Update from the Sky HD Team
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We hope that you’ve been enjoying the enhanced programmes on offer in the first few months since we launched Sky HD. Our development of Sky HD never stops and we’ve been listening to and acting on your feedback about the HD box, our HD programmes and our service. We thought you might like to have an update on some of the forthcoming developments.
Our programmes
This month we have extended the hours of our two Sky Movies HD channels. Sky Movies 9 and 10 HD now start broadcasting at 11am, so you can enjoy six hours more movies per day. We have also signed up more studios so we will be adding to the great movies we have already shown like Walk the Line, Spider Man 2 and Sin City. We are also very excited to have secured the rights to show all six Star Wars movies in HD. They will all be shown later in the year, after the current run of the Episodes I-III, on the Sky Movies HD channels. We hope you’ll agree that this is something to look forward to!
This weekend on Sky One HD you’ll be able to enjoy Robbie Williams live in concert - the first UK concert to be broadcast in HD. Coming up in October there are new Sky One commissions in HD including Cirque de Celebrité, Mission Implausible and Ross Kemp on Gangs. In addition shows like Deadwood, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Rescue Me, Las Vegas, Final Days of Planet Earth are all showing in HD.
For sports fans, we’ve added an extra Sky Sports HD channel to make sure that we can show both events when there football and rugby matches are scheduled at the same time. With live Barclays Premiership football, Coca Cola league and Coca Cola Cup matches in HD, there’s a lot of matches to enjoy in HD quality. In addition we are pleased to announce that Sky Sports’ first UEFA Champions League match to be shown in HD will be Manchester United v Celtic on 13th September. And on the 22nd September the Ryder Cup will be shown live in HD for the first time.
For a taste of arts and culture, tune in to Artsworld HD at 10pm on 20th September to catch the premiere of BALLET ROCKS, an exciting new dance film produced specifically to showcase dance in HD, with costumes by leading UK fashion designer Giles Deacon, music by uber-cool Brit band Bloc Party, and performances by classical ballet company English National Ballet. And every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday in October, catch an entire season of British film classics (including Sympathy for the Devil featuring the original Rolling Stones recording of their landmark track) as never seen before restored to HD format for the first time exclusively on Artsworld.
Highlights on other HD channels this autumn will include the start of Atlas on Discovery HD, taking you round the world in glorious HD.
Sky customers can take a look at the latest Sky magazine to see all the programmes in HD this month.
Our service
As you know, there were some initial delays to Sky HD installations because of problems experienced by our HD box supplier. We’ve been working hard to install customers as quickly as possible and we have managed to reduce the wait time for Sky HD to a few weeks.
However, we are aware that there have been reports that some people are not able to get their HD channels when their box is installed. Our customer services team are working hard on this and are getting everyone viewing as quickly as possible. Fixing the issues that have caused this is a priority for us.
Our box
Our technology teams have also been working on improvements and last week they downloaded a new version of the software to your box. To check whether you have the right version go the Services menu, select System Setup, then System Details. The model number should now read 607120.
Here are some of the improvements that the new software brings.
Programme Guide: You should notice that the programme guide works faster than previously
Fast Forward & Rewind: We have made improvements to the way that FFWD and REW work and you will now find:
- that the box is more responsive to the FFWD and REW buttons
- that x30 is now faster however this may mean that when you press play the programme being fast forwarded starts 15 seconds later than expected
Stability: We have made a significant improvement to the overall stability of the HD box so that you will see fewer crashes and freezes
Interactive Services: We have made many improvements to the way interactive services are supported, however we are continuing to work on others which will be included with later versions of the software
TVs: Some of you highlighted to us that there was an issue with some JVC LCD TVs connected via HDMI where picture distortion occurred when changing between channels and aspect ratios. We have worked closely with JVC to resolve the problem and a solution is part of this software download.
The change includes an enhancement to HDMI compatibility and as a result some customers may note the absence of their TV’s applying aspect ratio changes when a fixed 720p or 1080i resolution output is selected on SkyHD box via HDMI. Whilst this might appear strange, this is the expected behaviour when a fixed 720p or 1080i output is selected and is now more consistent across differing makes and models of TV.
