Tasberley

hiya peops...

ordering our new tv at the end of the week and was wondering if its worth getting the sky hd box... its fecking expensive at the moment. any1 know if it can be bought cheaper than the £300 mark??

tas

TopBanana

I don't think it's worth it at the moment. Depends how much cash you have to burn I guess. Second generation HD boxes will be better in some manner anyway - that's how I prevent myself buying on impulse!

TDT

Went shopping at Bang & Olufsen yesterday and I had a look at Sky HD on the telly i've ordered. Not impressed with it TBH.

I think I get a free box with the telly anyway, but if I didn't I would be waiting for more output and the price to come down.

Andy M3

I have it, and enjoy watching nature programmes, the odd movie etc. We wanted sky plus so we upgraded to HD which isn't a lot more i don't think.

Tasberley

thats what i keep on telling myself.. dont have the spare cash to be honest..

does anybody know when the second generation hd boxes will come out or when its reduced??

tas

Leslie

Not worth the extra £10 a month etc.

Les

Andy M3

How much was that outrageously over priced TV then?

TDT

Twas about £8500. It's worth it just for the motorised stand.........

http://www.bang-olufsen.com/page.asp?id=25

Haven't plucked up the courage to tell the wife quite how much it was, but I figure you can't take money with you

RRH

At this point in time its totally not worth it- given the choice over I wouldn't have bothered. Whilst the picture is a bit better, the content is currently lacking, and tbh it doesn't add anthing to my viewing enjoyment.

Furthermore, the hardware doesn't seem too stable; I have to reset the box at least once a week.

Andy M3

Madness

Tasberley

:O indeed!!

and i thought 1500 on a tv was expensive.

Anderooo

Personally I don't think it is worth it just yet. There is just not enough content to justify another new Sky box at £300, an extra £10 a month to the already high price we have to pay. Unless you watch every single game of football including Prem Plus you won't get your moneys worth. The discovery channel looks good with bits and pieces coming through. And upscaled DVD's look better than Sky movies do.

A few people in work have sent theirs back just because its not worth the money. A few more channels and content would be nice for the money they are charging. But that's sky all over rip off merchants.

lozgti

Unless you have special eyes,no.

It looks absolutely the same as a normal picture

boxst

Wow, that's expensive!

Steve

kbsub

We've had Sky HD for a few months now and some of the channels are really good ie Planet Earth ,Sky Sports, Discovery, .Artsworld etc etc In fact watching Planet Earth on Sunday night was like having a live aquarium in your living room ,it was really that good and anybody who cant tell the difference really should have gone to spec savers
I also have a decent up scaling DVD player (Denon 1920)and Sky HD is a better picture , plus you get DD 5.1 on most HD channels , no problems with the Thompson HD box or the software
whether its worth the cash is up to you and what your priorities are , But I can see this turning out to be another CRT vs LCD/Plasma debate

DavidBrown

It all depends on how much you're going to watch the HD channels..

It sounds like an obvious thing to say, but Planet Earth is sensational, and the footie is quite good on HD.. but other than that.. hmm

DavidBrown

Completely incorrect statement. They're like night and day when compared back to back on a large screen.

dtriggs

The HD programs are a much better picture in my experience. The football is clearer although the added detail of the crowd and the presenters dandruff isnt of great use ! Planet Earth, Robin Hood etc all look very good I reckon, and BBC are committed to putting more and more content out in HD.

Whether or not it's worth the money is a matter of personal opinion, as there is nothing to actually rate it against. I needed a 2nd box and so seemed little reason not to go for it. But it's a no brainer if you compare the worth of spending £7000 more than my Panny Plasma !!

Fat Boy

Looks great on our Bravia. Sure content is currently thin, but I like footy/ other sports, nature programmes and things like Later, so using Sky+ (which we previously didn't have) it's easy to fill the max 2-3 hours that we might have on any given evening with virtually all HD programmes.

Not absolutely night and day but definitely significantly better especially for the newer stuff such as Planet Earth. Such high quality content will increase rapidly.

kbsub

Worth noting that when you buy the HD box and connect through the HDMI port all the SD channels look better as well .

hail-hail

I have a Loewe Xelos LCD and sky HD and the picture is fantastic, £300 for the box and a tenner per month is all relative as i spend a silly amount on my LCD (not quite B&O silly though) and wanted to get the benefit.

The only thing that hasn't been mentioned on this thread is the fact that ALL channels are much better through the HD box. I have sky+ multiroom and have compare non Hd channels through the Sky+ box and the HD box and it is a world of difference.

hail-hail

ok, so kbsub beat me too it

mpr

you mean "special" in the sense that they actually work?

Of course it looks a lot better on any decent tv of a reasonable size.

Football is actually watchable in HD whereas I can't stand it in SD on either sky or freeview.

It makes me laugh that people will shell out 1500+ on the tv and then moan about paying 300 quid for a box to drive it. This is especially true if you don't already have sky plus as it is IMHO essential to skip through all the crap that is in between and (sometimes in the middle of) the programmes.

