tangerz:DickDastardly:jaidevp: So still no Discovery/Natgeo HD.. sigh...
Agreed!! There are SO many other channels (like you said Discovery, Nat Geo but also Prime, UK TV, Living and i suspect Sky's new Sci-Fi Channel The Zone WONT be in HD) crying out for a little HD magic - its like Sky have got it in their heads that Kiwi's want ONLY sport in HD - this is so not the case (nice business model you have there Sky NZ!!) But come on - give us more mainstream HD channels - the content is HD - sort out your crappy infrastructure!!
The big problem is all the thousands of old standard sky boxes out there that can only support DVB-S and MPEG2. If they could all be upgraded to DVB-S2 with H.264 boxes there would be plenty of bandwidth for more HD. Because:
1 - Sky would no longer have to transmit 'duplicate' SD versions of the (currently 9) HD channels. The decoder could simply downconvert the HD channels (if need be).
2 - The remaining SD channels could then either be transmitted at better quality at the same bitrate (as low bitrate H.264 looks better than low bitrate MPEG2) or transmitted at the same quality at a lower bitrate - (more likely knowing Sky!)
Problem is replacing all those boxes will cost Sky $$$ but generate them no more income.
Sky are actually releasing a new box in March or April of next year which we have been told will be called the mysky 3. Although this new stb won't be replacing the older generation mysky, just the standard digital box and first gen mysky 1. sky will be pumping them into homes replacing all the old boxes so hopefully this will be the start of the cycle of moving onto hd and upgrading there channel quality. Fingers crossed.
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