A quick question on Sky and HD and 720/1080 TVs
Discussion
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?
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?
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 720pWhat screensize are you looking to upgrade to?
The Pana G10 is well worth looking at.
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.
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.
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.
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.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).
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