Sky Digital fuzzy/blocky on new tv

L1m1tless

I got a phillips hd tv for christmas and I have sky digital hooked up to it via scart but the picture is not a sharp as expected, its alll blocky on some channells. dvd's have a good picture when played. Any ideas on what the problem with the sky could be?

Thanks in advance!

MarkR

You could swap the scart leads to make sure it's not the cable, but other then that, if it is a large tv you may be noticing more artifacts on the screen as it is spread across a larger area.

L1m1tless

Thanks for your reply! I will try a new cable. is there a better way to connect it than scart? its 32inch and we have a similar phillips 32 inch in another room and the sky works great on it.

Turtle-TM

i noticed this on my 32" samsung. changed my cheap scart cable for a €30 one,not by far the most expensive, but good quality, and it has made a difference.

its deffo worth investing in a decent cable,scart or HDMI

L1m1tless

Turtle-TM wrote: »

i noticed this on my 32" samsung. changed my cheap scart cable for a €30 one,not by far the most expensive, but good quality, and it has made a difference.

its deffo worth investing in a decent cable,scart or HDMI

Cool I will do that indeed. Can you get a hdmi cable for the sky box? is it scart to hdmi?

Cheers!

Turtle-TM

if you have sky HD then hook it up with a decent HDMI cable. if you have normal sky or sky+ then just use a decent scart cable, no point in using a scart-HDMI cable, you'll gain no quality.

as with HDMI cables,look for one that has gold plated conectors, oxygen free copper and multi layerd shielding.

L1m1tless

Great thanks so much you really helped me out. I have some old ****ty scart cable on it at the moment. its just normal sky digital. Im gonna get a HDMI cable for the ps3 too.

Thanks again for the advice.

Turtle-TM

yeah i used €4 scart leads for ages,then after getting a €60 HDMI cable in currys for the ps3 i upgraded my scart too.

it makes such a huge difference having a decent cable for the ps3 too, watch dvd's through the ps3 too and you'll notice the difference compared to a dvd through scart. as for games and blu rays....you'll just have to see it to believe how good it looks

L1m1tless

Deadly! Cant wait to get one now!

Turtle-TM

if you go to currys go for the white cables,they're the most expensive but well worth it. should be around €60-€80.......or just go up the north and get it for €40!!!

snaps

My Philips 42" HD gives a poor picture as well with my panasonic sky box via scart. i tend now to watch a lot of my FTA stuff via my TM6900 connected via HDMI. Perfect crisp picture even on SD transmisssions.

watty

Make sure Sky box is set to RGB and you use TV out, not VCR out on Sky box. If there is more than one SCART on TV, make sure you use one that does RGB, often only one does.

If RTE/BBC are OK but some other channels are blocky, it's the offending channels using low bitrate.

Alternatively if LNB gets iced or Dish slightly out of alignment or coax is damaged the picture goes more blocky on many channels.


Additionally some TVs have poor Analogue inputs.

There is NO POINT to a €60 HDMI cable. HDMI is Digital. If the HDMI cable works, it's perfect. A €9 one is just as good as a €60 one.

There are TWO kinds of SCART,
1: Common screen bundle of wires. Skinny or very Skinny.
2: Multiple internal coax, very fat.
Brand name, Gold or Price are not relevant nor a guide. SCART is Analogue and needs a minimum of 9 separately screened/mini coax or else the sound interferes with picture and picture puts buzz on sound and you get ghosts of video out on the video in and hear audio out in background of audio in.
I've seen Type (1) (rubbish) from €2 to €40 and type (2) from €6 to €40.

The cover shell is easily unscrewed from a SCART plug to see what is inside.

rlogue

Another very important point to bear in mind for lcd TVs is that the sharpness setting should be set as low as possible as well as the contrast.

von Smallhausen

Gold plated Scart leads have been known to improve quality in pictures its better than the one that comes with installation anyway..your best off to change the scart with a new one for improvement

bmcgrath

It's SCART. It's older tech and can't deliver the same quality as HDMI. I had been using a gold plated SCART cable for my old sky+ box for the past year. It was alright but I was never 100% happy with the image quality.

Having recently got Sky HD and using HDMI only, everything looks much better and I'm not talking about the HD channels. On the SD channels everything looks better. When I flick back to the scart connection I get that blocky unsharp image I use to get.

von Smallhausen

bmcgrath wrote: »

It's SCART. It's older tech and can't deliver the same quality as HDMI. I had been using a gold plated SCART cable for my old sky+ box for the past year. It was alright but I was never 100% happy with the image quality.

Having recently got Sky HD and using HDMI only, everything looks much better and I'm not talking about the HD channels. On the SD channels everything looks better. When I flick back to the scart connection I get that blocky unsharp image I use to get.

Thats because the HDMI upscales the SD channels

bk

Turtle-TM wrote: »

as with HDMI cables,look for one that has gold plated conectors, oxygen free copper and multi layerd shielding.

I have to disagree with this, unless you are looking at very long lengths, there is no difference between a €7 HDMI cable and a €60 one. The reason being, unlike SCART which is analogue and can suffer from interference, HDMI is digital and therefore far less likely to suffer interference as it uses error correcting codes.

So with HDMI cables it either works perfectly or not at all, there is no in between like you can get with SCART.

Danny_B wrote:

Thats because the HDMI upscales the SD channels

Not quite, HDMI doesn't upscale the image, the Sky HD box does the upscaling. HDMI is just a cable and can carry either SD or HD image resolutions. All HD TV's also upscale the SD image to HD, it just seems that the Sky HD upscaler is better then the upscaler in most TV's.

However some TV's may have better upscalers (like the Pioneer sets, or the upcoming Toshiba sets ith cell processors) or you might have an external AV amp that could potentially do a better job then the Sky HD box.

Drag00n79

bk wrote: »

I have to disagree with this, unless you are looking at very long lengths, there is no difference between a €7 HDMI cable and a €60 one.

+1

BostonB

Wheres the best place to get decent scart cables. I've noticed a big difference in quality between scart cables. Hard to find short ones.