How should I connect up my new Sky HD box?

[oobster]

Folks,

Sky engineer is coming tomorrow to fit my new Sky HD box. Fingers crossed it's a Pace!

Anyway - I currently have Sky+ so it should just be a box swap, pair up the card then bob's yer uncle.

BUT

I have an AV amp (a Yamaha DSP-AX761) and the current Sky+ box is connected to it via optical - the pictures go straight from the box to the TV via scart.

Should I continue with this setup, replacing the existing scart with an HDMI cable?

Or should I go Sky HD box to Amp, Amp to TV and do away with the optical cable altogether?

There is already an HDMI cable running from the TV to the amp (to run my PS3, which is connected to the amp via HDMI too) - the TV is wall mounted and i'd like to have all the cables ready for the guy arriving.

[Plotloss]

skyhd doesnt send dd5.1 up the hdmi so you're stuck with optical however you wire the vid path

[oobster]

Ah ok. Thanks for that.

Would I be correct in my assumption that the HD boxes come with a 1M HDMI lead in the box?

If so I might need to nip out at some point and get a 1.5M.

[E31Shrew]

oobster said:

Ah ok. Thanks for that.

Would I be correct in my assumption that the HD boxes come with a 1M HDMI lead in the box?

If so I might need to nip out at some point and get a 1.5M.

He'll have a very cheap 1 metre lead with him!

[oobster]

I managed to get a 2M so the fitting went fine.

I got a Samsung box - brand new. Seems ok, SD picture quality is slightly worse than before - or seems so anyway.

Plotloss - quick question - what you said about the box not sending 5.1 audio over HDMI - is that the same for my PS3?

I think I can hear an increase in audio quality when watching a Sky HD channel on the new box - should I have my PS3 connected to the amp via optical cable too?

[Plotloss]

PS3 sends multichannel audio up the HDMI.

Its a peculiarity of the cretins who wrote the SkyHD spec that it doesnt.

[oobster]

Ah ok. Many thanks for the info - much appreciated!

Another one (please!) -

Previous Sky+ box was connected straight to TV via scart as mentioned above - all Sky channels displayed fully on the screen - i.e. there were no black strips down the sides of the picture, or above & below.

New HD box is connected via HDMI and some channels (only a few that i've noticed so far) have the black strips. Some, like 523 Discovery Turbo, have bars top & bottom which I could live with but others (like 520 Discovery) have bars left & right, which is annoying.

TV is a Toshiba 42XV505DB LCD and I have it on 'Wide' settings. Other settings appear to make the actual picture size much worse, or far too big.

Any ideas?

[^Slider^]

It does that on mine too sometimes, i think its when watching a SD broadcast on the HD channel.... IE even though you have the HD channel, not all programs are broadcast in HD, some will be SD.

[Not Ideal]

^Slider^ said:

It does that on mine too sometimes, i think its when watching a SD broadcast on the HD channel.... IE even though you have the HD channel, not all programs are broadcast in HD, some will be SD.

+ 1 on that. Pressing the information button will bring up the program details/description and it the top right of that box will have SD or HD info.

[spinningman]

oobster said:

Ah ok. Many thanks for the info - much appreciated!

Another one (please!) -

Previous Sky+ box was connected straight to TV via scart as mentioned above - all Sky channels displayed fully on the screen - i.e. there were no black strips down the sides of the picture, or above & below.

New HD box is connected via HDMI and some channels (only a few that i've noticed so far) have the black strips. Some, like 523 Discovery Turbo, have bars top & bottom which I could live with but others (like 520 Discovery) have bars left & right, which is annoying.

TV is a Toshiba 42XV505DB LCD and I have it on 'Wide' settings. Other settings appear to make the actual picture size much worse, or far too big.

Any ideas?

You also need to check that the SKY box is set to output 16:9 pictures - via the setup/picture setup menus (from memory). Tis true though that some HD broadcasts will be in a 4:3 format, but as you mention discovery 520 which isn't HD then i would say you have a setting issue.

Is there an auto setting for your TV's aspect ratio - this might help a tad but I would definately check what sky is outputting

[oobster]

HD box is outputting 16:9 (just double checked a sec. ago).

It's not all programs on 520 that are not filling the screen horizontally. For example, the adverts are fine but Forsenic Detectives (which is on as I type) has the bars down the sides.

It's not really a problem - I understand the thing about trying to watch The Simpsons on Sky 1 HD, that has HUGE bars down the side (which I assume is 4:3 asspect ratio). It's just the slim bars on some channels that annoys slightly.

[telecat]

Check the TV has an "Ratio" button on the handset. My Old Toshiba CRT does this but it can be corrected by switching though the various aspect ratios. It has Auto, Zoom, Cinema(palplus), 4:3, 14:9 and 16:9. On 16:9 programming everything is OK. Howeevr if the Picture is 4:3 then I have to use the Zoom to fill the screen and eliminate the bars down the side.