Sky HD output switching and other subjects!

[admin_exported]

Our Samsung Sky HD box is connected to a Denon AVC A1HD/Pioneer 500A. The Sky output resolution is set to auto. The plan was to allow the amp to do the upscaling of Sky braodcasts from their native state, whether that was SD or HD. Is this the best plan?

When I switch from an SD channel to an HD channel there is a long delay before the picture appears. Is this simply the Sky box having a think about its automatic output selection? Are there any other options? It is not the amp causing the delay as the same thing happens on other screens not wired through any amp.

I have mentioned elsewhere that I can not get a decent picture from the S Video output of this Sky box, unlike our previous Sky + box which was fine. This S Video signal goes via an older, non hdmi, Denon AVC 11 to a Sony 40W4000, which also gets the other HDMI out from the A1HD. Any thoughts on recent Sky HD box S-video outputs?

 

[Anonymous]

Hi,

How long is the delay? The 'spasm' (as it's known in my house) when switching from SD to HD and back is perfectly normal. I've had two different Pioneer TVs since getting Sky HD and Blu Ray and they've both taken about 3-4 seconds to make the adjustment.

The SD output over HDMI from Sky HD is already mangled by the Sky box's sub-standard deinterlacer. It'll only output SD as 576p. You want to get 576i out of it for SD if you can. Your A1HD is equipped with an HQV chip capable of very high quality deinterlacing. It also corrects for chroma / luminance errors common with lower grade analogue video. It should do a very good of decoding and cleaning up s-video and scaling it to 1080p. I would definitely recommend giving s-video straight to the A1HD a try. Keep the HDMI connection as well for HD channels. The trouble is that you'll now need to change input when switching between SD and HD, which will frustrate channel surfers no end. If you have a Logitech Harmony or similar universal remote, you should be able to simplify the process with a custom button or macro.

One possible gotcha is that not all receivers allow a single audio input to be assigned to multiple video inputs. I'm not sure about the A1HD.ÿ