I have an HD ready tv with built in freeview, I dont pay for Sky or Virgin or whatever, my question is……when there is an advert for Sky Sports HD on my tele does my TV temporarily show an HD quality picture when they are showing the clips of the sport that I could be viewing in HD if I pay for it???

Hope that makes sense

I think you’d know. HD is pretty different from normal quality. I suppose it depends on your TV whether you can tell the difference.
In answer to your question – I doubt it.

You have got to be kidding?

no and same goes for Sky 3D adverts!!

**facepalm**

The HD adverts appear ot be higher quality than the rest of the SD broadcasts on Freeview, is probably what you mean.

The SD broadcasts on Freeview are capable of a lot more quality than is apparent in normal programming and depend on the source of the original material and how much it is compressed. So if the original material was in HD and it doesn’t get degraded too much when encoding then it will look higher quality as the upscaling in your tv has better quality material to work with.

Isn’t this an old April 1st post?

wouldn’t surprise me at all if:

1) there was no such thing as HD and all they did was tun everything up to 11 (contrast, colour etc)

2) there was already a way of transmitting substantially higher than normal quality pics down normal reception routes (either definition or maybe 100hz or something)

(unlike Dez I can’t really spot a major difference between HD and normal sky broadcasts when they’re displayed on a HD-capable telly – either my telly’s good with standard or shit at HD, or maybe my eyesight is poor)

If you have a standard view television and you see an advert for an HD TV. The image that you see on the HD TV in the advert is actually displayed in high definition!

Also, if you watch a period drama you actually go back in time!

unlike Dez I can’t really spot a major difference between HD and normal sky broadcasts when they’re displayed on a HD-capable telly

There are several possibilities:

1) you’re not really watching HD
2) you have not got your glasses on
3) your telly is small and/or you are far away from it.

If you are far away your eyes cannot resolve the extra resolution.

But yes the others are correct above – digital TV is compressed and the more you compress it the worse it gets. Thats’ why cheap-o obscure digital channels are worse quality than Sky or BBC – they allocate less bandwidth to them and hence have to compress them more.

I think the HD adverts look good because they pull out the stops to make them look as nice as possible. Slow-mo in the sports one for instance, and high contrast colourful computer generated images in the graphical stuff.

If you have not got HD from sky or virgin then you do not have an HD decoder so your HD telly is only ever going to display SD stuff.

To see the benefits of HD you need to watch something that’s been shot on an Digital HD camera, or film that’s been digitised or CGI rendered at HD resolution, the best is 1280 and then 720, SD is 576. The numbers refer to the amount of pixels vertically, the more pixels the more information in the picture, just like a digital image on your camera or computer screen. You also need a HD playout device eg: set top box, ps3, blu ray player etc connected to the HD TV via HDMI, scart will never display HD. HD normally has less compression, Blu ray has virtually no compression. HD also refers to the audio which is mostly Dolby 5.1, again to hear the benefits you need the correct kit and speaker set up.

Most Sky HD ads are shot in slowmo, this is a clever way to help with image compression, digital encoders hate lots of colours with fast movement. Grass and Football has always been challenging for digital TV, hence why Sky Sports pushed HD so heavily.

I could tell the difference on my old 32″ CRT, it wasn’t amazing, but on the large plasma screen it’s very different.

400hz, 8m:1 contrast TV, football in HD, its deffo better than standard! get your eye tested haha!

I could tell the difference on my old 32″ CRT

Your CRT surely wasn’t HD was it?

Yep. A Samsung thing. Slimline HD ready CRT. Weighed a ton.

Like this

There are several possibilities:
1) you’re not really watching HD
2) you have not got your glasses on
3) your telly is small and/or you are far away from it.

1) I refer you to my own point 1) above
2) Don’t have any. Apart from many floaters, my sight is supposedly excellent
3) (37″ ?) Have tried moving; quality of both HD and normal varies similarly. I’ve failed to convince myself that I can get a bit closer before HD becomes unwatchable.

4) I think the handling/scaling of standard sky pics might be quite good on my telly – visitors sometimes comment on the picture (though we live a bit “rural” and I think terrestrial reception is poor). it’s plasma – would that make a difference ?

scaredypants – Member

(unlike Dez I can’t really spot a major difference between HD and normal sky broadcasts when they’re displayed on a HD-capable telly – either my telly’s good with standard or shit at HD, or maybe my eyesight is poor)

I have a Samsung HD TV and I cannot see a great deal of difference between the SD and HD channels, I have looked at the BBC HD channel and flicked back to SD and no difference whatsoever. I have some mates that say the difference should be extremely noticeable and I must have the telly set-up wrong!

Edit – I suppose it could be that I don’t pay the Sky sub for HD although I’m pretty sure they transmit the BBC HD and ITV HD channels in HD even if you don’t pay the sub.

BBC HD quality is reducing and the difference against an SD broadcast is getting narrower.

