MYsky HDi upscales SD to HD!?

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Talkiet

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#26652 29-Sep-2008 16:06

I’m not missing this am I? In an article on NZherald.co.nz today, Pat Pilcher claims that:

“The MySky HDi box can also be set to upscale standard definition output to 720p or 1080i, significantly improving non-HD TV shows in the process.”

Ref: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10534801

This doesn’t match my experience so far, and only TV3 (to my knowledge) does their own upscaling of SD content. Have I been incredibly inobservant, or has NZherald made this stuff up?

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

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#167778 29-Sep-2008 16:43

TV1 and TV2 are constantly outputting a signal of 720P. They do their own upscaling of their SD content shows, well via the freeview UHF platform anyway, I'm not sure about the feed they give to sky though.

richms

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#167783 29-Sep-2008 17:10

If you set it to output 1080i it will upscale all the other channels to it as well, but from what I have seen it was signifiganly worse then svideo to the tv.

Richard rich.ms

sbiddle

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#167784 29-Sep-2008 17:10

The box doesn't do any upscaling - it's all done by the broadcaster. The only thing it is capable of doing is downscaling HD content to 576i for the component/RF output.

richms

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#167786 29-Sep-2008 17:26

Thats strange, the tv I had a play with it on still reported 1080i even when on a SD channel so something was lying. I didnt have a chance to reconfigure the box or have a good play with it since it wasnt mine but the installer had left a svideo hookup as well which looked a lot better on that then the hdmi with all the sd channels.

Richard rich.ms

Talkiet

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#167794 29-Sep-2008 17:53

Yeah - I actually know a little more than I let on... The box is outputting a 1080i signal to my TV, but any "upscaling" being done looks extremely dumb. It's certainly NOTHING like the amazing upscaling the latest PS3 firmware does for DVDs and videos streamed from a DLNA server...

Sony REALLY got the video playback and upscaling right on the PS3.

As for MySky HDi... the upscaling by TV3 is far superior to any of the other channels - I don't actually know however if all the channels are broadcast as HD (dumb upsampled), or if the MySky HDi box recieves some in HD and some in SD and does it's own conversion to HD for the final transmission over HDMI to the TV. I'd suspect that only the HD channels (plus TV3) are broadcast in HD, and the box does it's own cheap upscaling for the others...

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

eXDee

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#167858 29-Sep-2008 22:58

If set in your options all the SD channels will be upscaled to 720p/1080i im pretty sure - our TV always thinks it's getting a 720p signal. TV3 will look good even on SD content because its TV3 doing the upscaling with high end equipment on their end, then sending it all out as 1080i.

Remember - Garbage in Garbage out. For some channels its almost like making a youtube video fullscreen - it's still going to look like crap.
The PS3 will upscale DVD's nicely because DVD's are of a very high bitrate compared to other sources. In comparison, some of sky's channels are very low bitrate.

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Talkiet

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#167860 29-Sep-2008 23:06

eXDee: If set in your options all the SD channels will be upscaled to 720p/1080i im pretty sure - our TV always thinks it's getting a 720p signal. TV3 will look good even on SD content because its TV3 doing the upscaling with high end equipment on their end, then sending it all out as 1080i.

Remember - Garbage in Garbage out. For some channels its almost like making a youtube video fullscreen - it's still going to look like crap.
The PS3 will upscale DVD's nicely because DVD's are of a very high bitrate compared to other sources. In comparison, some of sky's channels are very low bitrate.

Not entirely true... The PS3 upscales 350MB 42 minute TV downloads spectacularly well. Sure they aren't anywhere near the quality of real HD episodes like those on TV3, but they are a LOT better than watching the same file through WMP - it's really doing some magic.

I guess my initial question is "should the MySky HDi box making a serious attempt at upscaling, or is it simply expanding the image to fit whatever output resolution it's working at?"

I suspect it's doing nothing more than expanding the image, with no attempts made at edge detection, sharpening etc - which is what I would read into "upscaling" in relation to HD, especially when the writer of the advertisement, oops, I mean article, indicates that it significantly improves the picture quality.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

eXDee

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#167977 30-Sep-2008 13:07

In that case its just enlarging and stretching the picture as far as i can tell, not "upscaling" then. Looks very close to a Sky SD box over component.

richms

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#167999 30-Sep-2008 14:37

Thats all upscaling is, so its correct to call it that IMO. just because some implimentations artifically create edge noise thats not in the source material doesnt make it a requirement.

The one I saw the sky box doing it almost looked as if every alternate pair of scanlines was the wrong way around

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instead of

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Since they are 1080 lines from a distance it looked ok, but those distances are so great that the HD channells looked no better.

It almost looked like it wasnt deinterlacing before scaling or something but I was only getting a brief play with it so couldnt really judge.

Richard rich.ms

Balchy

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#168037 30-Sep-2008 16:18

Hrmm I wouldnt take what is written in that article as fact - they also state you can record three shows while watching a fourth prerecording.

As far I as have tried with mine you can record two and watch a third live, but not record three at once

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#168412 1-Oct-2008 17:53

Hi Guys - I wrote the article and double checked with SKy about the upscaling - sure it is "dumb" upscaling, and doesnt compare with the upscaling used by networks (who feed their SD video through an industrial grade $50k upscaler) but it does upscale and on a Large LCD viewed from an appropriate distance it did improve the SD picture on both my 40" Samsung and Bravia 1080P panels. As for recording three channels and watching a fourth, the third turner should either be enabled now or will be shortly (I was hoping that it'd be sorted by the time the article was published).....

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Balchy

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#168532 2-Oct-2008 08:32

patdude: Hi Guys - I wrote the article and double checked with SKy about the upscaling - sure it is "dumb" upscaling, and doesnt compare with the upscaling used by networks (who feed their SD video through an industrial grade $50k upscaler) but it does upscale and on a Large LCD viewed from an appropriate distance it did improve the SD picture on both my 40" Samsung and Bravia 1080P panels. As for recording three channels and watching a fourth, the third turner should either be enabled now or will be shortly (I was hoping that it'd be sorted by the time the article was published).....

Yeah my bad, I went home the night after that post and tried it and yes, three recordings worked sweet as

hazza87

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#168610 2-Oct-2008 12:56

As i suspected and just checked you cannot record 3 programs at once - came up with an error message stating that only 2 shows could be recorded at once and the other channel only watched not recorded. Unless there was another firmware upgrade i am unaware of ( i have uprgraded to the latest firmware that enables the third tuner but only for watching another live channel when recording 2 )

Can't say ive really noticed any upscaling of SD shows still look so bad on my 40" LCD that they are barely watchable especially after flicking from a HD channel.

Balchy

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#168615 2-Oct-2008 13:07

hazza87: As i suspected and just checked you cannot record 3 programs at once - came up with an error message stating that only 2 shows could be recorded at once and the other channel only watched not recorded. Unless there was another firmware upgrade i am unaware of ( i have uprgraded to the latest firmware that enables the third tuner but only for watching another live channel when recording 2 )

Can't say ive really noticed any upscaling of SD shows still look so bad on my 40" LCD that they are barely watchable especially after flicking from a HD channel.

Thats what I thought too and how it was with the first firmware update - however as I said in my above post I tried it a night or two ago and sure enough it recorded three while letting me watch a fourth pre recorded

rugrat

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#168673 2-Oct-2008 17:59

Thats what I thought too and how it was with the first firmware update - however as I said in my above post I tried it a night or two ago and sure enough it recorded three while letting me watch a fourth pre recorded

I just tried it after reading this, when got to third recording message came up saying "only two recordings can made at once" and then with options to cancel one of the recordings.

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