SkySports News

[Batch]

Switched my picture settings on the sky box to 16:9 .

But if you have a 4:3 TV it will fill the screen but everything will be long and thin looking because its the wrong aspect, unless your 4:3 TV has a 16:9 mode - in which case you'll see the black bars a the top and bottom.

[Barry Scott]

Sounds like they've fucked up the SD version to me. Firstly by making it 100% widescreen and removing the 4:3 safe zone leaving some 4:3 TV viewers  not being able to see the edge, and secondly shrinking the font size.

I was saying to a mate a little while ago that, as a truely cynical bloke, I expect Sky to implement some sort of worse SD soon, so that those of us not on HD are both more impressed by HD and less than happy with SD. You heard it here first. (I don't even know whether they could do it to be honest!)

[Batch]

Of course they could if they want to. They just reduce the bitrates down so effective less 'picture information' is sent to the box. The result is worse looking picture! However someone, somewhere would call them on that pretty quickly. There must be multiple  other ways to reduce picture quality though.

[pointless rant mode]
Widescreen - thankfully all my TVs are widescreen. I guess most TVs sold over the last 5 years have been. But there must be a lot of 4:3 main TV and second TV out there.

On HD - its a personal opinion for sure, but for me the £10 p/m fee is not worth it so I ditched it. I have two problems with HD myself. Firstly and most importantly I generally get engrossed in the program after 5 minutes, even when its football, I stop noticing the better HD picture.

Secondly I don't have a full 1080 set, its 768. From my viewing distance (10ft) the extra resolution would be wasted on my 42" screen. But it does make a decent fist of SD pictures, and so the Im happy with SD.

And i still reckon the difference between SD CRT->HD LCD/Plasma isn't that great in quality (but you can get bigger screens). Not as big as the leap between VHS and DVD for me
[/pointless rant mode]

[jilly_one]

Sky taking the Mike, taking sports news off free view. What about old people they cannot aford sky ?? 

If you are with sky, I have just normal channels plus news channels. If im with them for phone,  Broadband, tv  is there any special offers i should be looking at to improve my viewing.  If i contact them can i improve my package without paying more. Any one know, anyone know any Sky offer codes. 

[Reg Smeeton]

Sky taking the Mike, taking sports news off free view. What about old people they cannot aford sky ?? 

I've got Sky....

[Berniman]

Threaten to leave and if you have been with them long enough they will reduce your bill for a 6 month period.  Be prepared to leave though if they don't.

[Jimmy Glass is an Alien]

Threaten to leave and if you have been with them long enough they will reduce your bill for a 6 month period.  Be prepared to leave though if they don't.

Agreed, I phoned them and said what can you do for me and they offered me 25% off my TV package for 6 months.

[pauld]

Of course they could if they want to. They just reduce the bitrates down so effective less 'picture information' is sent to the box. The result is worse looking picture! However someone, somewhere would call them on that pretty quickly. There must be multiple  other ways to reduce picture quality though.

They could put it out on ITV3. That does a very effective job of completely destroying picture quality in my experience.

[sonicyouth]

I've got a 22" HD tv and it's impossible to read anything on the right hand side of the screen. But I'm nearly blind anyhow.