So those people who can’t tell the difference.. are you using HDMI to connect your TV to your decoder? Because it’ll only work over HDMI.

If you are really looking, I can’t imagine you would not see anything. It really is different.

Try watching eurosport on normal then hd, road cycling is so much better on HD !

Someone I used to work with didn’t believe that the old valve radio we had in the office was actually picking up Radio 1. She thought it would only pick up old radio stations.

Is she a relation to you Steve?

Sorry if this was a stupid question, I was just asking because I didnt see how it could be in HD, but when the advert shows a tele that is showing what I could be viewing if I had Sky Sports HD, the picture quality on the tv in the advert is way better than I normally get on my tele. Thats what I didnt understand

yamyamblade – Member

Try watching eurosport on normal then hd, road cycling is so much better on HD !

Agreed. But the normal cycling broadcast quality on Eurosport is awful.

I think a few channels are reducing the quality of the standard broadcast to make HD look even better.

if you can’t see *any* difference (even when close to the screen) it could be that

your reciever is connected to your tv through a non-hd interface (for example, scart)
your reciever is connected via a hd interface (component leads or hdmi) but isn’t configured to output hd quality signal
you don’t see the quality difference*

*the third is quite possible. I recently went from a high end 36″ crt to a 50″ full hd plasma, with several full hd sources (virgin, blu-ray, ps3 streaming 1080p from my media server). I also put around £1500 of speakers\amp in. Its all been set up properly, and it looks stunning. My girlfriend can’t tell the difference in quality, either picture or sound between it and the 19″ digihome set we had in the kitchen. All she will notice is the sound is louder and has surround, and that the picture is bigger. I’ve even pointed out the crispness of the picture, the solidity of the bass, the way it all pulls you in and.. nothing

🙁

the picture quality on the tv in the advert is way better than I normally get on my tele. Thats what I didnt understand

The picture is no better quality – they just optimise the advert to suggest the best ‘as HD’ experience (ie, they use techniques that better suggest what a HD experience will be like). You may notice they don’t have any fast-moving images – lots of ‘slo-mo’ effects (fast transitions don’t render very well at standard resolution) and lots of vibrant colours.

I once had to do some web banner ads to promote fast broadband – so dial-up users would get the idea of what super-fast broadband would do to their web experience.

5lab – My TV is only connected by HDMI cables (from Sky+ and Blu-Ray) and the Sky box is set to output HD in 1080i format. One thing I am not certain about is whether you need to pay the HD sub to get HD of any type even the BBC and ITV HD channels. The BBC and ITV HD chanells are the only ones that are available so maybe they are transmitted but only in SD format.

Back to the OP – they don’t broadcast HD on standard channels so unless you were watching the non-PPV channel (say ITV HD) there would be no possibility of the advert actually being HD.

If you were watching ITV HD there is a possibility the adverts are also broadcast in HD.

In fact, are there sets available with built-in HD decoders?

EDIT: Yes there are.

Shakey – the easy way to tell (on bbc) is the position of the bbc logo. on their SD feeds, the bbc logo is where the top left of the screen would be on a non-widescreen set – ie approx 1/5 of the way across a widescreen set. on a hd feed, the bbc logo is tucked right away in the top left corner of the screen, with a very small border on each side. Also, regional news isn’t broadcast on the hd channels, you just get a trailer or something.

If you stand right next to your screen and look directly at the logo, in hd it should be really really crisp, where as on SD the edges of the logo should be a bit blurry\fuzzy

Update: 😉

(all from skyHD box via HDMI – directional superconducting cable with holograms 😉 )

europsort – end of giro stage on both. HD is far clearer than std – mostly as std is kack, it seems.

ITV4 – cricket on both. HD is clearer but not by that much, esp at the distances I normally view from (it’s not a massive telly)

BBC – some kids’ shite on both. NO DIFFERENCE at all !
(however, BBCHD is currently broadcasting in non-HD it seems, so at least that means my eyes can tell a difference and also tell no difference)

I think currently that my set does a good enough job with sky’s std feed that the small difference is unimportant and only really noticeable when both are showing the same material, assuming you’re not on eurosport who must actively blur their normal stuff.

More exciting news as it breaks…

Have you taken the protective film off the screen?

I’ve suspected for a while now that the image quality of SD broadcasts is dropping. The cynic in me wants to think this is to make the HD broadcasts look more appealing.

Technical issues aside, you’re not going to get HD adverts on an otherwise SD channel, as they wouldn’t display on an SD set.

The quality of SD isn’t dropping – it’s just that we all now have new fangled HD LCD Plasma 10000Hz GTi televisions that show up the shortcomings of SD broadcast.

It’s not just that; it’s in comparison to how they used to be back when I first went HD. Or, even, in comparison to other SD channels; there’s definitely a variation in quality between broadcasts.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the adverts are in a higher quality / less compressed format compared to the programmes; they already do it with the damned volume, after all.

am radio, on the other hand – I’m certain they’re cranking that down