Sky News | General Discussion

Not sure about the President, but with three PMs in four years, it's probably worth it to give people a reminder.

I noticed this the other day when Theresa May was captioned as 'Outgoing prime minister'. It just seems a bit odd and unnecessary to be honest.

Yes, ‘Not very outgoing prime minister” would have been more accurate.

Presumably because of the improbability of either individual holding those offices, you need to be reminded that this isn't some weird dream.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. - Mark Twain

So on the Xfinity X1 System (Comcast’s STB) if you say Sky News into the voice remote it takes you to a hidden page with a description of Sky and link to what’s currently playing. It’s not a traditional cable channel but it connects to the internet. This version appears to be a better quality version of the YouTube/Apple TV app/ Sky News app feed. There’s no jitter or issues with the ticker that are displayed on the other online versions. If I had to guess it’s them taking the direct International Feed output and encoding it on their end.

It’s also appeared as a channel on their Xfinity Stream app among the other news channels:



The TVGo bug means you can view the channel out of home. With the stream app you can view all your channels in house.

If there is no jitter on the ticker then either the X1 and your TV are switching to 50Hz and thus Sky News is being displayed at 50Hz (which would be unusual for a North American product), or there is a decent frame rate conversion going on prior to the encoding of the web stream to create a decent quality 59.94Hz version.

It's not possible to display a native 50Hz stream at 59.94/60Hz without introducing 9.94/10Hz motion judder without a decent quality frame rate conversion (which isn't something that can be achieved at a consumer price point in any quality). This judder can be masked though, if your TV has MotionFlow, Natural Motion etc. enabled (it's always disabled on my TVs as it introduces so many motion artefacts as to be a joke)

My guess is that Comcast now have a decent quality Alchemist or For.A FRC converted version of Sky News kicking around? (I'd hope they aren't using Teranex...)

When I was setting up the X1 it appears there’s actually an option for 50hz in one of the diagnostic menus built in built in but was disabled by Comcast. But the X1 display I use permanently outputs 3840x2160 at 60p. There’s no way of me being able to tell where the feeds coming from. I compared it to the YouTube stream played through the YouTube app on the X1 box and there was then judder in the ticker.

Any known reason why 'Sky News Today' are using Studio 6? Will be interesting to see Kay in that studio

I think she was in that studio for Christmas Day morning if I recall correctly.

Remains to be seen if this is a permanent thing or a trial, but there were transitions between each story during the 10am TOTH (usual grey swipes from bottom to top) - Looked much better!

EDIT: Same with 11am. It should also be said that both times the initial website/ app preview opener has failed.

MSNBC simulcasting Sky News coverage from Hong Kong this afternoon, and NBCNews.com streaming Sky on their website (oddly, in preference over MSNBC?)

I think that’s a first in terms of collaboration between the two, and assume that Sky’s partnership with ABC and Fox has now ended. Neither were taking feeds from Sky that I saw.

Sky’s coverage has been first class this afternoon.