When will Sky offer digital tv to all?

alc

Sky has always marketed it's TV service as "Sky Digital", but without a digibox that has a digital output are they technically and/or legally mis-selling their services?

AFAIK all Sky or Sky+ digiboxes take a perfectly good digital signal and then convert it to an analogue signal. Given that almost every new tv has HDMI input I find it very annoying that I would have to get a Sky+HD box and subscription to avail of an actual digital-picture on my TV.

Does anyone know if Sky has any plans to bring out a standard digibox (no + no HD subscription required) with HDMI output or are they going to continue selling an analogue tv service as "Sky Digital"?

ynotdu

HDMI stands for High Definition Media Interface.

it is specific to media that can play high definition.

sky digital was always delivered by digital signal.

digital allows a signal to be delivered at at a fraction of the*space*an analouge signal can be.

a scart to scart connection for all intents and purposes makes the sky box and a standard tv one unit.

if you do not connect by scart and instead use the Radio frequency(RF) out to RF in you are using UHF(for a sky box)and that will degrade your picture quality very much.

even so the signal to your TV originates from a digital source.

ScrubsfanChris

Its just another way Sky use to force people into get Sky+HD.
SD picture (apparently) doesn't look that great through HDMI anyway.

partyatmygaff

I have a Sky+HD box here and using HDMI I have to say it does look pretty amazing, the difference is barely visible on SD channels though, just a tiny bit better colour reproduction.

Anyways, A short Scart cable that isn't entirely garbage connected to a good quality TV displaying an SD channel will look the same as a SD channel via HDMI. Not exactly the same mind but the difference would be so small it would be undiscernable to the naked eye, SD can sometimes even look better on an Analog Scart.

And by the way the difference between Digital and Analog satellite is huge, with an analog system if you don't have an excellent setup in bad weather for example you get speckling and all sorts of artifacts. Digital is miles better in that regard. That tiny box-tv conversion hardly degrades the quality of SD channels.

Mossy Monk

alc wrote: »

Sky has always marketed it's TV service as "Sky Digital", but without a digibox that has a digital output are they technically and/or legally mis-selling their services?

Could they not be referring to how the channels are distributed? When Sky Digital first started I knew of nobody who had a HDMI socket on their television.

watty

Digital refers to the Encoding of the transmission/ picture and sound. Not the connection.

Anyhow the use of HDMI is NOT because Digital is inherently better than RGB analogue to connect to a TV screen but to add copy protection.

Analogue SCART could easily handle VGA signals, they chose not to do this on HD. VGA is upto 2500 lines resolution compared with 1080lines HD on HDMI.

For non-HD transmission the HDMI copnmnector adds no quality unless the RGB SCART on the TV is poorly implemented.
Composite SCART or RF is lower quality.

Most TVs in use are still not HD and thus have no HDMI.

Conculsion
Sky used to use PAL Analogue signal on an FM satellite carrier. The Sky Digital Service uses MPEG2 and MPEG4 video encoding and MP2 or AAC audio encoding (All 100% Digital), this is then multiplex as serial Digital data with other channels as a DIGITAL DVB-MPEG2-TS (Digital Video Broadcasting Motion Picture [Digital] Expert Group Transport Stream [Digital Serial Data]). This then modulates the Transmission carrier using QPSK (as it's digital data) to give about 27,500k symbols per second, rather than the 25MHz wide Analogue FM (frequency Modulation).


HDMI didn't even exist when Digital Video Broadcasting was invented.

Sky Digital. The clue is in the name.

DTT (Digital Terrestrial TV, aka Freeview in UK) very rarely has an HDMI socket on the box.


I'm closing the thread as in 10 years no-one has suggested Sky Digital isn't. HDMI is nothing to do with Digital TV distribution. It's a method of having a copy protected picture between a box (any kind inc disk players) and HDTVs.

How many DVD players have HDMI? They are 100% digital too.

icdg

Thread being re-opened, but we're watching...

ynotdu

icdg wrote: »

Thread being re-opened, but we're watching...

