Can I recieve British channels via satellite in HDTV ?

[Wisigoth]

At our house in France our old Amstrad Skybox satellite decoder is becoming unreliable. We are also replacing the TV shortly and I was wondering if it would be worth getting HD for both box and TV.  We do not have a subscription but we like to watch all the usual free ones including channels 4&5.  I know there’s not much about in HD at the moment but I’m hoping to get 10-15 years use out of the new equipment.  Would I be obliged to get a Sky brand box for HD (these are only available on contract, I understand) or could I go for a Pace HD or other brand and still get the usual channels?

[Martin963]

For ch 4 and 5 certainly there is no alternative to Sky because of Videoguard.   The BBC HD channel should work on any HD box but having said that I've yet to meet anyone who has got an HD box other than a Sky one.   And the future of BBC HD is far from certain with the lower than wanted licence fee settlement.

Unless you are prepared to take out a sub with Sky I'd make the Amstrad last,  or get a second hand conventinal Sky box and pair it up to your card (if necessary)  or do without ch 4 and 5 by buying a bog standard FTA box,  then wait a year and see what happens.  

But that's only my rather cautious view.  Others may have better thoughts!  

[Fridgeman]

Martin you have hit the nail right on the button ,HD is in it's early stages. Technomate has just released their stb (set top box) about £299 not cheap, I personally will not be looking to buy one for at least a year.

 

 

 

[AnOther]

I honestly doubt I'll ever buy into HDTV. Sure I appreciate the quality when I've seen it in shops etc. but frankly I find the picture quality on my old 32" CRT TV perfectly acceptable and would find it very difficult to justify the cost of going HD.

I suspect a very large section of the general public in UK probably feel the same way. Do they have it in France yet ?

I'm not against new technology, far from it, but I suppose you could class me as a progressive luddite................[:D]

[Ron Avery]

You cannot and will not get Sky HD in France, the HD box has to be set up in a UK address and has to be enabled by phone to SKY and is then connected to that phone line, it cannot be transferred to  another adress without another set up by a SKY engineer so French addresses are out. 

[Bugsy]

[quote user="Ron Avery"]You cannot and will not get Sky HD in France,  [/quote]

Until counterfeit boxes appear on Ebay.........................................[:D][:D]

[Martin963]

Thanks Ron - I hadn't realised that Sky had done that. 

I wonder if there is a technical reason for the phone line,  as opposed to a Sky-likes-to-snoop-and-control reason.

I have to say that our Sky sub would be cancelled within minutes if there was ever a requirement to be plugged into a phone line,  even when the box is wintering in England.

[Eos]

They say the phone connection is for automatic programming updates, on screen messaging for competitions etc. I think you can email through their package aswell. I know since we got the + box whenever it came out first, we don't receive Sky cards.

Before we got broadband, we had two lines into the house each with it's own number but we had the facility to automatically swap between the two. If one line was taken up with a phone call, we could use the internet or fax machine on the other.

Sky sent quite a few letters advising us not to move our Sky+ box between addresses as we were contractually obliged to have the box at the address nominated for these updates etc as presumably each time they updated our box, they came through a different number. They finally understood the situation a couple of months before our area was broadband enabled but we weren't cut off and nor did the promised engineer arrive to check things out.

[AnOther]

Apart from any other reasons you need the phone line to keep the EPG up to date without which I don't think the recording facility will work, plus of coures for Box Office payments etc.

With the non Sky + box, even though you were supposed to have it plugged in for the first year, they only used to do random checks and if it wasn't connected and they contactred you you just said sorry, must have slipped out. When I first subscribed I was on dial-up so certainly didn't want anything nonessential damping the line so it was never plugged in and I never heard a word from Sky.

Before anybody asks........EPG - Electronic Programming Guide  [;-)]

[Fridgeman]

Hi Ron

Interesting, another way of controling you........ typical SLY

 

 

 

[Just Chris]

You certainly can receive Sky HD in France.

