Picture Quality?

[parapaul]

Not sure how to describe this, but here goes.

Recently, when watching (usually) HD films on Sky, if the picture is showing something like a night sky, or dawn breaking, where you would expect a seamless transition from a dark to a lighter shade or colour, I seem to get quite a 'blocky' transition. So instead of a smooth picture, the TV shows 2" wide bands of gradually lightening colour.

I've no problems with lag or motion blur, and I've not noticed anything on Blu-Ray films, just the Sky HD. Is it a problem with Sky? The box? The cheap cable they supplied? All of the above?

Its not the end of the world, but it's annoying

[OldSkoolRS]

It could be 'banding' or 'posturisation' that you're seeing. It can be inherent in the broadcast (low bit rates mostly responsible) or it may be caused by the Sky box, amp or TV itself. As I don't have Sky myself I can't say whether it's the box itself, but I have a Humax Freeviw HD box and only tend to see this effect on some standard definition channels. I don't know if there is an option to change the HDMI output to 'RGB' or if it's already on that, try 'YCbCr'. Is the signal going direct to the TV or via an amp? If so there may be similar processing going on in there.

FWIW I don't think the cable has got anything to do with it, though you could swop it with your BluRay player just to prove a point (best if you can record something that has an example of it if there's a particular program that regularly does it).