Yes it will be cheaper in a year, so hold off on buying your tv for a year too, as it will also be cheaper. In fact.... never buy anything for those reasons and you'll be much better off

It probably isn't worth the money in all fairness (sky in general isn't), as the content is limited, but in terms of my total household spending, it's f-all and it's cheap compared to every other "leisure" activity we do.

Chris L

From what I've seen - properly set up, the HD picture is stunning. I was watching an HD broadcast through a top range Panasonic LCD in my local specialist shop and it looked amazing. I've seen others in Tesco / Comet etc and they haven't looked anything special.

So the devil is in the detail I guess - the quality of the cables / interconnects must make a difference too.

I'm working with Sky at the moment and have been told to expect the prices of HD gear to drop in the new year...

King RA

For the people technically capable:

Get a 360
Install windows media center edition or Vista on your PC
Get Transcode 360
Download HD movies and TV series such as Lost, Heroes, My name is Earl and many, many, many films
Stream content to HD TV through 360
Enjoy massive quantities of HD material

- Don't ask me how as I don't know; I just know it can be done.

King RA

For example:

NUMB3RS 310 Brutus 1080i dd5 1 1 0 4 hr
House S03E08 720p DD5 1 448kbps 4 0 4 hr
Planet Earth 07 Great Plains h264 AC3 0 0 5 hr
Ghost Whisperer 210 Giving Up The Ghost ... 19 0 1 d
ryder cup golf a.b.m.sports 23 0 1 d
Heroes S01E07 720p HDTV x264 CTU a.b.m 40 0 4 d
Day Break S01E01 720p HDTV x264 CTU a.b.m 15 0 4 d
Stargate Atlantis S03 E11 1080i DD2 0 24 0 4 d
Ladder 49 1080i DD5 1 h264 6 0 4 d
The Sopranos 1x06 1080i DD20 .repost 11 0 4 d
The Sopranos 1x05 1080i DD20 .repost 4 0 4 d
The Sopranos 1x04 1080i DD20 .repost 3 0 4 d
The Sopranos 1x02 1080i DD20 .repost 6 0 4 d
The Sopranos 1x01 1080i DD20 .repost 9 0 4 d
Veronica Mars S03E08 720p HDTV x264 CTU a.b.m 4 0 4 d
Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire 1080... 33 0 4 d
hitch 1080i dd51 renderman .repost 8 0 4 d
Mindhunters (2004) 5 0 4 d
Prison Break S02E12 720p HDTV x264 SAiNT... a.b.m 19 0 4 d
Desperate Housewives S03E09 720p HDTV x2... a.b.tv 12 0 4 d
The Transporter 2 (2005) 15 0 4 d
Aeon Flux 2005 1080i 21 0 4 d
dreamcatcher 1080i dd5 1 nfn .repost 5 0 4 d
Flightplan1080i DD5 1 sHadow 11 0 4 d
The Unit 208 Natural Selection 1080i dd5... 7 0 4 d
House S03E07 720p DD5 1 448kbps ALANiS 4 0 4 d
Standoff S01E07 720p DD5 1 448kbps ALANi... 2 0 4 d
Dexter S01E05 720p HDTV x264 BamHD .x264 13 0 4 d
Prison Break S02E12 720p DD5 1 448kbps A... 35 0 4 d
Smallville S06E08 Static 1080i HDTV TS 32 0 5 d

Flaps

iTrader: (1)

I originally thought that if you bought Sky HD ALL the shows would be in HD. That's not the case though (or so it said on the Gadget show the other week). It looked as if they had maybe 2/3 shows a day in HD the rest were just the bog standard transmission. I can't see the point in paying extra if that's all you get!
We've a HD TV, quite a nice one too, recently got a DVD player that's meant to scale up the image quality, that looks quite good! Not very ipressed with the £70 cable they wanted us to buy though, thank God for Maplins eh?!

NorthDave

I could have got you exactly the same effect and a better screen for considerably less than that!

I can beat it though, I have a guy looking to spend around £40k for a control system to sit on top of his B&O setup. Doesn't like the existing remote apparently!

ReallyReallyGoodMeat

My folks have got Sky HD and to be honest right now it's not worth it.

Unless you fork out extra for the sports/movie channels (which we haven't so can't comment on them) then you've only really got BBC HD (which is mostly Planet Earth, or the hd preview all day, every day), Sky One HD (shows the exact same shows as Sky One, but one or two shows may be in HD, Lost being one of them), or 4 arts/history/nature channels. £300 plus £10/month for a couple of shows a week is (IMO) not worth the extra, at this moment. I've yet to see any news so far on any new planned hd channels anytime soon either. I'd wait maybe another year so that they actually have enough quality HD content to merit the extra cost.

On the plus side, you get sky+ which really is excellent, and the HD quality is superior to regular telly. Just not £300 + £10/month better.

lozgti

Simply my opinion whether people agree or disagree does not matter.

My point is,I have seen HD TV on a very nice large television.I couldn't tell any difference.

I have to say though,the panasonic plasma 43" I watched it on was a great picture generally.I really think you have to be a bit of a tv expert/addict to tell the difference.