Hi icdg,so the thread is now re-opened,difficult to see what can be said beyond what has already been said

hope its not a bitch-slap fight amongst you mods?:)
your first concern should be for us members!:)
Watty in my experiance across many threads, research,s his answers and gives very comprehensive and factual replys.

may,be actually closing the thread on the OP was a bit harsh,but the idea was so absurd it would be hard for a knowlageble Mod to resist closing it.

I suppose it is better that a poster finds knowledge on an Irish based site than going to oversea,s sites,it keeps boards.ie a much *hit site*
as well as giving the Irish perspective of ALL things broadcasting.
cheers

alc

Sky mention "digital tv" on their website a number of times and there is a general implication that the service provides "digital tv". However a subscriber must subscribe to additional services (ie: Sky+HD) in order to actually experience digital tv.

Scart, VGA, s-video etc are all analogue systems. The fact that HDMI also provides for DRM/copy-protection is beside the point, it's currently the only digital port commonly available on modern TVs. DVI could be used but it can only provide a video signal and I have seen very few TVs with a DVI port. If the original source is a digital signal (eg: Sky, DVD) then digital is inherently superior to analogue as digital is "as-per-original" (this is the main reason the industries involved in the HDMI spec included copy-protection!).

Most modern TVs are "natively" digital devices with onboard digital processing hardware. With a non-Sky+HD box the digital signal demuxed by the digibox is converted to an analogue signal, when passed to a modern TV it is re-converted back into a digital signal (digital>analogue>digital=signal degradation). This is somewhat like taking a cd (digital source) playing it in a CD player connected to the stereo input jack on a computer (analogue conversion) and then converting that signal to MP3 (back to digital) for your iPod, who would want to do that? Some higher-end TVs will even reprocess the signal to interpolate additional frames and smooth out pixelation and artefacts introduced from the encoding process, I can imagine this would be fairly ineffective with a signal received over a scart cable.

I have tried hooking a computer with a decent VGA card up to a 32" lcd and I can see the difference when compared to a HDMI video card on the same machine connected to the same TV. With VGA (and s-video-to-scart) you get slight blurring (barely noticeable, but noticeable none the less), and slight artefacts with motion (introduced by the TVs digital processing of the analogue VGA signal), with the digital/HDMI connection it's rock-solid, every pixel where and when it should be (and this is with a cheap Matsui/Currys-own-brand tv). Also I have a DVD player (SD) I got in Lidl (bargain at 59 euro, a good quality HDMI cable costs more) with HDMI and Scart ports and the picture and sound are noticeably better when using the HDMI port.

HiDef/HD, StandardDef/SD, LowDef etc are all subjective terms that compare "legacy" resolutions and framerates to "current" and "future" (I know, also subjective terms). To be objective you need to refer to actual resolution and frame-rates (580p, 720p, 1080p, NTSC, PAL etc etc). The fact that TVs capable of consuming a digital signal are reasonably recent is also beside the point, that's like saying eircom shouldn't provide me with DSL as they don't expect me to have an ethernet port on my computer. The point here is not about resolution and/or framerate, it's about "Sky Digital". The Sky service delivered to a bog standard subscriber *terminates* at the box, and that box can ONLY provide an analogue signal.

I agree with ScrubsfanChris I think by not providing HDMI output on a standard digibox Sky is, possibly deliberately, forcing subscribers that want to experience actual digital-TV to subscribe to Sky+HD.

Does anyone know when/if Sky plan to provide standard digiboxes with a HDMI port (or any type of digital output port providing video&sound that a new TV might be capable of processing)?

Biro

I find my picture from the Sky+ box a nice bit better when I use S-Video to take the picture to the TV and change the Picture Settings to RGB.
I'm also using the optical out on the Sky+ box to feed my Denon amp. I must double check, but I'm pretty sure that on some channels it detects Dolby Digital, which would suggest that there is a digital signal out from the Sky+ box, wouldn't it?

slegs

Digital TV has always referred to digital transmission and reception. It has nothing to do with how you display on your TV. Sky Digital is available since long before there were HDMI TVs generally available. In Sky's case they are referring to the use of DVB-S to transmit and receive TV via satellite technology. Your implication that Sky are misrepresenting something is ridiculous.

