sky hd sd piqture quality

[murg]

Hi All,
Just taken delivery of the new amstrad hd box. I am finding the pq on sd far inferior to sd on freeview. pioneer 427xd plasma. I have set the amstrad to auto. Any ideas??

 

[Anonymous]

There is nothing you are doing wrong, the picture on SD is not as good as Freeview and that is fact, you will find everyone will say the same too.

Ive had Sky+ HD since christmas and noticed the SD was not very good, so what i do is basically when i turn my Sky box on, i filter the guide to show just HD channels and watch those, obviously there is some good stuff on the SD channels, so i usually flick over to Freeview for those unless i record them on the box that is.

Regards> M

 

[murg]

Hi sorry for the delay,been working away. Well i`ve had the 4th sky engineer round today re picture quality and to qoute him when seeing the pq " I wouldnt put up with that!" so they are ordering me yet another box ( samsung) any comments on pq on this box-ie anyone know if it is better? He also told me that samsung are developing a new 5oo Gig box for sky. I take on your advice regarding using scart to watch sd but it seems like a step backwards to me. If this one fails then I will be calling it a day with sky HD

 

[Davro83]

Hi, this thread has helped me. Thanks. My parents have just got a new panasonic 42" G10 tv and i went round and thought the picture was rubbish. I was confused as its supposed to be a 5star tv. They have sky also. I have Virgin at home. After reading this thread, i tried the freeview on their tv and it is much better. So basically Sky is rubbish picture. Is there a certain box that is better. I cant see how sky get away with it. Its so so popular yet a rubbish picture. Another reason (and a big one) why i think Virgin cable is better.

 

[murg]

I really cant comment on which boxes are the best. So far I have had two of the new amstrad 5oo gig boxes and the previous amstrad model. Both have been awful. The pq is blurry and slightly out of focus. Its simply not good enough for £28.00 per month. When my new Samsung arrives I will post and let you know if its any better.

 

[Anonymous]

HI I have done a self install for Sky HD and the pictures on SD were shocking, I phoned the technical department thinking I had done something wrong, after 10 mins or so the guy said there was no more advise he could give, the pictures were still poor by comparison to freesat so I have decided to cancell my HD subscriptionand send the Amstrad box back to sky.

 

[The_Lhc]

Curious, I find the Sky SD picture much more watchable on my KRP-500a compared to its internal tuner, the freeview picture seems to have a lot more mpeg blocking, compared to the Sky output.

I have the Sky box set to auto for the picture output, allowing the TV to upscale the SD pictures, this is a vast improvement over setting the output of the Sky box to 1080i, the Sky upscaler is not very good, perhaps the people in this thread should try that?

 

[daveh75]

There has been numerous complaints on some other forums, about the SD PQ and PQ in general being under par, for both the new Amstrad 500GB and 1TB boxes!!

 

[Anonymous]

daveh75:There has been numerous complaints on some other forums, about the SD PQ and PQ in general being under par, for both the new Amstrad 500GB and 1TB boxes!!

I have seen amstrad computers and 'hi-fi'.....i dunno how sir alan made so much money from these rubbish products.

 

[Joe Cox]

ITV SD is certainly pretty poor for me. Not that I'd contemplate for a second getting shot of my Sky+ HD box...

 

[GazzyP]

I generally go back to SCART for SD because the TV will use its trickery to de-interlace and smooth out the picture from SCART. When its on HDMI the Sky box does all this and does a terrible job. Infact it doesnt even bother to de-interlace! Its a pain but for me its SCART for SD, HDMI for HD.

 

[m.j]

i've had a samsung and amstrad sky hd box and the PQ was the same with SD on both ! RUBBISH

have found the freeview freesat far superior ,

and itv is especially bad !

but when watching football ITV HD looks better than BBC HD ?

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys, Further to my post regarding ( what i regarded to be a faulty Amstrad HD Box ) and the lack of customer care. I honestly believed after me complaining several times about the picture quality I would get a replacement. I got -- -- -- you guessed it nought. Any way the box has been posted back . Thats my first and last experience with Sky HD. I have a sky + box excellent picture quality and a Humax Foxsat Pvr the picture quality with HDMI is far superior to that sky box I was sent.

 

[PJ1200]

Poor customer service from Sky!? That doesn't sound right J J!?
You must be mistaken!!? HAHA!!

Bunch of complete monkeys!

 

[Pindi]

My SD picture through Sky HD is pretty good. It must be the Kuro doing a great job of the upscaling!

 

[digigriffin]

My SD picture from my Sky+HD (thomson @ 1080i) via hdmi to my TX-P42V10B is as good as I would expect.
So very happy with the SD quality although this does vary between channels.

 

[The_Lhc]

digigriffin:My SD picture from my Sky+HD (thomson @ 1080i) via hdmi to my TX-P42V10B is as good as I would expect.
So very happy with the SD quality although this does vary between channels.

Just out of idle curiousity have you tried setting the Sky box to auto to see if the TV does a better job of upscaling, the difference was stark with my TV.

 

[digigriffin]

Well I tried all the resolution settings and the delay when switching between different resolutions and my amp which passes the hdmi though clicking each time meant that I preferred to stick with the 1080i.

However I will go back and take a look just in case I missed the difference.

**update well done a quick test and can't see an obvious difference on Auto