Poor picture quality

[Rhonny]

@blade+the @nonnie1 @woppy1

The most striking thing about the BBC's UHD is, whilst Samsungs are not the best for sports motion, there is no ball blur via the BBC iPlayer. It's so obvious it's miles better than Sky (who only believe in better when it comes to UHD, they don't actually deliver better).

BT Ultimate is great for picture but even that is eclipsed by the BBC.

Sky UHD is truly not much better than HD. But they know the vast majority of the public have no clue about these things... 

[Chodley]

@Paulmhayes It's got nothing to do with the mini boxes (which don't support UHD anyway) - it's the bitrate transmitted from the satellite.

Satellite bandwidth is VERY expensive (but only needs to be broadcast once whereas every stream on iplayer is individual to a point, somewhere between you and the BBC) and capacity restricted compared to internet broadband.

But bitrate isn't the whole story. Netflix looks fantastic at less than 15Mb. But the codec (the mathematical algorithm that compresses & then decompresses the video data) that they use probably needs more time, and possibly multiple passes, to get those results and live sport doesn't go well with transmission delays.

[woppy1]

The fact of the matter is sky could do away with probably a quarter of the channels broadcast and then up the bitrate on the remaining. UHD is barely above the quality of HD and HD on some channels is barely better than SD and the SD is a disgrace, for example I love M*A*S*H and bought it on Apple TV and it looks almost HD quality, but the sky broadcast of it is absolutely Horrendous and unwatchable. 

[blade+the]

You’re spot on, way too many plus 1 channels. But obviously they are just money grabbing for more adverts, we can all record stuff and download it too, we customers do not want or need all these +1 channels. Sky want the advertising revenue, they dont care about picture quality. The do not believe in better.

[woppy1]

The fact that I have a direct comparison, I can see how much sky are skimping on bitrate's and quality 

[Paulmhayes]

@Chodley 

Thanks for this explanation 

makes sense to me now 

Amazes me how Sky can't see picture quality is what TV viewing is all about and especially as tech moves more and more towards 8k etc

if you take live sport off their platform would you even use it with all the streaming services that offer way better picture quality 🤷‍♂️

[fizzdisco]

@Paulmhayes 

Sky is providing a service for the mass market and the vast majority of that market still don't give two hoots about picture quality, they just want to watch their soaps and sports regardless of resolution on one box with one remote control. Sky's mediocre UHD/HDR output is to satisfy the minority of us who do actually care about that kind of thing and, of course, make some more money out of us by charging us extra for the 'privilege' of viewing it.

But as fast broadband becomes more prevalent, decent 4K TVs get cheaper, and all the other streaming services increase their subscriber numbers, consumers are becoming more aware of image and sound quality and how much better they are on these other services. 

Sky need to be careful with their next move forward. I think they're far from being in any sort of trouble, but hard-drive based time-shifting PVRs will no doubt head the way of the VCR in the not too distant future.

There's already been indication that their NOW streaming service will introduce 4K with Atmos at some point soon(ish), but I don't hold out much hope for it to have anything approaching Netflix or iTunes levels of quality. 

I do think Sky will continue to provide a box of some sort for many years to come, capable of receiving the hundreds of compressed SD and +1 channels via satellite to keep the masses happy, but as the generations move on and streaming becomes king, it'll transform into more of an IPTV provider and dishes will eventually start to disappear from our houses.  

Oh and don't get too excited about 8K. We ain't going to be seeing that piped into our homes any time soon. It's another marketing gimmick to get us excited that we can get an even better TV than the one we've just bought so don't be fooled by the short 8K demo films. 

The only things being shot in anything approaching 8K are very high end movies and even then they are mastered in a maximum of 4K. Most movies you see in the cinema are still projected from a 2K source master file. Do they look high-res enough on a massive screen? Yes they do. 

Mastering anything in 8K costs a small fortune, not just in storage costs for the massive files, but in rendering time for VFX, grading, duplication, etc. So basically don't even think about 8K - by the time it's mainstream (if it ever is) your eyesight will probably have deteriorated to the point where everything looks SD.  

[bob1234]

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@woppy1 wrote:

this is what football should look like

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I was disappointed I thought you were going to show a blank screen.

[Rhonny]

@blade+the

...way too many plus 1 channels. But obviously they are just money grabbing for more adverts.... Sky want the advertising revenue,

Not really. Sky doesn't get any ad revenue from any channels other than their own. 

[TimmyBGood]

@blade+the @woppy1 

You do know the vast majority of channels listed on the Sky EPG are not Sky?

[GD1]

@blade+the  These +1 channels are, with the exception of Sky branded ones, nothing to do with Sky, you do know this?

Neither do Sky own any Satellites, nor do they operate them.

[woppy1]

But they do decide how much bitrate goes to each channel, and that is where the problem comes from with the poor quality across the channels 

[Zinc+alloy]

Maybe sky Football uhd will improve to the level of BBC i player when they also broadcast in hlg hopefully in August ??

[Chodley]

I suspect unlikely unless they have a bump in tech or decide to spend more on satellite throughput.

[nigea99]

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@woppy1 wrote:

But they do decide how much bitrate goes to each channel, and that is where the problem comes from with the poor quality across the channels 

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I think you may misunderstand how it all operates. 

SKY do not own or run the satellites - they are run by a Satellite Provider (SES)  who own & run many Satellites not those  just pointing at the UK but accross the world. (In fact looking at the transponder information for one of the Satellites used by SKY, Freesat & other UK channels  - it also carries non SKY channels aimed at Africa)

The channels pay to use their service and agree costs either directly with SES or through third parties -  few will go through SKY.

SKY do include the channels in their EPG and may assist with encryption  for those which are not Free To Air (& charge them for this) but they do not control bitrates or how much independent channels pay for the Satellite bandwith they use