Sky "On Demand" download quality

scanner

Following up on the thread for Sky "on demand" last week , is it just me or are the quality of downloads extremely poor , I watched the film Sacrifice last night and it was very blurry , it was easily comparable to the very soft images seen on some of the more obscure satellite channels.
It was so poor I spent more time " effing and blinding" to the other half than actually watching the film.
If this is a teething issue with it only being a new service then so be it , but the old Sky Anytime downloaded overnight automatically to the box was a much higher quality picture. again I ask is this an attempt by Sky to force people to upgrade to the "HD" pack.

Has anybody else got an opinion on the quality of these downloads , or is there a way of changing settings to increase the quality, if not it is very annoying as I used to use the Anytime service a lot but I could'nt put up with this , so its either stop using or cough up another €15 to Sky

thanks

Trampas

maybe your bb is the issue

scanner

don't think it is the broadband , UPC 25meg

Kensington

Was it just that particular film?

The content is all pre-encoded by Sky and your box simply downloads that file, slower broadband means it will take longer to download but has no effect on the quality as it is not a streaming service.

Stinicker

I found no difference on the HD stuff but some of the SD stuff is inferior alright.

3rdDegree

The SD stuff is definitely poor quality. Haven't found very much in HD to download yet, so can't comment on that.

scanner

So people that are currently using it have noticed the poor quality as well then , I have to say if it stays like it is I won't bother with it again , now getting slightly off topic but I was watching the football yesterday on Sky Sports 1 on my main Sky HD box ( without the HD sub ) and the picture was very soft and grainy as well , wife was watching same match and also thought picture was poor. The picture wasn't much better than watching on a laptop with Sky Go, I have had Sky for years and I don't remember the picture ever being this poor , I only recently dropped the HD pack to cut costs , but this is very poor in comparison. I have checked the signal and both quality and strength are fine.

1 - Could this be a possible fault with the Sky box , sometimes I have to turn it off and back on again in the mornings to get rid of a "hdmi handshake bluescreen"

2 - Have Sky changed the bitrate or the way they broadcast their SD signal on their premium channels ie sports and movies recently to try and sneakily force subscribers to take out the HD sub , if it wasn't for the football I wouldn't have Sky at all ( watty is correct about 90% of viewing being terrestrial TV in my house ). I have to say I am just not a happy camper with Sky at all at the moment , I also have a Freesat box in another room and have no issues withe either HD or SD signal on that box

3 - Or am I just being paranoid

Any thoughts welcome

keith_d99

scanner wrote: »

So people that are currently using it have noticed the poor quality as well then , I have to say if it stays like it is I won't bother with it again , now getting slightly off topic but I was watching the football yesterday on Sky Sports 1 on my main Sky HD box ( without the HD sub ) and the picture was very soft and grainy as well , wife was watching same match and also thought picture was poor. The picture wasn't much better than watching on a laptop with Sky Go, I have had Sky for years and I don't remember the picture ever being this poor , I only recently dropped the HD pack to cut costs , but this is very poor in comparison. I have checked the signal and both quality and strength are fine.

1 - Could this be a possible fault with the Sky box , sometimes I have to turn it off and back on again in the mornings to get rid of a "hdmi handshake bluescreen"

2 - Have Sky changed the bitrate or the way they broadcast their SD signal on their premium channels ie sports and movies recently to try and sneakily force subscribers to take out the HD sub , if it wasn't for the football I wouldn't have Sky at all ( watty is correct about 90% of viewing being terrestrial TV in my house ). I have to say I am just not a happy camper with Sky at all at the moment , I also have a Freesat box in another room and have no issues withe either HD or SD signal on that box

3 - Or am I just being paranoid

Any thoughts welcome

Have you had Sky Sports on the HD box before in SD?
I noticed that when I went from the regular white sd box to the HD box, I thought that the picture on the SD channels had degraded.

I cancelled the HD pack when I cancelled the Sports pack for the summer. By the time the summer was out - I got an offer of the HD pack for €5 a month for 12 months.

scanner

Yeah I have watched Sky sports on the SD channels on this HD box before ,I go through phases every now and then of dropping either the HD sub or premium channels particularly during the summer months when there isn't much on , but no I have never seen the quality as bad as this before