Last time I checked this (to put another conspiracy theory in its place), the following situation existed:
DVB-T vs Sky Rebroadcast of TVNZ
Identical Resolution, as near to identical bitrates as you could see, without putting the signal through some sort of time base correcter, to compare exactly. ie there was no perceivable difference, and no difference in the actual signal. It looked every bit like a straight signal pass thru...
DVB-T (TVNZ or TV3) vs Sky HD.
Sky run the same resolution as TV3 (1920x1080i), but usually at higher bitrates. With domestic sport, this commonly averages 18-21Mbit. This is well over the average you see on TV3. Generally on like for like equipment ie same TV, same cable, same graphics card, Sky looks the best of any NZ domestic broadcast.
But dont let the facts get in the way of another pointless bash on Sky will you...
Are all the Sky HD channels the same then? Just wondering because if Lyngsat is correct their 12358 mux has SS2, SMG and the 3 FTA ones while 12331 has SS1 and SM. I don't know much about DVB-S2 (or DVB-S) but I'm guessing the bandwidth of each mux is usually the same if it has the same parameters and is part of the same beam. I presume they aren's using all the capacity of 12331 but I was wondering if they dedicated more to those because they considered them more important.
BTW in terms of the 720p vs 1080i issue dasimpsonsrule mentioned, some people do prefer 720p for sports particularly high motion ones (clearly the quality of your deinterlacing will also make a difference). Football isn't generally thought of as an extremely high motion sport AFAIK (a few things like shots on goal maybe) so 1080i may be mostly better. Of course if you do a lot of manual slow motion replays you're probably more likely to notice any advantage with 720p.
Many broadcasters do use 720p for sports at least in the US I believe, I'm a bit surprised to find out Sky use 1080i since it's easy for them to use 1080i for SM and 720p for SS whereas the FTA/general ones have to choose one or the other for all their content.
Mind you, this is something which I've never seen researched well, e.g. double blind/ABXed. It seems something you could do if you have a 1080p50 or p60 source. Convert it (with high quality filters) to 1080i and 720p and then compare them at standard viewing distances in an ABX or similar fashion. Lots of people saying I can tell or I can't tell without any real details on the source, how it was tested etc.
Of course in any case Sky's bandwidth advantage may be a bigger factor then anything else making the 720p vs 1080i a moot point.
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