Clarity around HD, UHD and Netflix

[wizbongre]

Hi folks,

I've currently got the following packages:

Sky Entertainment

Sky Sports

Sky Cinema

Sky Kids

Ultimate on Demand (including Netflix)

HD

I see from the My Sky page I can upgrade to UltraHD for £4/month, to unlock UHD and Netflix Premium. I'm pretty sure I already get Netflix in UHD and already have some UHD channels/content, so struggling to understand what the benefit would be. What am I missing? Is there a load more UHD content that I'm not currently getting?!

[Mark39]

The ability to watch on additional devices. See Sky's help here: https://www.sky.com/help/articles/netflix-faqs

[wizbongre]

Its not obviously clear from those FAQ's but ok, thanks.

In short, I'm not actually gaining any element of increased quality in terms of UHD, and would only gain Netflix on 4 screens, so not really worth it at all for me.

[PandJ2020]

Are you sure you are getting UHD (4K)?

With SkyHD sub you get NetFlix standard which is only HD.  You need UHD as well to get Premium which is 4K.

You may be able to set your box to output UHD but the stream is upscaled HD...

TBH the difference between HD and upscaled UHD can be minimal unless you have a mahoosive screen.

[TimmyBGood]

@wizbongre 

HD (and SD) content is always upscaled to UHD for display on a UHD output device, either by the television or projector itself or by the hardware feeding it, otherwise three-quarters of the screen would be empty.  The difference gained by paying for the UHD add-on is that the input can in some cases be native UHD material rather than having upscaling applied (and UHD content often has HDR data too, which can actually make more of a difference than UHD resolution input itself)

[wizbongre]

Thanks for all the answers so far.

I understand how scaling works across the devices. For info, my setup is: Sky Q box -> Denon 4k AV Receiver -> Panasonic 59" screen.

I've done a bit of rudimentary testing to get to the bottom of what I've currently got:

With my SkyQ box set to output 4k, when I open the Netflix app I can see titles available with a range of UHD formats. If I set the SkyQ box back to 1080p, all of the content in Netflix is presented in 1080p HD.

Using the input monitor of my Denon I can see the different format coming from the SkyQ box.

When in UHD mode, my receiver confirms I am recieving a UHD stream, and the fact Netflix offers content in UHD suggests it is streaming in proper 4k. I'd have thought if the SkyQ box was upscaling to 4k, I'd not see the UHD/4K content in Netflix?