Just picking up on a few points here: 1080p broadcast, better motion when a box is set to 1080p, and Humax menus now looking radically different:
In practise we have just two resolutions for most linear broadcast TV, be that Freeview, Freesat or cable. These are
576i and
1080i. In theory it's possible to broadcast at 720p as the bandwidth required for it is in the same ball park as 1080i. HD Sport and F1 would look better at 720p, but sadly it isn't used here. Other countries do things differently. There is of course broadcast at 4K UHD, but only available to a limited number of users who subscribe specially to the service. It isn't yet part of the national broadcast platforms of Freeview or Freesat.
For the technically minded, the bandwidth calculation is
BW = [(TP x Vt) /2] x 3
where TP is the total number of pixels (horizontal x vertical) eg for 720p it's 1280 x 720 = 921600
Vt is the vertical refresh rate; we use 50Hz for most TV broadcast in the UK
Divide the answer by 1,000,000 to get it in MHz
720p = 69.12MHz
1080i is 1920 x 540 pixels (only half the horizontal lines are displayed at once) = 77.76MHz
1080p 50Hz is 1920 x 1080 = 155.52MHz - and that's a
big difference
UHD 50Hz 3840 x 2160 = 622.08MHz - exactly 8x the bandwidth of 1080i, and exactly 4x the bandwidth of 1080p, which is precisely what you might expect
Bandwidth is a bit like how fat the signal is compared to the pipeline you have to put it down. Broadcasters, be it terrestrial (via an aerial) or satellite or cable all have the same challenge. Their systems don't have unlimited bandwidth. They have to balance how they divide up the total bandwidth available. Do they go for a small number of really wide pipes, or a higher number of slimmer pipes? The number of pipes equals the number of channels.
We know that the answer is they mix it. Adding extra capacity is a huge cost. It's why the broadcasters wanted to go digital. The bandwidth for one analogue channel can host dozens of SD channels in digital format. To add more bandwidth for satellite means launching a new satellite with more transponders to either sit along side or to replace the existing one. Hugely expensive, but can be switched over relatively quickly. For terrestrial it takes far longer. There are 80 main transmitters and over 1,000 relay transmitters that would all need upgrading. We've just been through more than a dozen years of pain with digital switchover and the 800MHz and 700MHz band clearances. It's partly why we're still bumping along with a lot of SD channels (that, and backwards compatibility) and why 4K UHD terrestrial broadcast is a very long way off.
Any box that outputs 1080p is creating that signal itself.
We don't broadcast in 1080p. It takes up too much room and, for the most part, it's pointless too. Anything originated on video at HD comes out of the back of a camera head at 1080i 50Hz. It's a native 1080i signal. Every 1/50th of a second the imaging chip sends out a 1920 x 540 pixel image. This is called a field. Invariably the subject or camera is moving, so the image is shifted in the next field. Two fields make one frame of video; one complete resolution image, but when the two fields show the subject in slightly different positions then the leading and trailing edges of the image have a comb tooth effect because they don't line up. Wikipedia doesn't do a bad job explaining this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlaced_video
The bottom line here is that it's impossible to reintegrate two parts of an image that were never together in the first place. We can have good deinterlacing, but it's always going to be something of a compromise.
The situation changes when the source was whole images. This is the case with film (and digital cinema). The camera takes whole frames. There are no fields. There is no issue with combing. This means it's possible to split those whole frames into two fields per frame, broadcast them, then successfully reintegrate them so they look like the original. (I'm glossing over some other issues such as pull down and how to deal with 24fps cine film fitting in a 50Hz TV system when the numbers don't divide precisely.)
The point is though that the interlacing/deinterlacing process for whole frame formats makes broadcasting in 1080p redundant. That's why we don't do it.
All TVs include deinterlacing and scaling. Some do it well, some do it poorly, but they all do it. With any decent TV then the best option is to give the TV the cleanest signal possible. That means the signal as it was broadcast. For SD channels that would be 576i 50Hz, and for HD channels it's 1080i 50Hz. Some decent TVs struggle a little with motion processing, so it's always worth experimenting just as
@BigMould found. If someone subscribes to the UHD broadcast channel then the native resolution is 3840x2160p.
The reason why boxes have the option to set to a fixed output is because it takes the TV a few seconds to resync whenever a source resolution is changed. That drives folks nuts when they're flicking up and down through channels. It's nothing to do with quality and everything to do with convenience. It's as simple as that no matter what B.S. the broadcaster says.
Humax Freesat boxes - they don't make them any more, and haven't done for a couple of years now. Any Humax Freesat boxes in the retail channel are either new old stock or refurbs.
I have to talk about Freeview a second. Freeview is in every TV because Freeview (as DVB/DVB-T2) is the UK's primary television broadcast system. It covers 98.5% of the population, but not everyone receives the same service. Those places where the main transmitter signals don't reach (behind hills, in valleys etc) are served by relay stations, but it has been common to find that they only provide the main PSB (Public Service Broadcast) channels, and often they were in SD only. Satellite doesn't have these limitations so long as the receiving location has a clear view of the sky where the satellite is parked in geostationary orbit.
How does this relate to Humax Freesat boxes?
Any manufacturer can (and must) include a Freeview tuner in any TV or receiver box sold for the UK unless it's a Freesat STB. Pay the licence fees. Get the product approved, and you're in business. Freesat is different. It's a niche product. As such, it's not open to any Johnny with a factory knocking out TVs.
The contract to supply is (or was) controlled by a company called
Digital TV. It has now been renamed
Everyone TV. That company is owned by the main UK broadcasters - BBC, ITV, Ch4 and now C5. They know that far fewer Freesat receivers will be bought than Freeview capable ones. For this reason, and to stop them losing control of the IP and to ensure sufficient business so that there's continuity of supply, no one but the contract holder can make and sell Freesat devices for sale in the UK. That used to be Humax. It isn't them any longer. It hasn't been them since 2020. The announcement was made back in 2018, and the contract awarded in 2019. The news has been around a while then.
A French firm called Arris won the contract. Part of the deal was to develop the next generation in Freesat box rather than simply continue what Humax were doing. This is partly why the Arris Freesat 4K boxes work with the SkyQ-type wideband LNBs and can record more than two channels simultaneously. The 4K bit applies to streaming sources only. Freesat does not broadcast in 4K.... yet.
Any manufacturer can make and sell a satellite receiver for the UK market. This is not the same as a Freesat receiver though. Freesat picks up it's channels from the same satellite that Sky uses. It then puts them into a familiar order using the Freesat EPG (electronic programme guide). A generic satellite receiver simply picks up any receivable satellite signals, and there are a hell of a lot of satellites up there. The channel order is arbitrary. Most of the time it's down to the individual user to create their own ordered list. There are a number of Freeview TVs which also include satellite reception, but it's not Freesat.
Freesat is available in three generation steps. Gen 1 is simply Freesat reception. Gen II (where Humax ended) includes Freesat's version of Freeview Play, the catch-up TV services and their integration into the EPG. Freesat calls this
On Demand. Gen III boxes (Arris, so far) include wideband LNB compatibility, and more integration of streaming including 4K playback.
In summary: there is no 1080p broadcast as yet in the UK. 720p for sport would be desirable but is rare. Motion processing, upscaling, deinterlacing is something of a lottery with TVs, but generally handled better by the TV rather than the box. There will be exceptions to this, but a lot also depends on the TV settings too. Humax doesn't make Freesat boxes any more, and none of its boxes support 4K streaming.
Apologies for the long post, but there's some stuff in the the thread that really needed clearing up.
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