I've got regular Sky TV at the moment but we're getting Sky+HD installed on Wednesday. Just wanted to ask those of you that have HD whether it is worth it? Was at a friends house the other night who had HD and to be honest couldn't tell the difference but wasn't sure whether it was just because I saw it for two minutes, so do you think that it is worth it?
To be honest, I wasn't in a rush to have it, but my sister wanted it for the new HD ready TV so anything to stop her nagging!
On the plus side, I got the old SD Plus box upstairs in my room as part of the MultiRoom contract.
(I did subsquently have a HD ready TV bought me as a 40th birthday present, but again I'm not in a rush to upgrade to a SKY HD Plus box! Incidently, when SD Plus boxes fail, what are they been swopped with? A reconditioned SD Plus box or HD Plus box? )
Incidently, when SD Plus boxes fail, what are they been swopped with? A reconditioned SD Plus box or HD Plus box? )
The vans don't carry reconditioned SD boxes. Anything replaced as part of an Engineer's call is just a standard Sky+HD box (or 1TB box if the customer already had that).
If it's a faulty multi-room 'non+' box, then they get the new 'SkyHD' box (no PVR function), assuming the old one can't be fixed there and then.
In terms off comparing sky HD to virgin media plus:
*Sky has already announced that its going to hit the 60th HD channel benchmark, with Disney in September, watch and Dave in October, and by the end of the year, Star Plus, Star Gold and more 4. Next year will see Alibi HD and qvc hd. Along that, hd channels for animal planet, racing UK, tcm and cartoon network.
*as far as I know, skys anytime plus has more premium channels where as virgin on demand has BBC, itv etc.
It comes down to how much you want HD, as Sky+ HD has got the most amount of HD channels available. It's worth it, even if the £10pm is rather crap, but it all depends on how much you think it's worth having.
Personally I think it depends on what you watch. If you watch sport, then I think it's much better than SD - with Formula One, for example, on BBC One you can't really see the marbles on the track that clearly, but in HD it's very clear and the slow motion shots of the cars are stunning in HD.
It is harder to tell the difference in non-sporting shows, and I also find that if you don't watch Sky channels then it isn't as noticeable. For obvious reasons, Sky try to go the extra mile with their HD (such as the side panels on Sky News HD), so if you watch Sky News, Sports or Movies, then it is worth it.
I've had Sky+HD for just over a year now and personally I think it's worth it, there's quite a wide range of HD channels now (most my viewing now being in HD) and I can tell the difference between SD and HD channels (but not so much when the HD channels are showing upscaled content, particularly the terrestrials).
I find the setup of the TV depends a lot on how well you can tell the difference, the default settings are usually rubbish, so it's worth taking your time to get it just right for you. It is also obviously more noticeable if you have a Full 1080 HDTV rather than a 720 one. If you do have a 1080 one I'd recommend disabling overscan as it's just there to degrade the quality in my opinion. What the setting is called depends on the manufacturer (it's Full Pixel on my Sony KDL-32EX403, and enabled by default).
Another word of advice, if you have a good quality TV, change the box output from 1080 to auto, that way the box doesn't upscale SD channels, which in my opinion it doesn't do as well as the good quality upscales in good TVs. Also that way you can watch 4:3 programmes pillarboxed, the upscaler in the Sky box always streches it to 16:9.
Another word of advice, if you have a good quality TV, change the box output from 1080 to auto, that way the box doesn't upscale SD channels, which in my opinion it doesn't do as well as the good quality upscales in good TVs. Also that way you can watch 4:3 programmes pillarboxed, the upscaler in the Sky box always streches it to 16:9.
I disagree, I prefer to have it on 1080 as the black screen delay in switching between HD/upscaled and SD is annoying, and upscaled looks better than the box's SD output on my TV. The downside is the pillarboxing but if it's a long enough programme to be annoying I can adjust that with my TV remote. Thankfully most stuff I watch is widescreen now.
What I'd suggest doing, is getting SD, then watching the free BBC One HD or ITV 1 HD when formula 1 or football are on, or a decent drama series, and if you like the clearer picture and you might consider it worth getting for the other channels too.
we have a Sky HD box, which we got we for free, we don't have the hd sub, so we just have the free hd channels, which are worth it as we don't seem to watch many sky channels in sd never mind hd.
Once there is a decent freeview hd recorder on the market at a good price, this will replace sky for us. I have a £30 freeview hd box in my bed room from tesco and that picture is better than the sky hd picture.
The only downside the freeview hd is that there is limited space for more channels, like BBC 2HD (Which I believe is replacing BBC HD in the future) but it would be nice to have them both.
Another word of advice, if you have a good quality TV, change the box output from 1080 to auto, that way the box doesn't upscale SD channels, which in my opinion it doesn't do as well as the good quality upscales in good TVs. Also that way you can watch 4:3 programmes pillarboxed, the upscaler in the Sky box always streches it to 16:9.
I disagree, I prefer to have it on 1080 as the black screen delay in switching between HD/upscaled and SD is annoying, and upscaled looks better than the box's SD output on my TV. The downside is the pillarboxing but if it's a long enough programme to be annoying I can adjust that with my TV remote. Thankfully most stuff I watch is widescreen now.
Which is why I mentioned a 'good' TV, as a lot of the cheaper and lower end sets aren't great for that. On my TV it's internal upscaler takes the edge over the one built into the box, plus the deinterlacer in the box is poor in my opinion (this is on the current Amstrad PVR5).
As for 4:3 content, many HDTV's I've come across (including my Sony) don't let you adjust the ratio for HD inputs, which is technically the correct behaviour as HD is natively widescreen, and as such assumes that whatever it is fed with is already in the correct format.
