[mwood72]

Have recently needed to downgrade from Sky HD to Freeview HD due to financial issues.

Picked up an A Graded Philips HDT8520 from Richer Sounds quite cheaply for ~£100. Came with latest firmware installed.

On my 40" Sony 1080p HD LCD I'm finding the SD channels quite poor quality in that they are quite dull and blurry, some worse than others notibly Channel5. And the sound can be a bit up and down, not quite stable. The HD channels aren't too bad but the sound's not great. Signal wise box reporting across the muxes ~70% signal, 100% quality from Crystal Palace.

I just wondered if this is the transition from Sky to Freeview or whether my box might not be up to much? I see the Humax box is quite highly rated but that's holding onto it's £200+ ticket price at the moment. I guess I'm wondering whether it might be worth investing in a Humax to improve things.

[technologist]

The PSB Channels (except BBC Parliament ??) are all 720 pixels wide -
but all the COM muxes have 544 pixels across - sort of 3/4 SD ....

Audio is more of a puzzle ... but your description does not help .
firstly HD is quieter than the equivalent SD
But what do you mean by up and down -
is this that some channels are louder than others - I think you will find that the same on Sky!
(it may be that adjacent channels on sky tend to be closer because there are more channels .. )
but other than that DTT and DSAT seem the same.

[DragonQ]

It may be less good at upscaling than your old Sky box, which makes the SD channels not look as good. What have you got it outputting, 1080i or auto?

There's also the simple fact that the satellite versions of channels (found on Sky and Freesat) are higher quality than their Freeview counterparts (with the sole exception currently of Channel 5's channels). There's just more bandwidth available so they can use higher resolutions (720x576 or 704x576 instead of 544x576) and higher bit-rates.

HD is indeed quieter than SD but if your audio on a single channel is fluctuating, there could be some dynamic range compression going on. Have a look in the audio settings of both the Freeview box and the TV to turn off any setting like "loud", "loudness", "dynamic", "compression", etc.

[mwood72]

Hi,

Ref the sound being a bit 'up and down' to try and explain it a bit better I might be watching a film on Channel 5 and the sound's quite low and muffled and it's quite hard to hear what people are saying so I turn up the volume but then there would be an outburst of loud sound so I need to turn the sound down but then I need to turn it up again as things seem to get muffled again. The sound seemed really muffled on ITV1+1 last night. For sound my box has two settings Auto and PCM but both sound the same to me. My TV has a sound setting called Auto Volume which I thought might make the sound go between loud and quiet but I've tried turning this on and off and it doesn't seem to make much difference.

Ref the picture my box is set to Auto which in effect upscales anything not 1080i to 1080i and displays the HD channels in their native 1080i (I think)

[Luis Essex]

(Deleted by poster)

[DragonQ]

Originally Posted by mwood72

Hi,

Ref the sound being a bit 'up and down' to try and explain it a bit better I might be watching a film on Channel 5 and the sound's quite low and muffled and it's quite hard to hear what people are saying so I turn up the volume but then there would be an outburst of loud sound so I need to turn the sound down but then I need to turn it up again as things seem to get muffled again. The sound seemed really muffled on ITV1+1 last night. For sound my box has two settings Auto and PCM but both sound the same to me. My TV has a sound setting called Auto Volume which I thought might make the sound go between loud and quiet but I've tried turning this on and off and it doesn't seem to make much difference.

Ref the picture my box is set to Auto which in effect upscales anything not 1080i to 1080i and displays the HD channels in their native 1080i (I think)

Three things:

1) I would turn "Auto Volume" off on your TV. That will be dynamic range compression, which can cause fluctuations in sound an "pumping".

2) Films have high dynamic range. Explosions and stuff are supposed to be a lot louder than the dialogue, for realism. You should find that TV shows (perhaps except dramas) will have much less dynamic audio, where everything's pretty much the same volume.

3) Usually "auto" doesn't upscale at all; it outputs 1080i for HD channels and 576i for SD channels. If you set it to "1080i" it should upscale SD channels for you, which may look better than leaving it to the TV to upscale.

[Marti S]

I would say set auto volume on, that normalises the sound more and stops the large variation from loud to quiet, works very well on My Sony TV

[mwood72]

Ref my box's Auto picture res setting my TV always says, whether an SD or HD channel is coming from the box, that it thinks it's 1080i. I remember my Sky box when in Auto used to switch to 576p for SD and then back to 1080i for HD. The only way I can get the box into 576i is to force it in box settings.