Our technology team are continuing to make further improvements and do listen to the feedback you put on the forums. So thanks for all your contributions.
Remote record
Finally you may have noticed that over the last few weeks we’ve introduced a new function that allows you to use your mobile phone to set a recording on your Sky HD or Sky+ box To find out more visit http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/remoterecord.
That’s all for now but we’ll keep working on new developments. Thanks for all your comments. Keep watching!
Sky HD Team
Our programmes
This month we have extended the hours of our two Sky Movies HD channels. Sky Movies 9 and 10 HD now start broadcasting at 11am, so you can enjoy six hours more movies per day. We have also signed up more studios so we will be adding to the great movies we have already shown like Walk the Line, Spider Man 2 and Sin City. We are also very excited to have secured the rights to show all six Star Wars movies in HD. They will all be shown later in the year, after the current run of the Episodes I-III, on the Sky Movies HD channels. We hope you’ll agree that this is something to look forward to!
This weekend on Sky One HD you’ll be able to enjoy Robbie Williams live in concert - the first UK concert to be broadcast in HD. Coming up in October there are new Sky One commissions in HD including Cirque de Celebrité, Mission Implausible and Ross Kemp on Gangs. In addition shows like Deadwood, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Rescue Me, Las Vegas, Final Days of Planet Earth are all showing in HD.
For sports fans, we’ve added an extra Sky Sports HD channel to make sure that we can show both events when there football and rugby matches are scheduled at the same time. With live Barclays Premiership football, Coca Cola league and Coca Cola Cup matches in HD, there’s a lot of matches to enjoy in HD quality. In addition we are pleased to announce that Sky Sports’ first UEFA Champions League match to be shown in HD will be Manchester United v Celtic on 13th September. And on the 22nd September the Ryder Cup will be shown live in HD for the first time.
For a taste of arts and culture, tune in to Artsworld HD at 10pm on 20th September to catch the premiere of BALLET ROCKS, an exciting new dance film produced specifically to showcase dance in HD, with costumes by leading UK fashion designer Giles Deacon, music by uber-cool Brit band Bloc Party, and performances by classical ballet company English National Ballet. And every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday in October, catch an entire season of British film classics (including Sympathy for the Devil featuring the original Rolling Stones recording of their landmark track) as never seen before restored to HD format for the first time exclusively on Artsworld.
Highlights on other HD channels this autumn will include the start of Atlas on Discovery HD, taking you round the world in glorious HD.
Sky customers can take a look at the latest Sky magazine to see all the programmes in HD this month.
Our service
As you know, there were some initial delays to Sky HD installations because of problems experienced by our HD box supplier. We’ve been working hard to install customers as quickly as possible and we have managed to reduce the wait time for Sky HD to a few weeks.
However, we are aware that there have been reports that some people are not able to get their HD channels when their box is installed. Our customer services team are working hard on this and are getting everyone viewing as quickly as possible. Fixing the issues that have caused this is a priority for us.
Our box
Our technology teams have also been working on improvements and last week they downloaded a new version of the software to your box. To check whether you have the right version go the Services menu, select System Setup, then System Details. The model number should now read 607120.
Here are some of the improvements that the new software brings.
Programme Guide: You should notice that the programme guide works faster than previously
Fast Forward & Rewind: We have made improvements to the way that FFWD and REW work and you will now find:
- that the box is more responsive to the FFWD and REW buttons
- that x30 is now faster however this may mean that when you press play the programme being fast forwarded starts 15 seconds later than expected
Stability: We have made a significant improvement to the overall stability of the HD box so that you will see fewer crashes and freezes
Interactive Services: We have made many improvements to the way interactive services are supported, however we are continuing to work on others which will be included with later versions of the software
TVs: Some of you highlighted to us that there was an issue with some JVC LCD TVs connected via HDMI where picture distortion occurred when changing between channels and aspect ratios. We have worked closely with JVC to resolve the problem and a solution is part of this software download.
