Poor quality sd picture

[Deleted User]

t-elle wrote: »

Since upgrading to sky HD the SD channels are now not as good as freeview which has a clear picture

Unless you are able to compare Freeview and Sky side-by-side on the same channel and on the same TV, it's unlikely you are making a fair comparison. Some multi-channels definitely have poorer Standard definition than others, but it's not platform specific.

Sky have certainly been accused of making their SD broadcasts less appealing (in order to encourage more HD subscriptions presumably) but there appears to be no hard evidence of this

almillar

Briefly, you're watching the same thing, being broadcast from the same satellite. It's the same signal into your HD box, as your SD. I would guess that the difference you're noticing, is between your SCART and HDMI connection. HDMI provides better 'definition' (detail) than SCART. This means that you'll be able to see the flaws in the signal better than you were able to before. A similar idea to watching it on a bigger TV.

AnthonyUK

HDMI connections boost gritty digital noise, blocky digital artefacts, and picture-edge feathering noise from SD MPEG2 tv channels. Also to squeeze lots of channels into digital tv platforms you have to reduce picture bitrates which causes the noisy pix. SD set top boxes with HDMI 1080p upscaling produce poor quality imagery via HDMI on large screen sizes and are a poor substitute for good quality full on 1080p HD broadcasts.

dal4685

i had the old white sky box+ and the picture was really good,Now i've got a HD box the picture is really bad i had to have the HD switched on..I can't even watch Football 1st no more as its like you tube

almillar

HDMI connections boost gritty digital noise, blocky digital artefacts, and picture-edge feathering noise from SD MPEG2 tv channels.

You've got that the wrong way round. HDMI carries it as is, whereas the limitations of SCART cables soften them. Upscaling does vary in quality, but as you say, a rubbish SD picture can only look so good.
Anyone noticing these artifacts and bits of noise - I hope you haven't turned the sharpness way up. It should be at zero usually - as it not sharpening, or softening the picture.