Because no matter what it is, Sky want you to PAY for the HD pictures.
They even use the lowest SD resolution for all but one of their channels to make HD look even better.
That channel is Sky news BTW. 720 x 576i
Everything else is at 544 x 576i

I didn't realise Sky News is at 720x576i, thought they'd reduced it to 540. The next thing Sky will do is reduce the res of all their SD channels down to 480x576i to make them even worse! Personally, if it's free then fair do but for premium content it's wrong as it's degrading the quality of the product, be it only in SD!

Sky News International is at 544 x 576i. That was a 4:3 channel but went widescreen finally but never changed resolution to match and it looks horrid.
But yes, Sky News in the UK is the highest res for SD in UK broadcasting and the only one at full res of the SD Sky channels.
Id be more than unhappy if i was a Sky subscriber and got that crap PQ after paying them £20+ a month!
The movies and sports channels..Not sure the res on them, but i believe its also low.

Surely the BBC need a second transponder when they regionalise BBC One HD. 5 streams in 44 Mbps is moving in the Freeview direction...I really hope that doesn't happen. If STV HD and 1 region of ITV1 HD remain on the BBC's HD transponder then they'll need another one anyway. There'd also be space on it for Channel 5 HD, which'd reduce their costs. I'd prefer Channel 5 to get their own HD transponder though as they can rebalance the channels on existing one, which have poor quality.

44/5 = 8.8Mbp/s Isn't that more than BBC HD channels have at the moment? Allowing for overheads about the same?

Well video bit rates for sport are 8.5-9.5 Mbps but then you have to add on audio, which is about 0.65 Mbps. Bit rates would definitely suffer considering for stuff like sport (demanding content), all the regions would most likely be showing the same thing so statistical multiplexing won't help much. It won't be a big reduction but still.

I take your points but what they may do is delay the regions by a small but different amount so stat muxing could be used. I think that is already done in some instances.

Audio on BBC is .384Kbs for AC3 5.1, plus the audio described stream which need only be 64kbs mp2 as on Freeview, although I think it's higher at the moment.

You have to add EPG data and firmware update streams etc.

They BBC closed down a few of their DSAT transponders and cut services and will be doing so again after the Olympics with the redbutton streams being cut from 4 to just one.
If they are planning another shift around of services for the launch of BBC One HD Scot, NI & Wales, so they dont have to go the route of getting another transponder, i wouldn't be surprised.
The Txp they have with their HD channels on, could say bye to ITV, its already DVB-S2, so could carry 4 HD channels, more if they reduced them to 720p (God i hope not!)
They have also talked of reducing their DSAT BBC One regions so would save space there too.

All Sky HD channels are subscription.

Now the majority of ITV HD channels being subscription is STRANGE...

Yeah they could kick off STV HD and ITV1 HD from their transponder but they'd still need a space for a 5th. All I'm saying is I hope they find space elsewhere (be it on one of their DVB-S transponders, on a new transponder, or on Channel 4's HD transponder) rather than opt to cram in 5 channels on a single DVB-S2 transponder.

I was wrong about this. The BBC's HD transponder is 40.6 Mbps, rather than the 43.9 Mbps used by transponders with subscription channels. That'd mean the average video bit-rate would have to drop to ~7.5 Mbps, which is the same as Freeview, but they can't encode progressively for progressive content like they can on Freeview (which saves bit rate), and again statistical multiplexing won't be as useful. Adding different delays to the channels helps a bit with instantaneous complexity increases (e.g. a quick camera movement) but doesn't help with longer-term complexity increases (sport for 2 hours on all the BBC One HD channels).

If this happens it sounds like bad news for us!

I agree about delaying channels it helps but can't work miracles.

It would be good if the providers pooled resources (at least the publicly owned ones).
eg switch CH4HD's transponder back to DVB S2 and find space (easier said then done maybe) on a BBC mux with DVBS channels or ITV.

If that's not possible get a new transponder and share the costs between them, maybe even get ITV and channel 5 involved.

You could end up with sensibly populated transponders and maybe one with spare capacity awaiting Film 4 HD etc?

Let's hope they find an alternative.

Exactly. Only 3 transponders are needed for all the PSB HD channels right now (assuming 4 channels per transponder):

4x BBC One HD
1x BBC HD/BBC Two HD
4x ITV1 HD
1x STV HD
1x Channel 4 HD
1x Channel 5 HD

I'm sure they could figure out a way to share 3 transponders between 4 companies. If Channel 4 or Channel 5 want to regionalise their HD channel then an additional transponder will be needed. UTV HD would also require an additional transponder.

STV HD is on a Sky uplinked transponder, not the BBC's.
There is an ITV1 HD region on the BBC txp but i would imagine thats not going to stay much longer

Have to say, about the pooling of resources; As good an idea it is, they would all have different demands and standards, with the others not at all willing to accept the higher standards of someone else.
BBC would have wants and so would ITV, Channel4 also and Channel5 too, they wouldn't be able to play nicely because one would want to be big daddy and the others would too.

I didn't say it was likely to happen, just it would make sense.

When you think how heavily BBC and ITV are involved in Freesat and BBC and CH4 publicly owned maybe they (or someone) should set standards that "they" all have to adhere to so they just become "standard" SD or HD slots, all equal.

If this were done we wouldn't have all these problems we read about here:
"epg disapearing on xxxx box with channel x".
"series recordings not working with channel y"
etc, etc.

Maybe just a dream but ........

Cameron and Clegg are in a coalition so anything could happen but hopefully with a bit more agreement than them!

So basically, every SD version of a Sky channel only broadcasts at 544x576i?

Not strange at all, sky pay ITV good money to have there 2,3 and 4 HD channel's encypted, but for how long, sky are getting desperate, to stop all the channel's going FTA

BUT what is strange sky have not been able to keep ITV 1 encypted

OH what it is not to have freinds in high places

Not sure about the movies and sports channels, but with the exception of Sky News, yes, their entertainment channels Sky1 & 2, Sky Atlantic,
Sky Living, Challenge, PickTV and so on, are all 544 x 576i.
When Sky bought Living and whatnot from VM, when the playout was transferred to Sky, the resolutions dropped from 704 x 576i to 544 x 576i over night!
Yet another slimey tactic by Sky.

Pick TV & Challenge now listed under FTA channels:
http://www.a516digital.com/2012/07/s...tv-as.html?m=1

After the Olympics, couldn't they use the 10.876 transponder to house the 4 BBC ONE HD regions? Then they can have BBC TWO HD where BBC HD currently is, and hopefully keep BBC HD to show content from BBC THREE and FOUR in HD along with repeats of other HD programming. If they don't do this, perhaps rent the space to another broadcaster who wants to have FTA HD content on Freesat, say Channel 5 HD or more HD channels from Channel 4?

Is there a reason why the picture is wrong?
Watching Cleverdicks on Challenge, and there is a black bar at the bottom of the screen.

Resolution looks even worse...

Yes, looks wrong, complain to Sky.

All of Sky's SD channels except for Sky News are in 544x576 so they look rather pants. It's to make their HD channels look even better in comparison (even though many of them don't have HD simulcasts anyway, such as Pick TV, Challenge and Sky2).