Sky HD picture on SD channels

Ludo

Hi,
I am considering getting in HD but just wanted to get peoples opinions on one aspect of it. Does having a HD box make ANY difference to the picture on SD channels. I.E. will it improve the picture quality to any degree at all on the RTE channels or other SD channels? Will there be a marginal improvement on these SD channels also or will these remain the exact same.

Only wondering as my current sky+ box is ancient and has a tiny hard drive which I constantly fill. Am thinking of upgrading to Sky HD just to get a newer box really and cancelling the hd sub again after the 12 months min contract are up.

Thanks.

cpu-dude

Ludo wrote: »

Hi,
I am considering getting in HD but just wanted to get peoples opinions on one aspect of it. Does having a HD box make ANY difference to the picture on SD channels. I.E. will it improve the picture quality to any degree at all on the RTE channels or other SD channels? Will there be a marginal improvement on these SD channels also or will these remain the exact same.

Only wondering as my current sky+ box is ancient and has a tiny hard drive which I constantly fill. Am thinking of upgrading to Sky HD just to get a newer box really and cancelling the hd sub again after the 12 months min contract are up.

Thanks.

Depends on how you connect and what TV you have, SD channels are displayed in normal resolution 576i (720 x 576) while the HD channels will change and up to 1080i (1920 x 1080). If you use the HDMI cable and a HD TV (of course), it can upscale to 1080i but you might not notice a difference too much. If your TV has upscaling too, then you should see an nice improvement. Just remember, no scart leads - only HDMI.

GigaByte

Yes it will! The Sky HD box will upscale the SD channels

John mac

GigaByte wrote: »

Yes it will! The Sky HD box will upscale the SD channels

Not by a huge margin though

GigaByte

John mac wrote: »

Not by a huge margin though

:rolleyes:

MarkR

Wouldn't the tv also be upscaling it if it was being fed a scart signal?

Ludo

MarkR wrote: »

Wouldn't the tv also be upscaling it if it was being fed a scart signal?

Yeah that is what I figure...wonder which does the better job...tv (samsung) or sky hd box? Only one way to find out I guess.

GigaByte

MarkR wrote: »

Wouldn't the tv also be upscaling it if it was being fed a scart signal?

Not if it gets a signal through scart, if it gets the signal through HDMI it will upscale. The quality up the upscaling depands on your TV

Ludo

GigaByte wrote: »

Not if it gets a signal through scart, if it gets the signal through HDMI it will upscale. The quality up the upscaling depands on your TV

Now that I didnt realise and is good to know. I assumed it would attempt to upscale all pictures regardless of source. Thanks.

byte

GigaByte wrote: »

Not if it gets a signal through scart, if it gets the signal through HDMI it will upscale. The quality up the upscaling depands on your TV

Eh? Of course the TV will upscale through Scart, or through any other analogue connections it has. Otherwise, you'd have a small picture on your screen.

zilog_jones

Any display with fixed pixels, e.g. LCD, plasma, DLP etc., will need to upscale or downscale (i.e. interpolate in some way) an input to the resolution of the display. So a "Full HD" TV with a resolution of 1920x1080 will have to interpolate any video input that isn't 1920x1080, which would include 720p and everything else.

The question here is whether the Sky HD box can do better upscaling than the TV. The fact the SD channels won't be converted to analogue video and back (as what would happen with SCART output) probably helps a bit at least. It is possible to do SD resolutions over HDMI, but I'm not sure if the Sky HD boxes allow this for SD channels.

GigaByte

byte wrote: »

Eh? Of course the TV will upscale through Scart, or through any other analogue connections it has. Otherwise, you'd have a small picture on your screen.

Yes thats true, but there will be a difference in the quality of the picture.

fat-tony

GigaByte wrote: »

Yes thats true, but there will be a difference in the quality of the picture.

There might be a "good" difference or a "bad" difference;)
My Panasonic has a crisper picture on SD channels on SCART, with a Humax Freesat box. The picture quality on SD via HDMI is slightly soft. On HD channels only HDMI provides the full resolution and is streets better (to my eyes) than SCART. So, rather than being proscriptive about HDMI being "better" quality than SCART, it might be more appropriate to say that your experience may differ, depending on the equipment being connected and the settings of said equipment:)

GigaByte

fat-tony wrote: »

There might be a "good" difference or a "bad" difference;)
My Panasonic has a crisper picture on SD channels on SCART, with a Humax Freesat box. The picture quality on SD via HDMI is slightly soft. On HD channels only HDMI provides the full resolution and is streets better (to my eyes) than SCART. So, rather than being proscriptive about HDMI being "better" quality than SCART, it might be more appropriate to say that your experience may differ, depending on the equipment being connected and the settings of said equipment:)

We're talking about going from Sky+ to SkyHD. We're not talking about Freesat boxes or LCD/Plasma TV's with in built super upscaling processors. The simple answer is a SkyHD box will process and scale an SD channel to a HDTV better than a Sky+ box will.

byte

I agree with fat-tony on this. Results will vary depending on your equipment, especially how good or bad your TV's upscaler performs compared to Sky+HD scaler.