Stupid Sky HD Rant

flogen

This isn't a problem I've had with them personally, just something that annoyed me when I saw it (sorry if wrong forum).

Basically in Omni Park Shopping Centre in Dublin they've had a Sky HD kiosk up for weeks (maybe even months).
The thing has big banners reading "Sky HD" and "feel everything" or whatever their caption is. They also have a big and sexy flat screen TV and a Sky HD box underneath it.
The problem is, out of all the times I see it (once or twice a week) they're never showing any HD content. Sometimes they have Sky News on, or Sky Sports News or one of the regular Sky Sports channels. Never a HD one.

I find it kind of stupid because they're obviously trying to get new customers to make the leap to Sky HD and get existing customers to upgrade, but you can see people walking up, looking and the screen and walking away thinking that they just saw HD and it looked the same as SD.

I'm not sure how reliable certain channels are for HD content (as in, are there any on the package that are always showing HD content) but even still they could surely have a holding channel, which I believe BBC HD has when it's not broadcasting. Or they could put a PS3 under the desk and play a blu-ray disk - sure it wouldn't be Sky HD but neither is what they're showing!!

Anyway - I'll finish my rant now... just can't get my head around why they're not showing HD content on a HD display with a HD box at a kiosk promoting their HD product.

Tony

One in the square is exactly the same

Grayarea

You could always take your remote in and fix the problem

Later,

Mossy Monk

Exact same thing in Dungarvan. A friend of mine said HD looked **** until I brought him into a pub to show him the proper HD channel. Makes me wonder if these people have any idea on what they are selling.

mustang68

i was in a shop with where they were splitting the sky feed with (I think) scart leads into a load of TVs, showing some non HD channel, the TV I was shown was a HD TV and the sales person was insisting that it was displaying HD. It looked much worse than VHS.

kbell

Maybe there was nothing on the HD channels that the sales assistant wanted to watch to pass the day.

Mossy Monk

Maybe the display isn't there for the sales assistant to be watching all day.

watty

I saw decent flat screens with HD that looked good for 1st time at ANGA in Koln, but didn't have time to identify make/model of screen. It was like looking out of a window. (A very clean clear window).

byte

Not many channels run HD during the daytime. At work, the HD box is usually left on DiscoveryHD or NatGeoHD. There is also SkyHD Retailer Info channel.

Mossy Monk

But when they turn on channel 401 on a Saturday afternoon to show a Premiership match then surely the Sky Sports HD1 should be used to demonstarte the picture quality.

zilog_jones

Harvey Normans seems to be the only shop in Limerick where they have a half-decent HD set up, i.e. most the TVs are showing HD content, be it BBC HD or some crappy Philips demo video or whatever.

The first HD video I ever saw was in the Panasonic shop - they had a TV connected to what was apparently some sort of Japanese CATV decoder (I guess it was a PVR as well or there was something hidden), showing some Panasonic demo. A few weeks later was the same demo video, but on a DVD

The Sony Centre made some attempt at receiving Euro1080 when it was FTA, but either the reception was so bad or they were using SD connectors so it didn't look HD at all.

mathias

There really is no excuse for such a sad setup in the shops , I have sky HD and the quality of some of the channels is excellent , Nat Geo and Discovery are good , the Movie channels show some good stuff , Sky one has some genuinely good HD in the evenings , the daytime stuff though is clearly upscaled ,
But the real point is that the Sky HD box is a Sky + box as well , and at the very least they should have the thing full of HD recordings to show.

Lost is great in HD , King Kong was on the HD movie channel as well and looked excellent , no excuses , they should hire someone who knows what their doing !!

JDxtra

Agree 100%.

Seen the same thing at the Sky HD stands in Liffey Valley and in Newbridge shopping centres.

watty

When I was in Limerick Harvey Normans many of the sets with "BBC HD" infact had SD feeds from SCART, Composite or RF.

Something got knocked off and almost all the "BBC HD" sets reverted to RF noise on screen.

Very, very few sets in Curries or Harvey Norman or Soundscene seem to be 1080line.

cgarvey

I'll go better Watty .. was told by a sales guy in Harvey Norman who consulted with the manager (won't name which Dublin store it was!), that you don't need to have a HD source to appreciate HD. I'd asked (after a similar bewilderment to flogen's) if they had *any* HD set connected to a HD source. Once we got over what I meant by "source" he went off to ask his manager.

It's about pushing the keeping-up-with-the-jones' rather than anything else. I mean HD should sell itself. Has anyone seen a HD source on a HD TV and not gone "WOW!"?