Is Sky HD worth it?

turtle1000 · 6 Dec 2008 at 09:37

Finally decided to jump onto HD when they had the box on offer for £75 in October. Had to wait for over six weeks but finally got my SKY HD hooked up yesterday. Seen the demo's in town but was worried when I got it at home it would look nowhere near as good.
However, even though I've only got a very early HD ready TV it looks fantastic. Only flicked through the channels so far really but Discovery and National Geo Look amazing. Problem is after watching HD, the SD channels look pretty ordinary when you go back to them

Is it worth it? Deinitely now the box has come down in price :cool:

sampo · 6 Dec 2008 at 11:12

Yeah I'd say it is worth it. Remember that you don't get HD sport/movies with the HD box unless you pay for them as with normal SD sky. However, if you have a reciever and a 5.1 setup I'd say it was worth it for that alone when watching movies due to the dolby 5.1 signal sent out with most HD channels.

alle · 6 Dec 2008 at 13:34

...Worth it just for the golf

Abyss · 6 Dec 2008 at 21:58

Tesco are selling actual HD boxes in store at the moment for £199 with free installation and 3 months free subscription to the full sky package.

turtle1000 · 6 Dec 2008 at 22:06

That's a good offer if the complete range of channels come with it.

Conan257 · 7 Dec 2008 at 11:14

Rumour control:

I heard recently that sky broadcasts 720 not 1080.... Dont know if anyone can prove either way...

zophiel · 7 Dec 2008 at 12:04

720p and 1080i are the setting in the box if i remember correctly.

Memphis · 7 Dec 2008 at 13:21

Conan257 said:
Rumour control:

I heard recently that sky broadcasts 720 not 1080.... Dont know if anyone can prove either way...

It's not a rumour, it's a well known fact, and has been since Sky HD launched. Freesat HD is the same.

There just simply isn't enough bandwidth to broadcast 1080p yet. The box can upscale to 1080i, but native is 720p.

gord · 7 Dec 2008 at 14:16

Can anyone beat the current Sky price. We're a sky customer already so we're looking at £10 on the monthly, and then £99 for the box and £60 for installation.

Corasik · 7 Dec 2008 at 14:31

I think the HD is worth it myself, Think is Sky is over compressed, (yes so is freeview). The picture quality on both isnt as good as the old analog broadcasts with a good antenna.

Most of the HD content is overcompressed as well, however the end result is still an image quality that is marginally better than DVD. Compared with BluRay its not that good, but try getting shows like Stargate Atlantis / Bones etc on Bluray.. SkyHD is the best we can get. For a movie that im not prepared to buy on Bluray, the SkyHD broadcasts are quite satisfactory, and certainly provide an enjoyable experience which is considerably better than the even greater compression on the SD channels.

Im pretty sure that sky broadcast 1080i for the majority of the time, as it takes less bandwidth than 720p. Thing is most video is captured at 25 or 30 fps, and most film at 24fps. If you take a 25fps progressive video, broadcast it at 1080i50, your TV will convert it back to 25fps progressive before displaying it. The vast majority of plasma TV's and all LCD's(I believe) are progressive anyway. Only ALiS 1024x1080 plasma's are truly interlaced displays.

Problems can occur if video is recorded at source using a 1080i camera, as these camera's can actually recored the a/b subframes at two separate points in time. With 1080i from a 1080p source the a/b subframes are simply extracted from a single progressive frame, and when recombined in the TV form a perfect version of the original.

Attu90 · 7 Dec 2008 at 16:01

Memphis said:
It's not a rumour, it's a well known fact, and has been since Sky HD launched. Freesat HD is the same.

There just simply isn't enough bandwidth to broadcast 1080p yet. The box can upscale to 1080i, but native is 720p.

What ??? SkyHD transmit at 1080i and always have since launch, a lot of people wish they would transmit at 720p as Sports and action movies would look better as the progressive picture handles motion better than an interlaced picture but to be honest most of the time there isn't a lot of difference between a 1080i image or a 720p image because of the way interlaced and progressive scan images work.

Who told you SkyHD was 720p ?

BTW Sky did test 720p before launch for football but they stuck with 1080i.

sunderland · 7 Dec 2008 at 16:25

Abyss said:
Tesco are selling actual HD boxes in store at the moment for £199 with free installation and 3 months free subscription to the full sky package.

yes but you still have to get sky to come out and install it,you cant take the box away from them as they dont have them

Nymins · 7 Dec 2008 at 17:09

sunderland said:
yes but you still have to get sky to come out and install it,you cant take the box away from them as they dont have them

Some Tescos do have the actual boxes. People have just bought them and took them home and install them themselves.

schnipps · 7 Dec 2008 at 18:19

Had it for about 6 months and think its well worth the 10 quid a month, you do need to have a good setup for it though. Personally if i had a 32" tv and no proper AV then i wouldnt bother but 40"+ and a good setup and yes its good.

Nodiggidy123 · 7 Dec 2008 at 20:50

im sure sky hd will be free relativley soon. judging by how you used to have to pay for sky+ and since freeview recorders became relatively mainstream it stopped.

the same will happen to sky hd now that freesat offers hd channels imo.

Memphis · 8 Dec 2008 at 00:37

Attu90 said:
What ??? SkyHD transmit at 1080i and always have since launch, a lot of people wish they would transmit at 720p as Sports and action movies would look better as the progressive picture handles motion better than an interlaced picture but to be honest most of the time there isn't a lot of difference between a 1080i image or a 720p image because of the way interlaced and progressive scan images work.

Who told you SkyHD was 720p ?

BTW Sky did test 720p before launch for football but they stuck with 1080i.

Fully open to the possibility I was wrong between 720p and 1080i

. I might have just mixed them up in my head.

Stand by the 1080p bit though

.

jeffa123 · 9 Dec 2008 at 01:21

If you do get it make sure you don't get one of those old Thompson boxes they have an inherent fault. Insist on the Sky+HD as advertised. The Thompson just has SKYHD on the front.
The new ones are made by PACE and Samsung. Better made, faster interface and no faults.
Comparatively speaking I don't think Sky HD is worth it and I have had it since it first came out. Sky Sports was the first thing I had turned off. The time delay and sound sync is terrible. Often you can record a program and the sound is so out of sync with what is on the screen you have to abandon it.
1080i on sports is pathetic. But some people believe everything they hear and end up believing it. Documentary programs are fine in HD like Discovery etc. But movies are just no better than an upscaled dvd. And with some of the films that are on you may as well get out an old dvd and watch it on an upscaler. The only reason I have it is for convenience. I always seem to watch Sky1 instead of Sky1HD but I do like my documentaries.