Upscaling SKY feed...

[snadge]

Is there a Device I can get or different receiver that will upscale my SKY feed?
I dont want to pay £300 for a SKY HD box that probably wont work unless i take out
the subscription aswell.... (does the SKY HD box upscale anyway? or does it just receive HD from sat)

all I want is my current SKY package upscaled.. my new DVD player does a great Job and Ive seen Freeview sets with HDMI upscaling...sureley there must be an alternative for SKY users...

[SatStorm]

This you wish to do is not so cheap.

Buy any DVB S2 satellite receiver and add a Dragon CAM. Put your subscription Sky card to Dragon CAM and start watching.

BTW, let me inform you, that Channel 4 HD is open even on freeview cards that way.

I use a Homecast DVB S2 reciever myself, for my freeview card. And a Dragon CAM of course.

[snadge]

how much does this cost?
and where would i find the hardware?

what is a dragon cam?

[SatStorm]

A cheap DVB S2 receiver cost nowdays around 250 euros. A Dragon C.A.M. cost around 100 euros.

They are many online retailers that sell through around Europe. Google a bit to learn about them. The British retailers are the most expensive ones.

[snadge]

it would be cheaper getting a SKY HD box from ebay for £150 wouldn't it?

Does the SKY HD Reciever Upscale ?

I know you have to have a Dish change when getting SKY HD but im not wanting the HD Channels/Subscription, im simply wanting my current SKY upscaled to 720p

[SatStorm]

It's not cheap, I told you so.
And when you end up doing this, you also end up installing a 90cm offset dish with a DiSEqC 1.2 motor, so to receiver DVB channels from all around the world. That way you get some European HDTV channels for free too.

The point of not using a Sky HD Receiver is that the others upscale better the SD channels and you can add channels from all the satellites. With any Sky Digibox you are limited to 28.2 East and to the channels that pay to be a part of Sky's EPG.

[[_chef_]]

it would be cheaper getting a SKY HD box from ebay for £150 wouldn't it?

Does the SKY HD Reciever Upscale ?

Nope, there wouldnt be a sense in it. Its a crippled Pay receiver anyway.

I'd suggest 120cm offset dish with a motor and using Diseqc 1.2 or USALS.

[snadge]

]

it would be cheaper getting a SKY HD box from ebay for £150 wouldn't it?

Does the SKY HD Reciever Upscale ?

Nope, there wouldnt be a sense in it. Its a crippled Pay receiver anyway.

I'd suggest 120cm offset dish with a motor and using Diseqc 1.2 or USALS.

Thats gobbledeegook to me lol...

Im not in a position to start buying and installing satellite dishes - all I want is a decent upscale of my current SKY package - im not bothered about recieving more channels etc

[[_chef_]]

Thats gobbledeegook to me lol...

Im not in a position to start buying and installing satellite dishes - all I want is a decent upscale of my current SKY package - im not bothered about recieving more channels etc

Which will not work.

[snadge]

]

Thats gobbledeegook to me lol...

Im not in a position to start buying and installing satellite dishes - all I want is a decent upscale of my current SKY package - im not bothered about recieving more channels etc

Which will not work.

What Wont Work??? im not suggesting something WILL work???? lol

[Richard_G]

Why do you want to upscale Sky??? The SD feed is pretty dire quality anyway, all you will do by upscaling is make the artifacts sharper and more noticable.

[snadge]

well... my TV upscaler is crap.. my DVD player uspcaler is excellent so surely if theres a DVD player that can upscaling to decent quality then there should be a way to upscale SD on SKY to 720p... SKY HD box but i dunno if it DOES upscale or what its quality is like

[ntscuser]

well... my TV upscaler is crap.. my DVD player uspcaler is excellent so surely if theres a DVD player that can upscaling to decent quality then there should be a way to upscale SD on SKY to 720p... SKY HD box but i dunno if it DOES upscale or what its quality is like

Record the programmes on DVD.
Stick them in your upscaling player.
Problem solved

[Richard_G]

Crap in, crap out. No matter what you do to Sky transmissions, they will still be crap quality. It's like trying to upscale VHS, you'll make it look worse.

[snadge]

Im not convinced - maybe programs of poor quality wont be much different but channels that have decent quality broadcast (in same 576p as DVD) could be upscaled to better resolution/quality.... Ive already spoke to someone who recommended a technique that was pretty good and better than SKY HD reciever upscaling....