Ref the Auto Volume setting on my TV I think I'll need to experiment with that to see which I prefer. I think I had it on with the Sky box but never noticed any yo-yo sound then.

I think maybe I just need to get used to my new setup and that getting a Humax wouldn't improve things?

[David (2)]

another vote for keeping the auto volume turned on. I use this loads for normal tv viewing. It takes the sony tv a split sec to detect the audio level changing and to compensate (you can hear it dropping the vol and increasing again as when needed).

Another thing to check, might be if the tv has local settings for each input. So, eg if on day 1 you plugged in sky to hdmi-1, you may have adjusted something (audio or vision). Later, when plugging in a FreeviewHD box to hdmi-2, you would find a difference, as the settings for hdm-2i are still at default.

[gomezz]

A bit late now but you could have changed to Freesat HD (rather than Freeview HD) instead using your existing satellite dish and downleads which would give you the same broadcast quality on the FTA stations as you were used to. Someone mentioned getting a Foxsat HDR for just £124 recently. No technical reason why you still can't have both of course. As a matter of course I record all sport whether HD or SD on my Freesat PVR as that is the type of programme which benefits most from the difference over Freeview.

[mwood72]

Hi, checked that and I'm using "Common" settings for all my HDMI ports on my TV.

Originally Posted by David (2)

Another thing to check, might be if the tv has local settings for each input. So, eg if on day 1 you plugged in sky to hdmi-1, you may have adjusted something (audio or vision). Later, when plugging in a FreeviewHD box to hdmi-2, you would find a difference, as the settings for hdm-2i are still at default.

[mwood72]

True. I could have went with Freesat but was kind of drawn to Freeview with some of the Sky pay-tv channels being on there in the clear. Mind you knowing now that the res/bitrates are different between Freeview and Freesat I'm not so sure. Maybe quality might be better than quantity.

Would be very interested to know where you can pick up a Foxsat HDR for £124. That would sit nicely in my budget and from what I hear is one of the good boxes.

Originally Posted by gomezz

A bit late now but you could have changed to Freesat HD (rather than Freeview HD) instead using your existing satellite dish and downleads which would give you the same broadcast quality on the FTA stations as you were used to. Someone mentioned getting a Foxsat HDR for just £124 recently. No technical reason why you still can't have both of course. As a matter of course I record all sport whether HD or SD on my Freesat PVR as that is the type of programme which benefits most from the difference over Freeview.

[gomezz]

I can't remember where I saw that post whether on here or elsewhere but with Youview boxes finally hoving into view on the horizon older models should start appreciably dropping in price (by the end of the year at a guess) if you can hold on.

[lbear]

Originally Posted by gomezz

I can't remember where I saw that post whether on here or elsewhere but with Youview boxes finally hoving into view on the horizon older models should start appreciably dropping in price (by the end of the year at a guess) if you can hold on.

I think you may be referring to "G2" Freesat boxes which, although they will probably share similar features, are not YouView which is based on Freeview.

[gomezz]

Of course. I seem to have had a very senior day yesterday.

[Bangers]

Originally Posted by mwood72

True. I could have went with Freesat but was kind of drawn to Freeview with some of the Sky pay-tv channels being on there in the clear. Mind you knowing now that the res/bitrates are different between Freeview and Freesat I'm not so sure. Maybe quality might be better than quantity.

Would be very interested to know where you can pick up a Foxsat HDR for £124. That would sit nicely in my budget and from what I hear is one of the good boxes.

I'd say spend £90 at Tesco on their amazing value Manhattan Plaza HD-S Freesat box with installation. As you already have a satellite dish installed, they'll put in a feed to another room. So you get a cracking Freesat HD box on your main telly, plus you can use your old Sky box in a second room.

[DragonQ]

That seems like a great deal.

[lbear]

Originally Posted by DragonQ

That seems like a great deal.

The Manhattan freesat box is very well regarded and is around 77 quid on its own so the Tesco deal is excellent value.

[The Great 208]

I've just got Freeview HD on a new cheapie Toshiba 40" LCD for my second TV and on the HD channels and I can't see much of a difference from Freesat/Sky HD on my 42" Panasonic plasma. SD channels are better on the Panny but I have heard that plasmas are better then LCDs for SD stuff