Sony teams up with SKY to kickstart HDTV in the UK.

[London Geezer]

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2285966#post2285966

Sky teams up with Sony to kick-start HDTV
Jason Deans
Wednesday December 21, 2005


BSkyB and Sony are due to unveil a joint initiative today to sell high definition flat screen TV sets alongside digital satellite boxes.
The agreement is designed to help kick-start the UK market for HDTV, which offers viewers greatly enhanced picture quality and Dolby digital surround sound.

BSkyB hopes the new technology will give its Sky Digital service a competitive advantage over Freeview and digital cable as the UK moves towards analogue switch-off.

Under the deal consumers will be offered savings when they buy Sony's Bravia flat screen HDTV sets as a package with BSkyB's new HDTV-enabled Sky+ set-top box.

The BSkyB chief executive, James Murdoch, described HDTV as a "very, very important new product for us".

"It's extraordinary. We've been shooting a lot of football this year to get used to [the new HDTV technology] and [you can see] the detail from the string in the nets to the individual blades of grass to the sweat beads down individual players' faces," Mr Murdoch told the Daily Telegraph.

The Sony tie-up comes as BSkyB is planning to launch four HDTV versions of four channels - Sky One, Artsworld, Sky Sports and Sky Movies - early next year.

BSkyB's HDTV channels will be broadcast to a new HD Sky+ box capable of storing and time-shifting programmes and offering a picture quality around five times better than that of normal TV.

The Sky HD service will come with a version of the latest sound system used in cinemas, Dolby 5.1.

In addition to offering four HD channels, BSkyB will also offer pay-per-view, video-on -demand content to the HD Sky+ boxes, which will come with a broadband connection.

BSkyB and Sony will also launch a joint HDTV marketing campaign next year, featuring national advertising, direct marketing, press and radio promotions, and demonstrations at events such as the Ideal Home Show.

Almost a third of all flat screen TVs sold in the UK in September were "HD ready", according to research by GFK Marketing Services, and BSkyB forecasts that 700,000 HDTV sets will have been sold by the end of this year, rising to 2 million by the end of 2006.

 

[Gerry]

Gonna be expensive the HDTV business on Sky. £400-£500 for the box, £10 a month additional on your fees, and all for four HD channels.

Think I'll give it a miss until a far greater range of channels are converted and the price is little more reasonable.

Good to see Sky have picked a good quality screen though - football should look good on the Barvias - although I'm not sure I want to see individual sweat beads on the players.

 

[London Geezer]

Gonna be expensive the HDTV business on Sky. £400-£500 for the box, £10 a month additional on your fees, and all for four HD channels.

Think I'll give it a miss until a far greater range of channels are converted and the price is little more reasonable.

Good to see Sky have picked a good quality screen though - football should look good on the Barvias - although I'm not sure I want to see individual sweat beads on the players.

Or other stains....

HD material will look amazing on any HD set really, the Bravia's advantage over most other sets is the Wega engine and how it works on SD signals, and apparently it's turned OFF when watching HD material, making the Bravia's just as good as any other HD display when viewing HDTV...

 

[Jawed]

I think it's worth pointing out that with good old-fashioned analogue TV, before Freeview came along, there was more than enough detail: string in the net, sweat beads and blades of grass - no problem.

It's just the horrifically compressed digital data formats that have made this stuff invisible to modern viewers. A travesty.

Jawed

 

[London Geezer]

I think it's worth pointing out that with good old-fashioned analogue TV, before Freeview came along, there was more than enough detail: string in the net, sweat beads and blades of grass - no problem.

It's just the horrifically compressed digital data formats that have made this stuff invisible to modern viewers. A travesty.

Jawed

I KNOW!! I just came back from Rome and our room in the hotel had a TV with standard aerial and i was shocked by the quality of the biggest italian channels! I got so used by "newer" digital TV that i forgot how good old aerial analog broadcasting looks.