High Definition Telly

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domtyler

domtyler

Über Member
Sky HD installed today but still no sign of the telly. Apparently it will be here on Thursday.

Very frustrating having the PS3 and the Sky but not able to view in HD! :rolleyes:
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Argh that's dreadful. Still right time, FX HD to launch this month (28th) on sky epg and rumours doing the rounds again that ITV HD will launch upon arrival of freesat (May).
 
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domtyler

domtyler

Über Member
Just got the call. It is sitting in our front room waiting to be unpacked! :sad:

Full report tonight if I can prise myself away from the PS3! :tongue:

PS3 is already changing the way we do things at home, you can so easily stream music from the computer upstairs that all the CDs have now been put into storage. It's easier to select an album on the PS3 and then change over to viewing a photo album or just to the telly.
 

PrettyboyTim

New Member
Location
Brighton
Yay for big tellies!

Our V+ box arrived today (The Virgin Media version of Sky+ - 160Gb, dual tuner, HD)

It'll be nice to finally watch some HD telly on our HD telly... ;-)

Also, I'm getting very excited about the forthcoming release of GTA IV, although I've been unable to preorder it somewhere that can get it to me on the release date - I may just have to chance it at HMV on the morning of release...
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
PrettyboyTim said:
Yay for big tellies!

Our V+ box arrived today (The Virgin Media version of Sky+ - 160Gb, dual tuner, HD)

It'll be nice to finally watch some HD telly on our HD telly... ;-)

Also, I'm getting very excited about the forthcoming release of GTA IV, although I've been unable to preorder it somewhere that can get it to me on the release date - I may just have to chance it at HMV on the morning of release...

Mine's worked a lot faster since virgin meeja had a software update in the last few weeks. They also added a sopranos and Band of Brothers onto VOD HD.
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Uncle Mort said:
ITV HD will definitely launch at the same time as the Freesat EPG.

But nobody has a clue when that will be. The website is still holding out for "spring 2008" though.

Imagine - Corrie in high definition :biggrin:

Freesat info is months out of date. Everyone knows when freesat is **supposed** to launch but all the retailers and freesat themselves have kept silent due to NDAs. They've also had a lot of discussions with channel 4. Last week FTA versions of channel 4 started appearing and quite a few transponder changes, this has now been acknowledged officially. Psssst it's supposed to be 5th May :biggrin:.
 
I stayed in a Hilton last night. The bedroom had a huge Phillips tv at the end of the bed.

The picture was rubbish.
If you'd paid the nice man at reception for the, ahem, 'extra' channels then it would have been just fine...;)
 

cisamcgu

Legendary Member
Location
Merseyside-ish
marinyork said:
Even flicking the settings on the V+ menu makes a noticeable difference. When it's in 720p HDMI the menu is very crisp, put it in 1080i and a very tiny fuzz comes in, a bit more in component and it looks bad in standard. The menu isn't even written in HD!


We have a Philips HD TV, and we experience exactly the same thing when we switch the V+ box to 1080. I thought it was a problem with the TV :smile:

Andrew
 
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domtyler

domtyler

Über Member
So I got in a fairly decent evening of watching some HD broadcasts on Sky, ten minutes of a blu-ray disk and some gaming in HD as well as some normal broadcasts.

First off you get about fifteen HD channels on Sky, some are sports and movies which we don't get but the ones we do are promising. BBC HD has got a long way to go, only a few hours of programming a night, this should just be BBC1 in HD. Discovery and Nat Geo HD show some really good documentary stuff, amazing to watch especially the under water stuff, but I fear it will start to repeat after a while.

Viewing a Blu-Ray, I've got Earth the BBC natural history film, simply has to be seen to be believed, what strikes you is the vivid colours, level of detail and the depth of the picture, almost like a 3D effect. I can only equate it to looking at a good digital photograph on a quality computer screen that is moving.

Watching normal broadcasts like "In the Night Garden" with all its colourful wacky scenery was fabulous, there is none of the breaking up of the picture, noise or pixelisation that you see in the shops, just a solid clear picture, far better than the old telly, a real joy to watch. Even watching East Enders was more bearable than normal.

Once I'd got the wife and daughter out of the way though :smile: I got down to a little gaming which was just great on such a large screen and in High Definition.

The only other thing I did was to browse some photos via the playstation which, again, was just breath taking seeing them on the big screen.

All in all, a great decision to go for it, the price is definitely at an acceptable level now, it cost me £715 for the TV, £300 for the PS3 and £200 for the Sky HD box plus £10 extra per month on the sub. The main drawback is the lack of HD broadcast, you just want to watch everything in HD once its there and it is annoying having to watch low def stuff, just like it would be annoying have to watch B&W programming on the first colour TVs I guess. Only time will remedy that.
 

PrettyboyTim

New Member
Location
Brighton
My V+ box arrived yesterday. Unfortunately there's hardly anything to watch in HD on it, but I did watch some of the BBC HD stuff and some of the HD programs on video on demand.

Connecting via HDMI though made the picture quality of the standard channels much better.
 
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