Sky+ HD Question?

netwhizkid

I bought a HD tv today and am going to get Sky+ HD, My question basically is, will the normal standard channels like RTÉ1, Sky News etc get upscaled by the box to give them a better look on the HDTV? Is it connected by HDMI? and if say in 12 months time I cancelled Sky+ HD would it upscale the standard defintion channels? (if it does this to begin with). I have a Pace PVR3 connected via scart at the moment and get a very good picture but the higher the quality the better.

Danno

Nope, no upscaling of SD Channels, however, a high quality HDMI cable will improve clarity by at least 10% IMHO.

Caruso

In fact the Sky+ HD box can upscale SD. See threads on this here and here. The choice is yours: you can set the box to upscale SD or set to Auto, which leaves SD sources at 576 and lets the tv do the upscaling.

Be prepared to be underwhelmed by upscaled SD, though. In my experience the image can look quite "soft" when upscaled by the box. In fact I still prefer an RGB signal on a good-quality scart for SD. Speaking of good quality, this is much less of an issue for HDMI cables. Unlike scart, HDMI is digital, so the signal either arrives or doesn't -- there's no question of a poorer quality image. As long as they don't actually fall apart, cheapo HDMI cables do the same job. This is exhaustively documented on avforums.

swoofer

Just goes to show a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I have all sorts of hdmi cables and would be hard pushed to see any difference in quality. The bog standard that comes with the sky box does the job nicely.

Not a lot of people know this but the HD box on its own improves the sd output via scart without any upscaling via HDMI.

And yes when you cancel you can still change the output resolution to suit on the usual sd channels

Finally to get a really good pic I would concentrate on setting up the tv properly so take a look at av forums co cuk. If tv set up wrong then box wont make any differnce.

good luck

gb--

netwhizkid

Thanks for the replies guys, I guess the answer to my upscaling question will be revealed to my eyes when I get it in. (I registered today for it).

a few questions finally:)

I understand that BBCHD is available to Irish HD subscribers via "other channels" and and ITV is Freesat only and not available to tune via other channels due to certain MHEG5 coding making it invisible to Sky HD boxes.

What is the situation with Channel4 HD? Is it hidden like ITVHD or tunable like BBCHD?

Also does the SkyHD box switch itself over to HDMI like the old digiboxes do with scart? (I know this is very TV dependent).

If my SD channels looked worse could they be streamed to the TV via scart and the HD via HDMI or would this involve constant changing of settings?

thanks!

John mac

ITV HD 11.428 H 27500 2/3
its on a sticky above.

no ch4HD at the moment.

the tv switches in hdmi (mine does anyway )

the sd channels wont look worse.

hope that helps.