What fidelity level is Sky HD?
Posted by: Consciousmess on 23 July 2010
Hi all,
I ask this question as I suspect a few of us have Sky HD as one of their sources. I generally understand that what is feeding all the components 'downstream' should be of highest quality (before others are addressed), but....
If a match could be stated comparing Sky HD, what Naim source component would it be? Would it be the HDX?
(Incidentally, I'm confident that is a scientific question...)
Regards,
Jon
Posted on: 23 July 2010 by garyi
Well video streams at no higher than 720. But I don't know at what rate. As for audio I don't know you would need to capture a stream to find out but I would guess at aac-92-128, I think they use the H264 or what ever its called to capsulate the audio and video.
In terms of comapring it to a naim product well thats a bit pointless but the only thing it could be compared to is a NVI as that has audio and video.
Posted on: 23 July 2010 by tonym
Errr - no Jon.
Sky HD boxes output either stereo via the phono outputs which is mixed down from the digital satellite signal through a pretty average DAC or via their optical digital output which can be either stereo or 5.1 channel Dolby Digital. If you feed the latter into a decent DAC you can get fair results but it's never going to be a high-quality source.
Lots of variation depending on TV program, channel etc. of course.
Posted on: 23 July 2010 by BigH47
1080i picture and adequate and OK sound.
As Tony says this can vary with channels.
It sounds fine 2 channel copper wired in to the main rig.
Posted on: 23 July 2010 by nap-ster
The latest 1Tb HD boxes have an optical and a co-ax out.
Posted on: 23 July 2010 by garyi
Some things on sky are 1080i, but sport and the likes are 720.
BUt I guess jon was referring to audio, In which case it is what it is. i.e. highly dependent on the quality of feed which due to the bandwidth is not likely to be awesome.
Posted on: 26 July 2010 by Eloise
All HD channels in the UK via Sky/Freesat are 1080i. Of course that's the horizontal lines, the number of vertical pixels can vary - 1440x1080 and 1920x1080 are the most common IIRC.
There is a table of bitrate details on Wikipedia ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...D_channels_in_the_UKThere's also a (supposedly) automatically updated table here ...
http://www.digitalradiotech.co...e_hdtv_bit_rates.php ... but currently it's not working for me though it has in the past. The same website has bit-rates for Radio via Satellite (and digital terrestrial I think) and for SD channels.
Generally sound quality is between 96kbps and 256kbps compressed with MPEG3 or AAC (IIRC).
Eloise
