better (and it's true that SkyHD will not get to p anytime soon), but I suspect the improvements may be more due to higher bitrates rather than p over i. Most people won't care, and will be wondering what gibberish I have just typed.

I'm still waiting for my perfect TV. It will be soon, maybe July-August, and most likely it will be "Full HD" but that's because I'm fussy.

Ix.