A Digital Ready TV is one that has a digital reception tuner built in (usually DVB-T). When you plug your Sky Digital box to your TV via scart it is still digital TV as the broadcast was received digitally via the DVb-S tuner in your Sky box.

In any case the difference in quality between SD digital TV on good RGB scart and SD digital TV on HDMI is marginal at best when viewed on an LCD or Plasma TV.

Mossy Monk

slegs wrote: »

Digital TV has always referred to digital transmission and reception. It has nothing to do with how you display on your TV. Sky Digital is available since long before there were HDMI TVs generally available. In Sky's case they are referring to the use of DVB-S to transmit and receive TV via satellite technology. Your implication that Sky are misrepresenting something is ridiculous.

Well said. Can this train wreck of a thread be closed again?

JoeA3

Biro wrote: »

I'm also using the optical out on the Sky+ box to feed my Denon amp. I must double check, but I'm pretty sure that on some channels it detects Dolby Digital, which would suggest that there is a digital signal out from the Sky+ box, wouldn't it?

On regular Sky+ the only channels that have Dolby are the premium movie channels, and also some stuff that's auto-recorded in the "Anytime" planner. Everything else is regular stereo, but your Amp may be applying Dolby Pro Logic II to that stereo - thereby giving you the perception that it's full surround sound - some amps do this quite well, depending on the TV show too.

Sky+HD on the other hand - all of the HD channels have Dolby sound - whether it be DD 2.0 or full surround DD 5.1. All the premier league football on Sky HD is in 5.1 for example, as is a lot of the stuff on the Nat Geo HD and Discovery HD.

alc

The fact that Sky use a digital medium to transmit their signals is irrelevant to this discusion, standard Sky subscribers can *only* receive an analogue signal. When you plug your Sky Digital box to your TV via scart it is NOT digital TV/video, it is analogue TV that was originally transmitted via a digital system. Like I said, for a standard subscriber, Sky's digital service *terminates* at the digibox where it is modulated to an analogue signal. Sky provide the video content, decoder box and I provide the TV. My TV can now process a true digital signal but Sky will only provide me that digital signal if I subscribe to further services.

The interpretation of the terms "Sky Digital", "Sky Digital TV" and "Digital TV" is fairly off topic. Originally Sky Digital TV was not a misrepresentation as noone had the capacity to receive a digital signal. However on mature (mature technology) reflection it is indeed possible that the term is notionally and technically inappropriate (although I probably should never have pointed this out in the first place!).

The technology side of this discussion is also mostly off topic, as are subjective opinions (mine included) about picture quality. If anyone knows of a method to extract a digital signal directly from a standard Sky box please pipe up.

The original topic/question is far simpler than discussed so far: Does anyone know if/when Sky plans to provide digital output to standard subscribers.

evilivor

alc wrote: »

The original topic/question is far simpler than discussed so far: Does anyone know if/when Sky plans to provide digital output to standard subscribers.

alc wrote: »

My TV can now process a true digital signal but Sky will only provide me that digital signal if I subscribe to further services.

I think you may have answered your own question.

greendom

evilivor wrote: »

I think you may have answered your own question.

Sky Digital replaced the original Sky transmission system that was an analogue based one. So instead of being able to offer something like a maximum of 50 channels it could offer hundreds, as less bandwith is required to transmit digital signals

fat-tony

greendom wrote: »

Sky Digital replaced the original Sky transmission system that was an analogue based one. So instead of being able to offer something like a maximum of 50 channels it could offer hundreds, as less bandwith is required to transmit digital signals

+1 .... and in the process reduced the original analogue picture quality by compressing the hell out of it, so now it's in perfect blocky digital quality no matter what device you watch it on:rolleyes:
HD is going the same way, with higher compression and reducing bit rates to squeeze more channels on to each transponder. watty was right in closing this thread originally:) we're worse for debating this pedantic thread:o