sky plus digital video output where is it?

[sky4us]

this is the second time iv posted this so hope it works

Connected up my new sony 32W4000 and after auto tuning all the digital terrestrial channels I looked at the output from sky on the scart line and side by side BBC1 was far better on direct terrestrial as sky degraded the signal. This is because the box transcodes from digital to analogue RGB outputs it to the TV via scart then the TV transcodes it again to digital for the display.
Why havnt thompson included a digital video output even though its non hd at least it stays in the digital dommain.
I suppose sky wants people to by the Sky HD box to do this.
Anyone looked inside a sky c+ box to see if its possible to wire in a digital output for the video.
scart to HDMI Upscalers on ebay cost 56 GBP and probably wont do any good anyway as the signals already been ruined by the sky+ box
anyone got any ideas apart from the obvious of going to Sky HD
kevin

[Brian69]

This was done years ago using a standard Sky box and reviewed in What Satellite mag. I'll try and find the details for you. I think that the cheaper option of going for a Sky HD Box would be better thro.

[Brian69]

Sorry I cannot find the artical, but I do remember that it could only be done with first generation boxes (with later boxes,no doubt including all the "+" ones, chip intergration prevented extraction of the signal)

[Brian69]

Ah found it The original artical appered in the September 2000 Edition of What Satellite & Digital TV . But there is a further artical in the July 2004 edition, which covers how to extract the digital signal from a first generation Sky + box.
Hope this helps


If you want the artical, I cannot scan it in, but if you PM me your address I will happly put the mag in the post

[Proppinupthebar]

this is the second time iv posted this so hope it works

Connected up my new sony 32W4000 and after auto tuning all the digital terrestrial channels I looked at the output from sky on the scart line and side by side BBC1 was far better on direct terrestrial as sky degraded the signal. This is because the box transcodes from digital to analogue RGB outputs it to the TV via scart then the TV transcodes it again to digital for the display.
Why havnt thompson included a digital video output even though its non hd at least it stays in the digital dommain.
I suppose sky wants people to by the Sky HD box to do this.
Anyone looked inside a sky c+ box to see if its possible to wire in a digital output for the video.
scart to HDMI Upscalers on ebay cost 56 GBP and probably wont do any good anyway as the signals already been ruined by the sky+ box
anyone got any ideas apart from the obvious of going to Sky HD
kevin

The box decrypts and decodes the MPEG transport stream back into pictures that a display can then show.
Your TV decrypts and decodes DTT MPEG transport streams, your TV still needs to decode them (from MPEG to discrete 25 frames per second video).
Your TV screen is still made up of picture elements (pixels) each one of which is made RG and B.
I've not really explained it very well, but in short you are misunderstanding how your 'digital' TV works.

A HD TV will have a HDMI (or DVI) digital input, but the HD STB is still required to decode the MPEG2/H.264 compressed digital information. The HDMI connection carries 1.5Gb/s of video data to the TV, which is created from the decoded H.264 stream at between 2 and 20Mb/s.

[dms05]

Of course it could be the BBC simply transmits more data over Freeview. In my opinion the BBC pictures varies from channel to channel and also over time on the same channel. BBC HD is possibly the best comparison.

I also seem to remember Sky had to omit 'digital out' connections due to limitations placed upon it by the Movie people who were afraid that perfect copies could be made of their movies when they were trying to sell them at Tesco for £5.99.

[Proppinupthebar]

Of course it could be the BBC simply transmits more data over Freeview. In my opinion the BBC pictures varies from channel to channel and also over time on the same channel. BBC HD is possibly the best comparison.

I also seem to remember Sky had to omit 'digital out' connections due to limitations placed upon it by the Movie people who were afraid that perfect copies could be made of their movies when they were trying to sell them at Tesco for £5.99.

For a standard definition STB the only digital video out you could have would be an SDI one. SDI inputs are pretty much only available on high end Professional broadcast equipment. I doubt anyone reading here has an SDI capable monitor at home (that hasn't made its way there from work anyway!).
Sky don't broadcast BBC channels. The Beeb does its own encoding muxing and pays a third party for uplinking. On satellite they do have to multiplex 6 or so regions of BBC1 together on three or more transponders to cover the UK. 6 of the same video being muxed together does not stat mux efficiently. Stat muxing works better with completely different material on each encoder as its unlikely all encoders require a high bit rate at any one time.

[Brian69]

As the OP has not responded if any one else would like the July 2004 mag, just let me know.