Thinking of buying sky..........

**kookachooo** · 31st January 2005

1st of all, I hope this is in the right forum, if not apologies and could the nice ppl that run the site pls let me know and I will move it. :0)

OK, Im still on analouge TV sent to my house via cable (and yes I still use pen and paper occasionally

), and I think the picture is very good. Watching TV through a sky boz at my parents,best mates and gf's is (in my opinion) terrible. Everytime I watch TV at these places I feel like Im watching a Divx that has been coded with high compression. Now I understand how many channels there are and only so much band width etc, but if this is what digital TV looks like , they can keep it and wont bother ordering it. Is there anyway to make this look better? ( Better quality box/dish etc?) I watched Simpsons and 24 last night and when there was some fast moving action it got quite blocky. Cable provides TV reception to my house in analouge which looks fine (apart from sky 1) which has the same blockyness to it , parents are the same, but mate and gf get all their channels through the sky box and all channels seem effected.

If anyone has ANY advice or thinks im being to anal, please advise. Thanks in advance.

PS Dont think this will make and difference but Im watching TV through a 43" RP TV, at 1st I thought it was the fact that the screen was big so I could see everything, but I see the same on 29" 4:3 28" 16:9 and 32" 16:9

Cheers people.

**hxbro** · 31st January 2005

sky one over the last few days seems to have a reduced bitrate causing more artifacts than usual, I didn't notice it on other channels

**kookachooo** · 31st January 2005

hXBRO

Cheers for that, to be honest, its something that I have noticed for quite a while, at least 12 months, is this something that I will need to put up with you think?

It just looks really poor compared to analouge. Any other feedback from anyone is welcome, even if they think Im talking out of my bum.

**Spennyboy** · 31st January 2005

watching the football yesterday on sky ws terrible!

the screen even went green at the end of the match!

its like the lil guys got a fuzz surrounding them lol.

**ShakeyJake** · 1st February 2005

I've just switched from NTL digital to Sky and the picture is a fair bit better with digital cable. All the channels just seem to be transmitted on a lower bitrate. For example round the edges of people it can be quite blocky, or diagonal lines can look very aliased. Although the advantage of Sky is you get more channels (although most are crap) and the interactive works. Also works out slightly cheaper as they don't force you to have a phone line installed (assuming you already have a BT line to plug the box in).

**kookachooo** · 1st February 2005

Shakeyjake

Cheers for your response, well, I live in Milton Keynes so prob best I dont talk about NTL ( VERY long story ), so I have no choice apart from Sky , so looks like I will have to live it.

Damm!

Cheers to everyone that responded, but if anyone does have a solution or a way to improve the situation I will be all ears. Thanks people :0)

**hxbro** · 1st February 2005

reading elsewhere sky one over the last few weeks has had varying bitrates from stupidly high down to what it's at the moment, at a guess they are shifting things around which is causing the current problems