Ive been watching poor quality DVD and DivX files and my DVD upscaler makes neat work of it... id rather my SKY be upscaled to high resolution that left as it is.... (yes i know my HDTV upscales to 720p but its crap compared to my DVD players upscaling chip)

I dont have a DVD recorder or such

[SatStorm]

@[_chef_]: By law, in the U.K., the higher dish size that doesn't need special licence is 90cm. Also, despite the fact that the DiSEqC 1.2 motors are capable to move the 1.20cm offset dishes, it is no suggested to use a DiSEqC 1.2 motor (with or without Stab USALS) on dishes more than 1m, since it is very easy to have problems with the weather conditions (strong wind de-calibrates easy those dishes).

@Richard_G: Sky's channels are among the lowest in picture quality among the European subscription services. An upscaler does help on plenty cases. The biggest problem are on the channels that Sky re-broadcast from various sources (Bravo for example, the Discovery/national geographic channels and the viacom ones). Sky One also has terrible picture (probably by purpose, so to think that Sky One HD looks great, even if it is a simply upscaling on most programs)

[snadge]

I agree - BBC1, BBC2, Ch4 , Ch5 seem to be the best quality channels but it also depends on which program is been broadcast aswell... some are better than others on the SAME channel... Im quite shocked at how blurry ITV and SKY One / Two / Three is compared to BBC / Ch4 / CH5 - it has a soft picture that appears like a slight blur whereas BBC etc are much sharper and clearer

[ntscuser]

I dont have a DVD recorder or such

Forty quid at Argos. Do you seriously think you'll find a standalone upconvertor box for less than that?

[SatStorm]

snadge,the most shocking is when you watch upscaled ch4 SD and ch4 HD... They look alike on many occasions!

Any standard Definition DVB /S channel looks great when it has the right bitrate and broadcasts on full D1. The problem is that only few broadcast through Europe that way and most of them are not so interesting.

[Richard_G]

SatStorm has hit the nail on the head. An upscaling DVD player shows a noticable improvement in quality because the source DVD is in better quality than an SD TV can display. Most Sky channels are in a lower quality than an SD TV can display. The bitrate is kept low to reduce the required bandwidth and many channels are not broadcast in full D1 resolution. Rumour also has it that they have recently reduced the bitrate further to a) make more bandwidth available for their HD services and b) to make HD look very noticably better to encourage more people to pay for HD.

I have a Freeview IDTV and a Sky receiver. Switching from one to the other, when watching the same channel, shows just how much worse Sky is.

[snadge]

snadge wrote:
Forty quid at Argos. Do you seriously think you'll find a standalone upconvertor box for less than that?

YES - I got mine for £32 on eBuyer - Toshiba SD-370E

SatStorm - Yeah totally agree - ive even noticed it with some DVDs... my Matrix Revolutions DVD is the best quality yet and looks like TrueHD when playedback on my Toshiba - yet my Spiderman 3 is great but not as good as Matrix Revolutions - they both last around 2h20m on a Dual-Layer disc...
My toshiba has a BitRate display and on Matrix its around 9Mbps and on Spiderman 3 it was about 7Mbps

so this leaves me to 'think' that an original DVDs movie quality depends on how much space it has on the disc..
for e.g.
a 2h30m movie (only) put on a 4Hour Dual-Layer Disc will have a higher bitrate (and better quality)
than the same movie on a 4Hour Dual-Layer Disc but has 1hour of extras/features on the disc also (totalling 3h30min of video on the disc)

I may be wrong im just trying to work out why some DVDs upscale better than others.. my Aliens Boxset is the same and the best quality one is actually the oldest one from 1979

RICHARD_G : yeah i believe that , someone else said the same - you can also get Freeview boxes for £30+ with upscalers in them... I might get rid of SKY simply for better viewing quality - its rare we watch channels like NatGeo etc

[ntscuser]

snadge wrote:
Forty quid at Argos. Do you seriously think you'll find a standalone upconvertor box for less than that?

YES - I got mine for £32 on eBuyer - Toshiba SD-370E

Yes, but you can't record on it. Nor can you feed the input from a set top box into it and upscale that. This one will do both: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5335048/Trail/C%24cip%3D1500011405.So...Brecorders.htm

RICHARD_G : yeah i believe that , someone else said the same - you can also get Freeview boxes for £30+ with upscalers in them... I might get rid of SKY simply for better viewing quality - its rare we watch channels like NatGeo etc

As much as I applaud your idea of getting rid of Sky it's unlikely a Freeview box will have as good upconversion quality as your Toshiba DVD player.

