Sky quality

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powhead

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Topic # 170874 29-Mar-2015 14:13

Hey guys, as I'm pretty much technologically retarded, I had a friend hook up sky to my 32" Panasonic TV.

The picture was fine etc, however, today I brought my 42" Panasonic down into the lounge for the cricket and just copied the sockets he had plugged all the cords into (they were in slightly different positions). Currently it's on AV2

Anyway, the problem is, the picture quality is pretty bad. It's watchable, but seems kind of almost pixilated and jumpy.

Do you have any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong, or something I could do to improve it before 4pm today?

Thanks in advance

Oh also some extra info:
The sky box is not Mysky, it's a silver small one.
The TVs are the same type, one's just bigger and a slightly later model

eXDee

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Reply # 1272880 29-Mar-2015 14:51

For a reference, AV connections in order of best to worst:

HDMI (not available on your unit)
Component (Y, Pb Pr, uses RGB coloured plugs, may require SCART adapter depending on unit)
S-Video (Round plug with 4 small pins and a larger 'key' at the bottom).
Composite (yellow standard video plug)

Rikkitic

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Reply # 1272886 29-Mar-2015 15:06

If you really plugged the same cables into the same inputs, I can’t think why the quality would be different unless a cable or connector is not making a good connection. Try wiggling them.

AV2 is an analogue input so the Sky connection is probably composite or maybe s-video. I think the first question to be answered is what kind of input you are actually using. If there are three cables, one yellow, one red and one black or white, it is composite. If you have a really big angular rectangular connector with lots of pins it may be SCART (but that is really old) and you may need to change a setting on the Sky decoder.

There will also be extra inputs on your TV. Try one of those and switch the TV accordingly to see if it makes any difference. The TV should probably have AV1, AV2 and AV3 settings. Only two of these will be inputs but you can try them all. Can you provide any information about the Sky box, like model numbers and so forth?

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powhead

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 1272898 29-Mar-2015 15:21

hey ive got an image of it, does that help? also it's plugged in via three blue cords with colours on them and then two other ones. There's nothing in the scart bit skybox

sdavisnz

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Reply # 1272904 29-Mar-2015 15:29

Probably looks worse because your looking at the same amount of pixels on a larger screen, and the silver mysky box is only sd not HD

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powhead

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Wannabe Geek

Reply # 1272909 29-Mar-2015 15:32

Yeah, that was the first conclusion I came to + the explanation as to why the picture differed between the tvs.

ah, now the dilemma of to go with small + better quality or bigger + lower quality :P

sdavisnz

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Reply # 1272911 29-Mar-2015 15:34

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Bigger tv and put your couch ack another meter, sorted.org.nz

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powhead

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Reply # 1272912 29-Mar-2015 15:34

we have a tiny lounge, haha

Rikkitic

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Reply # 1272929 29-Mar-2015 15:47

I just sent you a reply but it disappeared into cyberspace for some reason. I can’t make out anything useful from the photo but your description suggests that you might have a component connection. I’m not sure what the possibilities of different Sky decoders are. If it is component, the three cables would have phono connectors coloured red, green and blue. The other two cables are for stereo audio. Picture quality should be excellent but you have to be sure the colours match up. I can only suggest what I said before, jiggle the cables and replug them to make sure it isn’t a bad connection, try different inputs.

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Spyware

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Reply # 1272933 29-Mar-2015 15:51

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What twaddle. I first shifted my silver pace box from a 29" CRT to a 32" LCD in 2008 via component. The picture quality was so bad I cancelled the service at that point. Take special note of the visible mpeg2 macroblocks and compression artefacts around all moving objects. Sky transcode H.264 to mpeg2 in order to use these 1998 technology worthless (no book value at all) decoders.

Note: Some channels are worse than others. Problem won't be resolved until all legacy boxes replaced and all Sky transponders are shifted to DVB-S2 H.264. End of next year at earliest.

Ross

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Spyware

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Reply # 1272935 29-Mar-2015 15:53

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Rikkitic: Picture quality should be excellent but you have to be sure the colours match up.

Do you even have Sky??

Ross

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Rikkitic

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Reply # 1272946 29-Mar-2015 16:14

Spyware:
Rikkitic: Picture quality should be excellent but you have to be sure the colours match up.

Do you even have Sky??

Yes I do and I also have the old Pace decoder (not the silver one). I'm well aware of Sky's deficiencies but the quality should not be anywhere near as bad as OP is suggesting. If it looks just ok on a 32 inch, it will certainly look less ok on 42 inch but I don't think the difference should be as bad as described. I have Sky on a 50 inch Sony via S-video and upscaling to 1080p and the quality is not great by any means, but it is a lot better than composite and it is way better than what OP describes. If there really is that much difference between his two TVs, I think there must be something wrong with the connection. That is all I am saying. I'm just trying to help from a distance based on my own experience.

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Apsattv

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Reply # 1273050 29-Mar-2015 20:28

Check the sets menus looks for stuff like digital noise reduction and give it a try.

JimmyH

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Reply # 1273067 29-Mar-2015 21:32

I think part of it may depend on the scaler in the TV. It's possible that one of your Pannys just handles upscaling better than the other.

I have just gone from a 40" Samsung set to a materially newer 50" Samsung set, when my old one died. While it's still pretty crummy, you would expect that an upscaled SD signal would look worse on a 50" screen than a 40" screen, particularly moving from 1080P to UHD. In fact the picture looks markedly better - and nothing else has changed (source device, cables, viewing distance etc). I put that down to Samsung having improved the quality of its scaler.

The Pace boxes do, however, support component output. I used to have one. As Rikkitic advises, that's the connection you should use for best quality - not AV!

hypnotoad

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Reply # 1277324 5-Apr-2015 07:30

JimmyH: I think part of it may depend on the scaler in the TV. It's possible that one of your Pannys just handles upscaling better than the other.

I have just gone from a 40" Samsung set to a materially newer 50" Samsung set, when my old one died. While it's still pretty crummy, you would expect that an upscaled SD signal would look worse on a 50" screen than a 40" screen, particularly moving from 1080P to UHD. In fact the picture looks markedly better - and nothing else has changed (source device, cables, viewing distance etc). I put that down to Samsung having improved the quality of its scaler.

The Pace boxes do, however, support component output. I used to have one. As Rikkitic advises, that's the connection you should use for best quality - not AV!

exactly! The older Samsung LCD's did a terrible job of digitizing/upscaling SD content.
I found most people complaining of Sky's picture quality usually own a Samsung TV.

Good to hear Samsung may have finally sorted it out.

Spyware

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Reply # 1277328 5-Apr-2015 07:45

The only slight flaw in your reasoning is that the said channels look identically crappy via a mySky HDi that has already done the up-scaling. Odd how the compression artefacts look identical to what you see via composite or component.

Ross

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