SkyHD Launched! Pre-order now (UK Only!)

[London Geezer]

YAY, at last SkyHD has "launched". In sarcastic quotes because you can't actually get it now, but you can pre-order it and at last we have final prices.

The SkyHD Box is £299 (only works through HDMI IIRC and has all the Sky+ box recording features) and you have to pay the monthly subscription on top of that.

The only alternative at the moment is Telewest (Cable) who have had HD programs for a few weeks now.

HD is slowly coming to our houses at last which is very good. Still, kinda disgusting to see that in the US HD broadcasts have been around (And for free!) for years, and only now we can get it here in the UK, at a very high price too.

I'm too broke at the moment, but i'd order one straight away if i could. Kinda pisses me off a bit cause i bought my HDTV waiting for this, but now i'm too broke to get it... Oh well...

 

[Ali]

Ive got telewest, and there is now way in hell Im paying extra for HD. They cut the bitrate of most programmes now anyway, so you get horrible banding in shows like BSG and sports. Only nature programmes seem to be at decent quality. If I pay the extra £10 a month to get the 3 shows they broadcast in HD, Im about 80% sure they would drop the bitrate at the first sign of network congestion.

The old analogue TV seemed better quality to me to be honest. I suppose Im less worried about slight fuzzyness than I am about dropped frames and banding.

Ali

 

[London Geezer]

The old analogue TV seemed better quality to me to be honest. I suppose Im less worried about slight fuzzyness than I am about dropped frames and banding.

Ali

U serious? I've got Freeview and it looks like night and day compared to Analog on the same TV. Really nice, but of course you get those channels that look worse than internet videos...
Anyway, TVDrive HD programs are quite nice looking from what i heard... There's just not a lot of them...

 

[Ali]

Im going by what I get out of my telewest cable box. I can check the BBC channels against the good old areal to the roof. On most shows the areal connection is just as good, and is less likely to crap out. I dont have a freeview box, as all the channels are included with telewest.

I only have a relativly small flat, but have a 26" HD LCD tv with an 8bit pannel. The sofa is about 2.5 metres away from the screen, so I didnt bother with a bigger screen. I thin kI would be really pissed if I had bought the 44" one I was looking at to start with.

Ali

 

[London Geezer]

Im going by what I get out of my telewest cable box. I can check the BBC channels against the good old areal to the roof. On most shows the areal connection is just as good, and is less likely to crap out. I dont have a freeview box, as all the channels are included with telewest.

I only have a relativly small flat, but have a 26" HD LCD tv with an 8bit pannel. The sofa is about 2.5 metres away from the screen, so I didnt bother with a bigger screen. I thin kI would be really pissed if I had bought the 44" one I was looking at to start with.

Ali

Oh i agree. I would never get a 40+ inches LCD or plasma today because even DVDs would look like crap. I'd get one once all i watch is HD.
Freeview is quite cool, shame it will take years to have the same but in HD. And spending all this money for limited HD programs, i just can't justify it.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I got a cheap digital air TV receiver a week ago and the thing is worthless.
11 channels detected (a few missing), and only 5 work (none of the six public channels work).
one gets mambled and skips all the time.
I watched Stargate SG1, as the channel worked with no artifacts. but I felt like the framerate was slightly jerky (maybe one or two frames dropped here and there)

image quality is no different that analog (I don't know if SECAM is that much better that PAL, I was under the impression both are very similar?)
I have perfect analog reception (DVD quality), except for two channels which look a bit grainy but have no artifacts otherwise. I actually excepted digital TV to make go away this grainy look (and give me extra channel instead of getting less). I learnt the hard way that digital TV means no image at all instead of artifacts.

 

[Blazkowicz]

shit, double post instead of edit (why does that happen? )

I wanted to add that the TV is 21" 4/3 CRT (ideally we'd have a 27" 4/3 100Hz one. still that one is quite good already)
and the day analog TV is switched out in 2015 or whatever, time to move to satellite. (unless if by that time I live in a decent sized city and get TV by ADSL)

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Ive got telewest, and there is now way in hell Im paying extra for HD. They cut the bitrate of most programmes now anyway, so you get horrible banding in shows like BSG and sports. Only nature programmes seem to be at decent quality. If I pay the extra £10 a month to get the 3 shows they broadcast in HD, Im about 80% sure they would drop the bitrate at the first sign of network congestion.