[snadge]

snadge wrote:
Forty quid at Argos. Do you seriously think you'll find a standalone upconvertor box for less than that?

YES - I got mine for £32 on eBuyer - Toshiba SD-370E

Yes, but you can't record on it. Nor can you feed the input from a set top box into it and upscale that. This one will do both: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5335048/Trail/C%24cip%3D1500011405.So...Brecorders.htm

RICHARD_G : yeah i believe that , someone else said the same - you can also get Freeview boxes for £30+ with upscalers in them... I might get rid of SKY simply for better viewing quality - its rare we watch channels like NatGeo etc

As much as I applaud your idea of getting rid of Sky it's unlikely a Freeview box will have as good upconversion quality as your Toshiba DVD player.

do you have that player and can confirm that it upscales a Freeview input?

My friend has the same player but with Hard-Drive installed and the quality of his wasnt very good, DVD was OK but it definatley never upscaled his Freeview feed

[ntscuser]

do you have that player and can confirm that it upscales a Freeview input?

My friend has the same player but with Hard-Drive installed and the quality of his wasnt very good, DVD was OK but it definatley never upscaled his Freeview feed

No, what I originally said was you can record the output from your Sky box on DVD with it then play that back on your Toshiba player.

[snadge]

can you get HDMI splitter cable?? my TV has only 1 HDMI input - if i were to get HDMI Freeview box is there a cable i can use to keep 2 in 1?

[[_chef_]]

@[_chef_]: By law, in the U.K., the higher dish size that doesn't need special licence is 90cm. Also, despite the fact that the DiSEqC 1.2 motors are capable to move the 1.20cm offset dishes, it is no suggested to use a DiSEqC 1.2 motor (with or without Stab USALS) on dishes more than 1m, since it is very easy to have problems with the weather conditions (strong wind de-calibrates easy those dishes).

Woot?? That is even crazier than here in Germany. I thought we already had the stupiest laws...........
As for HD I prefer watching BBC HD, also Prem.HD, Disc.HD, HD Suisse, EXQI, and so on.
Good motors can handle even bigger dishes, eg. Jaeger or some STAB up to 3 meters.
You had bad experience with storms (regarding your nickname)?

[SatStorm]

@[_chef_]: My job is the satellite reception.

It is impossible to move bigger dishes (more than 1.20cm) with a simply DiSEqC 1.2 motor. You probably mean v-box connected with receivers sending DiSEqC 1.2 signals. This is totally different. In this -rare- scenario, you have a V-Box replacing the old fashion Positioner. V-Box translates the DiSEqC 1.2 signals and moves the dish with an actuator motor. Also, the Dish, must be installed to it's polar mount base. Not a DiSEqC 1.2 dock.
By installing a V-Box near your Dish, it is possible to use one cable from your receiver to the dish. There, the cable splits to the one connected with the LNB and the other plugs to the actuator motor.
You need an external power line to make a vbox work. And you have some signal lose from the LNB.

Personally, I don't like those V-Box solutions. I still use an old fashioned positioner for my 1.80X196 fiberglass offset dish. Of course, I use 2 cables that way: One for the LNBF and one for the actuator. But that way my dish moves faster and I don't have signal loses from my LNB, which in my area, is very critical.

All countries have stupid laws. At least, in Germany you can do whatever you wish if you own your house. On the other hand, you can't do a thing if you rent a flat. I know people that install dishes inside their houses to watch Hotbird, behind windows! It seems that the Germany laws are very gentle to the owners of the buildings on those matters: They can determine whatever rules they want. From what I know, they usually offer cable solutions, which are very limited compared the satellite reception. But since 2004, there is a law there, from what I know, that if you prove that you wish to watch a channel that you cable provider doesn't offers you, you can install a dish. I think it is 90cm too in Germany for the cities too.

I can't receive BBC HD in Hellas (unfortunatelly), but I can watch CH4 HD. Sometimes I'm able to watch Premiere HD and occasionally HD Suisse (among the best HD channels in picture quality in this part of hemisphere!). The rest HDTV channels I receive are the FTA ones.

[snadge]

so can i get a spltter HDMI?

My TV only has 1 input and i want 2 to go in? DVD+SKY

[SatStorm]

Of course and you can. There are many HDMI splitters in the market. A simply google search, reveals many solutions for this. Amazon.co.uk has plenty to choose from.

[snadge]

thanks satstorm