The change includes an enhancement to HDMI compatibility and as a result some customers may note the absence of their TV’s applying aspect ratio changes when a fixed 720p or 1080i resolution output is selected on SkyHD box via HDMI. Whilst this might appear strange, this is the expected behaviour when a fixed 720p or 1080i output is selected and is now more consistent across differing makes and models of TV.
Our technology team are continuing to make further improvements and do listen to the feedback you put on the forums. So thanks for all your contributions.
Remote record
Finally you may have noticed that over the last few weeks we’ve introduced a new function that allows you to use your mobile phone to set a recording on your Sky HD or Sky+ box To find out more visit http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/remoterecord.
That’s all for now but we’ll keep working on new developments. Thanks for all your comments. Keep watching!
Sky HD Team
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Comments
Would be nice if you update the forum with any new HD channels and programmes etc when you have them
thanks again
People on this forum are mainly keen early adopters, and as such we are interested in everything from bug fixes to new developments. Thanks for keeping us up to date.
The point you raise about the FF & RW is interesting , as you will know from reading this forum , that not everyone is experiencing this so called fix.
Also the comment about stability is interesting , as again , since the update last week , many users are now unfortunately experiencing the Input 2 not locked problem , therefore experiencing recording problems. This appeared to be fixed in the 1st update.
Could you please inform us whether these are still being worked on.
Personally , although I am appreciative , and will continue to be so , I would much prefer if the HD Team would concentrate more on informing us of problems they are aware of & working on , rather than what programming is coming up.
The latter we can find on the sky website & in the Sky magazine , or maybe the HD Team can detail the programming issues in a different thread.
Many thanks.
Regards James
I'm very happy overall with the HD box now, and there's only really one main thing that I would want to change about it. I know lots of other people have been asking for it to, so I don't know how much you take feedback into consideration when looking at what to put in the next update, but this would be great - I'm afraid it's that old aspect ratio issue!
What would be ideal would be for there to be the option to the box itself to add the black bars down the side of the screen when a 4:3 programme is on and you're viewing in 720p or 1080i mode. I understand this is what the Telewest box does, although I'm not sure whether or not they have it as an option to have on or off.
Hopefully now that all TVs handle 720p & 1080i in the same way after the last update, this would be more possible? It's especially frustrating for people like me who own a TV that can't do auto switching over HDMI even in the box's "Automatic" mode.
Aside from that, as I say I'm really happy with Sky HD so far - although of course the more content the better!
But rather than use an update to advertise your programmes, can we please concentrate on the matters that need attention to assist those who pay your salaries...
Although nobody here is expecting a perfect PVR, especially as you've never managed to create one
I would like to thank those who finally managed to sort the EPG out, although it still needs to be stored on the HDD..
If I'm very honest, I would say that if the box recorded more reliably or was at least capable of restarting a recording as soon as it's humanly possible to avoid a fail when only a few seconds were missed, I would say you're nearly there...
Precisely , my point in post #5
Regards James
A few points I would like to bring to your attention.
30x fwd, would it be possible for Sky+ to automatically backspace 15 seconds when 30+ fwd is stopped.
Clashes, if a program classes by a few seconds nothing is recorded, can the box please record whatever it can of a program even if the first 2 mins or so is lost, if this is indicated I can decide wither to watch or delete
Disk space, Could we either have more of the disk available to record on as live HD sport requires a large percentage of the disk. Or could some thought be given to enabling the external SATA port so as extra storage could be added.
As to the software update, I'm very happy. The points noted are all working brilliantly well for me now after the update and the box is vastly improved from those first few days after installation.
Many thanks for the update and your hard work Sky HD Team. It is very nice to see that Sky are taking a customer focused approach to HD and I hope to see this continue.
Cheers.
I suspect that is covered under one of TiVo's patents so we are unlikely to see it which is a shame it is one of the features that makes TiVo so intuative to use.
Excellent idea - Sky+ functionality already has soft padding (when set to auto) and I always though a fall back position of not recording the first 5 miuntes of a programme if there was a clash was better than nothing. But what is a reasonable thing to do when does the clash ebcome too long it is hard but I agree something is sometimes better than nothing which is what happens at the moment.