The old analogue TV seemed better quality to me to be honest. I suppose Im less worried about slight fuzzyness than I am about dropped frames and banding.

Ali

Even if you don't want HD, the new telewest box give you three tuners, a PVR, and a proper EPG. It actually costs £15 a month unless you are on the top package, in which case it costs £10. And they rip you off on a £50 "installation charge" unless you are a new customer. They are using existing customers who just need a box swap to subsidise the new customers who need a cable pull down the street.

I suspect the reason why they lauched VOD first was so that they could use it for individual HD delivery, rather than broadcasting it all the time. If you think the bitrate is poor on some cable channels, you should see how bad it can get on satellite.

Unfortunately it's still a case of choosing the best of a bad bunch.

 

[London Geezer]

Unfortunately it's still a case of choosing the best of a bad bunch.

Absolutely. And i surely won't invest in either until i get REAL reports on the quality of HD programming. For all i know, they could still be super-compressed signals, just at a higher resolution. I'm quite optimistic though, i'm sure they will look very good. Apparently Planet Earth in HD on the BBC is stunning, according to the Telewest viewers with HD capabilities.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Absolutely. And i surely won't invest in either until i get REAL reports on the quality of HD programming. For all i know, they could still be super-compressed signals, just at a higher resolution. I'm quite optimistic though, i'm sure they will look very good. Apparently Planet Earth in HD on the BBC is stunning, according to the Telewest viewers with HD capabilities.

I think cable has the potential for better pictures as it has more bandwidth available to it, and as I mentioned above they can do Video On Demand where your local segment can effectively transmit what you want directly to you (like HD movies or Teleport), thus minimising the bandwidth used across the whole system, and so able to give you better bitrate.

Sure, Telewest have finally come out with a good next gen set-top box with HD, multiple tuners, PVR and EPG - but only about four years after Sky has had most of that with SkyPlus, and just a few week/months before Sky launch their updated version of Sky+

Personally I'm more interested in the PVR abilities and proper EPG on the new Telewest boxes - which is more of an indication of how poor and nasty the cheap Pace boxes they've been using for years actually are.

 

[London Geezer]

I think cable has the potential for better pictures as it has more bandwidth available to it, and as I mentioned above they can do Video On Demand where your local segment can effectively transmit what you want directly to you (like HD movies or Teleport), thus minimising the bandwidth used across the whole system, and so able to give you better bitrate.

Sure, Telewest have finally come out with a good next gen set-top box with HD, multiple tuners, PVR and EPG - but only about four years after Sky has had most of that with SkyPlus, and just a few week/months before Sky launch their updated version of Sky+

Personally I'm more interested in the PVR abilities and proper EPG on the new Telewest boxes - which is more of an indication of how poor and nasty the cheap Pace boxes they've been using for years actually are.

I know. Sometimes i just sit here amazed at how slow some companies are...
I think i can only get cable to my flat now anyway so i think i might take the plunge on the TVDrive thing with HD, there is no cost for the box upfront (unlike the 300 quid for the SKY HD box) and it will probably be getting all the HD channels you can get on SkyHD. I only need a payrise to give them 50 quid a month... And even then, i hardly ever watch TV what am i talking about?! Why did i even get a HDTV?! Oh god i'm all confused...

 

[Ali]

Im not sure there is much value in the PVR for telewest. everything is repeated 3-4 times anyway, and you have teleport if you really miss something. Only used it once to see what it was like, and seemed ok.

I think Im going to let myself fall off the leading edge of TV. I feel like we've gone back 5-10 years in the viewing stakes. Good old CRTs and VHS gave me at least as good an experience as HD TV and DVDs do now.

 

[London Geezer]

Im not sure there is much value in the PVR for telewest. everything is repeated 3-4 times anyway, and you have teleport if you really miss something. Only used it once to see what it was like, and seemed ok.

I think Im going to let myself fall off the leading edge of TV. I feel like we've gone back 5-10 years in the viewing stakes. Good old CRTs and VHS gave me at least as good an experience as HD TV and DVDs do now.

