A quick question on Sky and HD and 720/1080 TVs

[x5x3]

having downsized (severely!) my home cinema plans for now I have now decided the following;

At the moment we have Sky Plus downstairs on a Sony KDL-32T3000 (which is only HD720 I think?) and the old basic sky box on multiroom upstairs (with a very old TV!).

I plan to upgrade the downstairs to Sky HD and get a replacement for the Sony KDL-32T3000 (any suggestions - we are happy with this but it is not 1080?).

Then move the Sony KDL-32T3000 upstairs and upgrade the multiroom to a Sky Plus box.

Have I missed anything obvious here?

[cjs]

Does Sky HD broadcast in 1080? I thought it was just 720p.

[headcase]

Sky can output 720p or 1080i selectable from the Services/Picture menu.

What screensize are you looking to upgrade to?

The Pana G10 is well worth looking at.

[x5x3]

thanks - probably going to stick to 32 due to room dimensions!

[headcase]

TBH your not going to notice much of a difference between 720 and 1080 at that screen size, id keep the Sony unless of course your looking for excuses to get a new telly

[x5x3]

oddly enough though it is cheaper to get a Sky HD box than a Sky plus box though!

[cjs]

headcase said:

Sky can output 720p or 1080i selectable from the Services/Picture menu.

What screensize are you looking to upgrade to?

The Pana G10 is well worth looking at.

But do Sky actually Broadcast in 1080? Or does the box just convert from the 720p broadcast? I know on my Virgin box the picture is far better when the V+ box is outputting 720p

[JustinP1]

headcase said:

TBH your not going to notice much of a difference between 720 and 1080 at that screen size, id keep the Sony unless of course your looking for excuses to get a new telly

On my 63 inch I recently did a blind test to prove a point to see what the differences were between standard (478i?), 720p and 1080i.

Whilst the difference between SD and 720p was totally obvious, it was much more difficult to tell the difference between 720p and 1080i to the point where average Joe unless they knew *exactly* what they were looking for would not be able to tell the difference at all.

Thats on a 63 inch with a proper blind test.

I would seriously doubt that it would make any difference as all on a screen a quarter of the size.

[The Trig]

As far as I know Sky HD is only 720. The only native 1080 is Blu-Ray, some Xbox 360 + PS3 Games.

[jamieboy]

Sky seem a little vague about it:

Sky said:

The highest high definition broadcast format in the UK is 1080i, with Sky+HD supporting both this and the 720p HD format.

That's "supporting", not "broadcasting in".

I'm sure someone on here knows the right answer, though.

[headcase]

There is a little confusion around resolutions here, the number refers to the amount of lines in the picture and the letter denotes either progressive or interlaced, for instance 720p is 720 lines scanned progressivly and 1080i is 1080 lines using an interlaced scan.
The difference between interlaced and progressive is that with interlaced all of the odd lines are drawn first then all of the even lines, because only half of the pic is ever drawn then the bandwidth of the signal is only half what it should be, that is its main advantage, the disadvantage is that on larger screens then you may notice flickering artefacts line rips etc on faster moving images.
With progressive then the lines are drawn one after the other, the advantage being faster moving images are displayed more accurately.

Current resolutions in use today are

480i Standard Def
720p Sky HD, Cable HD
1080i Sky HD, Cable HD
1080p Blueray, Xbox360, PS3

Sky HD broadcasts some in 720p and other on 1080i to find out what is at what resolution the set the output resolution on the sky box to Auto, if you set it to 1080i or 720p then the image will be scaled to the appropriate output resolution that you selected. This is why people cant tell the difference between the two because more than likely the broadcast will be 720p but your output is set to 1080i so the box scales it to 1080i but you cant make the extra info required for the missing lines so the two pictures will look very similar.

When set to auto you will notice that 1080i has alot more picture info than 720p and 720p does indeed render faster moving images better but with less picture detail.
For instance watching football in 1080i you will be able to see what the crowd are reading in their newspapers but when the ball gets whacked then it may appear to you that it dissapeared then re appeared on the other side of the screen.
With 720p there is less crowd detail but you can see the ball very well.

[x5x3]

many thanks all - seems like my decision got easier.

[PJ S]

480i? Are you American, per chance?
We here in the EU, use the PAL system, which is 576i (where the 625 lines is the headline figure including Teletext, SMPTE time codes, and other stuff that doesn't contribute to the actual picture content).

[x5x3]

had a nice chat to the chap in the Sony store today - looks like the KDL-32V5500 is about right - leaves some room in the budget for a PS3

[headcase]

PJ S said:

480i? Are you American, per chance?
We here in the EU, use the PAL system, which is 576i (where the 625 lines is the headline figure including Teletext, SMPTE time codes, and other stuff that doesn't contribute to the actual picture content).

Largly uninportant for the idea i was trying to get across but yes in europe the SD figures are slightly different.

[mackie1]

I believe all SkyHD HD channels are broadcast in 1080i. I set my box to "Auto" and all HD channels switch to 1080i. Various discussions on digitalspy and avforums seem to confirm this.

[headcase]

I dont have sky HD anymore but i know it used to switch quite alot. Clould well be they standardised it to save even more bandwidth