That would be cool or even when will you start downloading (via satellite) Box Office and other movies to that space when the machine isn't scheduled to do other things - sort of rather like TiVo's sugestions. What would also be really cool is if it downloaded movies that met your preferences
Anyway it was good to get an update so thanks.
What would be nice is if there was more choice on the way 4x3 programmes are displayed when you select 1080i or 720p the possible options are - as currently full screen or 4x3 center of 16x9 image converted in the STB and output still as full screen 720p or 1080i.
This I have always thought was a negative thing in the same way that Sky insist on changing 4x3 programmes to 14x9 on Sky One HD but that has nothing to do with the STB
Well done, and I just wanted to say that I am VERY impressed that you are taking the time to post these updates on the Digital Spy forum, and I just hope that you continue to do so.
TO MEMBERS ,you have proven that no organisation can ignore their customer base and the more we use the forum
the better chance we have of having the service we want rarther than the one thats imposed.As with all new services there are lots of niggles but at least Sky has shown an interest in resolving them.
TO SKY Good of you to have someone respond ,quite shocked me that there might be a human face behind the organisation and thats been the problem.So please asign
a brain to the forum and you might just sell a lot more hd boxes,if you were from technical perhaps you could wake up someone from schedules and programmes.
Could Sky offer the independants a joint platform to transmit in hd,from what I can see there is content there it just needs affordable,transmission costs Iam sure some deal could be made.
The change includes an enhancement to HDMI compatibility and as a result some customers may note the absence of their TV’s applying aspect ratio changes when a fixed 720p or 1080i resolution output is selected on SkyHD box via HDMI. Whilst this might appear strange, this is the expected behaviour when a fixed 720p or 1080i output is selected and is now more consistent across differing makes and models of TV.
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I'm glad I saw this. I have a Pioneer plasma system and wondered why it had suddenly stopped automatically switching the aspect ratio. I've now set the HD box to from 1080i to automatic which has solved the problem.
Please do your absolute best to ensure you include native 4:3 pillarboxed upscaled playback in the next SkyHD update.
I find 14:9/4:3 stretched playback totally unacceptable on the SkyHD STB.
Thank you.
My sentiments exactly!
Boris
There is no argument here AFAIAK.
Complete 4:3 programmes should always be presented by default with no loss of the image, which means full 4:3 pillarbox on a widescreen set, and nothing else.
If you want to present it any other way by adjusting your TV to "panoramic" or "spectacle" or any other of the horrendous distorting mirror options to fill the screen, that's up to you, but detail should never be cropped off complete 4:3 programmes by the broadcaster.
If that means transmitting a 1080i 16:9 raster with "wasted" black down the sides, then so be it!
Thank you Sky for the update, much appreciated.
My HD box still doesn't work as well as my previous SD Sky+ box did, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was a few weeks ago!
And there's another thread later which picks this up. But I add my
vote, please display 4:3 programs complete and in 4:3 aspect.
An example, last night I wathched the new Simpsons on Sky 1 and
Blackbeard on Sky 1 HD. I'd rather just always go to the HD channel.
Same for Sports HD.
Pete.
This is nothing to do with the latest software. This is a known problem caused by the installation engineer pairing the wrong card. It has happened to me months ago like many others. Also, unfortunately like many others, it took me three weeks to get it sorted. Just keep pestering customer service and insist that a supervisor fixes this. (I ttried doing this 5 times and eventually someone who knew what they were doing fixed it in a few minutes.)
Good Luck (you will need it).
Steve B
Thanks for the help.
Press SERVICES on your remote, choose option 4 (system setup) and then 6 (signal test) and make sure you have a good signal strength and quality.
Then visit this WEBSITE and carry out the procedure listed against Forced Software Download:)
Perhaps a vote is required so Sky can see what the general concensus is.
I, personally, agree and would rather Sky broadcast 4:3 programming in its original format. If that means wasted space, I welcome it.
Grendal