What sound does Sky broadcast in?

legend99

Hopefully its a quick and easy one...what sound does Sky broadcast with...i assume its not full 5.1, and I assume its better than Nicam so what is it in...or does it depend on individual channles?

pH

Most Sky broadcast programs have a stereo soundtrack. To hear this you will need to connect Via a SCART cable and have a stereo TV. This is equivalent to Nicam stereo on terrestrial TV.

Sky Movies (And Disney) broadcast some movies in DD 5.1. For this you will need a Sky+ Box, an Optical cable and a Dobly Digital Decoder/Amp and 6 speakers.

Dolby Surround (DS) is a way of using the 2 stereo channels and a 'Hidden' directional indicator so that a DS amplifier can move the sound round the room. This system normally has 3 front speakers and a pair or rear surrounds (which both play the same).

Dobly Surround is added to the program soundtrack and is available in any stereo broadcast (Nicam and DVB).

pH

legend99

Optical cable??? But theres no optical out from the back of the Sky box is there???

What i got was in Lidl a few weeks back. 420 watt combined DVD/VCR surround sound system. So I have the VCR scart out going into that, I have the TV scart out going into the RGB TV in. Scart from the DVD/Video player is going into the telly as well.

but what i am doing is I have the DVD player swithed to receive the Sky singal and its pushing that sound out through its speakers. I am also watching the TV on the DVD inout rather than the RGB because it makes for less switvching.....4 year old in the house. It means then when you switch on a DVD(or when she does it!) the DVD pic just appears.

Now if I was watching Sky Movies should I get the 5.1 with this set-up? And how do you know which movies are in Surround Sound?
tks!

feck, just noticed you said Sky+ box....

watty

Nicam is a fairly high quality digital system. The analog sound on TV is mono here but better quality than 128K MP3. Some countries use two mono channels to give stereo. Stereo VHF -FM Radio uses Mono FM and a DSSC Sub carrier at 38KHz to carry L-R analog, this is "matrixed" with the mono FM (which is obviously L+R), so is inferior to German dual channel TV analog and analog satallite stereo which simply uses two mono FM carriers.

"Sky", i.e. Digital Satellite uses mostly MP2 audio typically at 256K joint stereo or 128K mono. This may be inferior at times to Nicam. Bit rates from 64K to 512K may be possible.

5.1 Audio is very rare. Only Sky Box office (some films) and maybe an odd Sky Movies channel use it. It uses a separate digital strea to thje stereo MP2 encoding.

Only some Non Sky boxes (which can't do Sky Pay channels), PC DVBs cards and SKY+ can output 5.1. The regular Digibox can't

AFASIK On approx 1100 Free To Air Channels, *NONE* ever have 5.1 audio.

It's a gimmic for theater sound effects, not true surround sound anyway. Only PPV cinema on Satellite is likely to have it.

Even some DVD releases are only stereo, even when the Cinema had DTS or Dolby 5.1.

pH

If you are getting the stereo audio into your surround sound system, then it will decode the Dolby Surround signal if the broadcaster is sending it.

Yep you need the Sky+ box at the moment for Dolby Digital. Your amp/decoder will need an Optical Digital Input socket to connect to this.

If you look at the EPG and press Info on a program you will see DS for Dolby Surround and DD for Dolbly Digital on the info bar.

DD is only on some movies shown on Sky Movies 1,2,3.

pH

pH

watty wrote:

5.1 Audio is very rare. Only Sky Box office (some films) and maybe an odd Sky Movies channel use it. It uses a separate digital strea to thje stereo MP2 encoding.

Are you sure about Box Office? - I wasn't aware that any of the Box Office movies had Dolby Digital, whereas I'd guess at the moment that the majority (>50%) of Premiere movies on Sky Movies are shown with 5.1

pH

ffocused

The digital output on sky+ is PCM 48 on all channels except sky movies.

ShaneOC

pH wrote:

Are you sure about Box Office? - I wasn't aware that any of the Box Office movies had Dolby Digital, whereas I'd guess at the moment that the majority (>50%) of Premiere movies on Sky Movies are shown with 5.1

pH

Sky Box office used to broadcast Dolby Digital on two of their channels (the old Sky Box Office Widescreen channels IIRC). They also used to broadcast Dolby Digital on only one of their movie channels. They changed this shortly after all of the movie channels went to widescreen. It was thought that more people would benefit from Dolby Digital on the movie channels than through Box Office. They were probably right .