Personally, most of my TV-viewing is taken up by downloads and DVDs, which will become HDDVD/Bluray eventually. Oh and i play games a fair bit.
Getting 10 movies a week from SkyHD wouldn't give me enough choice, but if they had a lot of choice, i'd either get SkyHD(or whatever Telewest equivalent) OR HDDVD/Bluray. Both would be a bit redundant.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I know. Sometimes i just sit here amazed at how slow some companies are...
I think i can only get cable to my flat now anyway so i think i might take the plunge on the TVDrive thing with HD, there is no cost for the box upfront (unlike the 300 quid for the SKY HD box) and it will probably be getting all the HD channels you can get on SkyHD. I only need a payrise to give them 50 quid a month... And even then, i hardly ever watch TV what am i talking about?! Why did i even get a HDTV?! Oh god i'm all confused...

Yes, you don't buy the box with cable, you rent it, so initial startup cost is cheap, and if something goes wrong they come out and fix it for free.

The thing about the PVR is it changes the way you watch TV. Instead of sitting down and trying to find something to watch that happens to be on at the time, you set the PVR to record what you want to watch regardless of if you are there or not. Then whenever you want to sit down in front of the TV, you have a library of the shows you actually want to see ready for you to watch. In effect, you create a channel of the programs you are interested in watching, rather than whatever dross happens to be on.

 

[Ali]

I only realy care about BSG, and some Futuramas on TV. Have the Breackfast show on in the mornings for weather and stuff. I suppose there is the odd movie I enjoy, but ~90% of whats shown doesnt interest me.

Actually, the Planet Earth or World or whatever that new nature show is called is pretty interesting. Very good camera work. Then the new Dr Who was worth the effort.

I cant say shows on evil children locked in a house, or people buying houses interest me at all. The Idol type shows make me sick, and the modern comedys dont do it for me.

Come to think about it, Ive got no idea why we pay for several hundred channels of crap.

I think I might call up telewest tonight and downgrade to the basic package.

Ali

 

[London Geezer]

Yes, you don't buy the box with cable, you rent it, so initial startup cost is cheap, and if something goes wrong they come out and fix it for free.

The thing about the PVR is it changes the way you watch TV. Instead of sitting down and trying to find something to watch that happens to be on at the time, you set the PVR to record what you want to watch regardless of if you are there or not. Then whenever you want to sit down in front of the TV, you have a library of the shows you actually want to see ready for you to watch. In effect, you create a channel of the programs you are interested in watching, rather than whatever dross happens to be on.

Oh definately cool, i mean you don't need to convince me, i'm sold, the only thing is lack of money and the constant idea that by the time the programs get here in the UK for me to watch, i'll have seen them already weeks or months ago cause i download them...

 

[Simon F]

I
I have perfect analog reception (DVD quality), except for two channels which look a bit grainy but have no artifacts otherwise. I actually excepted digital TV to make go away this grainy look (and give me extra channel instead of getting less). I learnt the hard way that digital TV means no image at all instead of artifacts.

FWIW, I've recorded some DVB directly to my PC and at times had data rates that exceeded DVD quality (i.e > 10MB/s).

 

[Crisidelm]

FWIW, I've recorded some DVB directly to my PC and at times had data rates that exceeded DVD quality (i.e > 10MB/s).

Yes, some channels have astonishing bitrates.
About HD, well, 299£ is not exactly cheap for a decoder, not at all, plus monthly fee on top of that (10 quids I heard?)...bah. I'd rather go for the HD German package if it was availabe outside Germany (and it's already up and running).
The first DVB-S2 PC cards are out on the market now...I might consider buying one: with a powerful Pc, that I already have, and a good video card that supports Mpeg4AVC/H.264 Hardware decoding you'd be ready for HD. I've also seen the first CRT HD-Ready television set due in Europe in May, a 32" Samsung one, which should cost 350£.

 

[RussSchultz]

Oh i agree. I would never get a 40+ inches LCD or plasma today because even DVDs would look like crap.

Uuhh?

DVDs look just fine at 110". 90% of my viewing on my front projector is DVD.

 

[dizietsma]

Well BBC are doing HD tv for the world cup so that is the first chance that Hd has to shine on something worth watching, unlike a soap opera where even in hd it is like having syringes stuck into your testicles and eyeballs.

It'll be nice to watch the World cpu in HD and see phlegm and snot squeezed out of one nostril in pure HD.

Why ? Just so I can, that's why.