SD Picture Quality

The OP is on SkyQ so I can't comment on how that behaves but Sky+HD has never pillarboxed anything when you set it to 1080i. Everything gets stretched/squashed and upscaled to fill the screen. This is the same behaviour in 720p mode, and only 576 or Auto mode presents things properly. It's a long-running "request" on the Sky forums, oldest thread I can find on it dates from 2011 and nothing's changed five years later.

In fact a more recent post on the Sky forums suggest SkyQ has the same issue in 1080i/p mode.

I have Sky+HD set to 1080i output, and I can assure you it does pillarbox 3:4 broadcasts, but only on the HD channels. I don't think it does it on SD channels.

On HD channels the pillarboxing is a part of the image as broadcast. The issue arises with 4:3 content on SD channels, which is actually broadcast in true 4:3 but Sky+ HD doesn't handle it properly in 1080i mode.

Err... No. All 1080i broadcasts are 16:9 rasters - if you are seeing a pillar-boxed image it is because the broadcaster has pillar-boxed it to add the black bars either side prior to broadcast. There are no 4:3 1080i video formats in use - so you can't send 4:3 1080i for a receiver to pillar-box.

The point about Sky HD boxes is that - unlike almost every other HD satellite box you can buy - they don't pillar-box 4:3 SD content when you upscale to 1080i or 720p. Instead they stretch it to 16:9 full-width. The only way of getting pictures to stay the right shape is to put the Sky box in AUTO mode and live with the rubbish 576i to 576p deinterlace and HDMI re-sync...

Perhaps I was unclear when I wrote "everything gets stretched/squashed and upscaled to fill the screen". I should have added that this is only the case with SD and Sky+/SkyQ in 1080i.

Unfortunately this opens a new can of worms because 1080i is the default for new Sky+ boxes, and we all know what it does to SD pictures, and the viewer thinks Hyacinth Bucket has always looked like that. How the hell anybody can watch that is beyond me.

I must admit I can't believe the Sky boxes still have no option for displaying 4:3 content in its proper aspect ratio. This is a standard feature on Virgin's cable boxes (both legacy and TiVo).

On the other hand, the YouView box as far as I know has no option for cropping or zooming a 4:3 picture to fill the screen. You can only view it pillar boxed. Whilst I'm sure the overwhelming majority of forum members here would rejoice at such a 'feature', try explaining it to the family member who just wants the picture to fill the screen and not have their TV jump between different shapes as they put it. It would be nice to just have the option to do so to suit the viewer, no matter how bad it may appear to some of us.

I see it more a case of "I've got a x-inch screen and I'm going to use every pixel even if it means watching Hyacinth Bucket looking fat and squashed on a foggy day". There just seems to be an aversion to black bars at the sides of the picture, yet people are perfectly happy to watch films on TV presented 1:85:1 (or even 2:35:1) with black bars at the top and bottom on a widescreen TV!

Black bars top and bottom cause a lot of complaints from people too...

Part of the issue I suspect is that Sky have always done 4:3 differently. For a mixed ratio channel like the BBC's, DTT has always been a 16:9 raster with 4:3 programmes pillarboxed. The feed to satellite is ARCd so that 4:3 programmes are 4:3 raster.

This means a triple conversion if the viewer at home pillarboxes it - first it had pillars added when the 4:3 programme left the tape, then they were taken off when it leaves playout, then they're added again at home.

Yes - though there is no major quality difference between upscaling and stretching a 4:3 SD show to 1920x1080 or 1440x1080 and adding pilarbox bars - other than a bit of rounding and filtering.

Most other DVB-S2 receivers available do it (and it's normal in other regions even if they do 4:3 content as 4:3 full-width) - it's just Sky who stubbornly refuse to provide 'right shape pictures' as an option at 1080i...

(They also still appear to refuse to deliver 576/50i over HDMI - even though that was added to the spec long ago - albeit after the initial release of HDMI 1.0 ISTR)

BBC One, BBC Two and ITV have HD as the default feed for their channels and the SD feeds are direct downscales. - The only difference between HD and SD programming is when regional news shows on BBC One and ITV. BBC Two HD had a screen for Party Political Broadcast.

But why won't ITV broadcast in Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound on SD let alone HD?