We brought our HD box with us to France in March, and have been receiving HD programming ever since.

The box isn't connected to the telephone line, and never has been since we've been out here.

 

Chris

[Martin963]

Unless the EPG is different on an HD box then it certainly ain't the phone line that updates it!   The EPG comes on one of the Sky transponders not by phone line.

From what Khazi says it's just another of those Sky-like-you-to-believe-another-myth stories about HD and the phone line.

Which is good news...

Not that I can verify one way or the other - we don't know anyone with the time or money for HD.

Apart from sending back info on pay per view films watched,  the phone line was (maybe still is) used to acknowledge that software updates had been correctly received and stored on the "spare" EEPROM;   when the box confirmed this the spare became the "main" whilst the main waited for the next software update.   However,  the switch over to new software happened whether the box acknowledged or not;  it could be quite amusing watching a box that wasn't on the phone system getting increasingly agitated as it kept trying to dial out to Sky;  my FTV box managed about 10 attempts in an hour as the deadline approached.   But it still changed software in the end.

[Fridgeman]

I must say I was quite surprised to hear you could not receive sly HD broadcasts in France as they can be received on a standard HD stb

 

 

[AnOther]

I did say I thought and I admit I have no hands on experience of Sky+ however it was my understanding that, for the recording function to work, it needed to be connected to the phone and that it was all tied in to the EPG.

Having done a bit of research it now seems that the major consequence of not being connected is that you cannot record a programme whist watching another, allegedly !

Also Sky might try and hassle you once they the box isn't connected and could possibly cancel your subscription because it's a breach of the T&C's but I would imagine that is highly unlikely as long as they're still getting their money [Www]

 

[pistebeast]

Hi all,

I don't know if this is relevant to this discussion but, I have sky in the UK and under their T&C's, I only had to agree to keep the telephone line attached for 12 months.

cheers

pete

[Onion van man]

[quote user="ErnieY"]Also Sky might try and hassle you once they the box isn't connected and could possibly cancel your subscription because it's a breach of the T&C's but I would imagine that is highly unlikely as long as they're still getting their money [Www][/quote]

They do have some way of checking here in the UK. My friend got a letter from Sky about his box being disconnected from the phone line a while back. Although it was not because he unplugged it but, because the landline had something go wrong with it without him knowing.

[Just Chris]

Further to my previous reply, I can confirm that not only do I receive HD programming, but all the recording/watching combinations available on the box in the UK are still available here in France, without any telephone connection whatsoever.

Chris

[Ron Avery]

Khazi wrote "Further to my previous reply, I can confirm that not only do I receive HD programming, but all the recording/watching combinations available on the box in the UK are still available here in France, without any telephone connection whatsoever".

But is it really HD? If it is on an HD channel it can still be watched through an old SKY box, but its not HD of course, so how do you know that you are getting real  HD without the phone connection?.

My information was from an engineer working for SKY who was fitting my daughter's HD box, he had to phone SKY from their registered home phone, not get a signal via the satellite, to activate the box and he told me that it would not be possible to transfer the system now anywhere without it being activated by SKY from the phone.  Incidentally, none of the French based so called SKY "suppliers" offer HD in France, they will sell you an HD box but not install it, so believe what you will, but I'm not risking big money on the TV engineer being wrong.

 

[Bugsy]

You have to remember that everyone using a Sky box outside of the UK is breaking the rules. Anyone using such a system and foolishly contacting Sky and telling them they are using it in France etc, will be disconnected. This is done via satellite and not the phoneline.

The whole concept of a phoneline connection was (in Skys view) to allow updates and interchange. The underlying bonus was, of course, for dear Mr Murdock to keep a track on its users. Signals come from satellites not phone lines.

As regards HD, well from what I've seen, the picture quality is not that different from what you currently receive on most of the new brands of LCD and Plasma screens.

[Baz]

[quote user="Ron Avery"]

But is it really HD? If it is on an HD channel it can still be watched through an old SKY box, but its not HD of course, so how do you know that you are getting real  HD without the phone connection?.

[/quote]

Unless, you subscribe to Sky HD, HD channels cannot be viewed on any box.

Baz

[Baz]

[quote user="Bugbear"]

As regards HD, well from what I've seen, the picture quality is not that different from what you currently receive on most of the new brands of LCD and Plasma screens.

[/quote]

Having seen a reasonable amount of HD and also watched it on my son's brand new plasma set, the picture difference is amazing. Many professionals have describe the HD picture as the same as changing from black & white to colour and I have to agree.

Baz

[Martin963]

Quote:

"You have to remember that everyone using a Sky box outside of the UK is breaking the rules. Anyone using such a system and foolishly contacting Sky and telling them they are using it in France etc, will be disconnected. This is done via satellite and not the phoneline."

Technically it's the card not the box whose removal to France (or anywhere other than the UK) infringes Sky's T&C's.   That is of course assuming the box was subsidised and has completed its twelve months connected to a UK phone line.    But I realise that's splitting hairs!

I wouldn't worry about it too much,  the worst Sky can do is deactivate the card (which still leaves the box working) and you save yourself the Sky sub money, to be enjoyed at a restaurant of your choice......

[Bugsy]

[quote user="Baz"]

Having seen a reasonable amount of HD and also watched it on my son's brand new plasma set, the picture difference is amazing. Many professionals have describe the HD picture as the same as changing from black & white to colour and I have to agree.

Baz

[/quote]

Perhaps its my eyesight then Baz...........................[:D][:D][8-|]

[Martin963]

I'm probably stating the obvious here,  but true HD (as demonstrated off DVD's in a shop) can be quite superb.

However,  just because a screen has an HD ready label on it doesn't mean it's displaying an HD picture,  and I'm sticking with cathode ray tubes for as long as possible because - for my tastes - ordinary 625 line pictures look truly appalling on these LCD/plasma screens,   all except static studio shots which are fine.

Reading the technical fora I know I'm not alone on this,  and it's still the case that most serious broadcasters continue do their quality monitoring on CRT's,  which is why they're often unaware of how ghastly their pics look in the homes of people who've shelled out all this money on LCD's etc.

I've made myself very unpopular with some of our well-heeled friends by pointing out the deficiences in their new equipment;  one friend actually accused me of having tampered with the LCD set while she was out of the room to prove my point.   She simply hadn't noticed how bad it was because when you spend that sort of dosh "it's bound to be better".

There was a saying some years ago that "widescreen TV was God's way of telling you you've got too much money", because Wide screen isn't real widescreen,  it's a nasty compromise (con in fact) of transmitting 14:9 pictures so that they're sort of standard and sort of widescreen.   So as a result many homes have TV's which are poorly adjusted so that the 14:9 fills the whole screen (well I've paid for all that acreage so I must fill it) which makes people look unusually fat.   And yet the folks just don't seem to notice how unnatural it looks.

The there are the many broadcasters (mainly the smaller channels on Sky) who don't even notice that they're transmitting stuff in the wrong aspect ratio so that if you want to correct it back you've got to find some obscure menu on the TV and put the "wrong" settings into that to compensate,  until they go back to correct format when you have to undo it all again.

That's why most of our viewing is done on a 22 inch CRT!

[Onion van man]

I agree totally with you martin! It's amazing how many people never research something before they buy, I tried to explain to someone recently that their newly bought HD TV only meets the minimum spec for it to be called HD ready, Which in my opinion isn't that good. I'll be staying with a CRT TV until it goes wrong.

I did speak to someone that does film editing on a PC recently and he said they prefer to use CRT monitors.

I seem to remember people saying similar things about CD's sounding that much better than tapes and records when the actually music they were listening to would have been recorded decades before digital recording was even thought of. I think people like to think what they have bought is soo much better but, in reality its not and they don't understand how these things work so they have been won over by someone at the shop saying it is better.