I'm thinking of getting Sky HD, but have certain reservations. I did not mind the £299 charge for the box, but asking £60 for some guy to unplug my Sky+ box and plug in the Sky HD box seemed like pure greed. Unfortuneatly there is no option as Sky have a monopoly in all areas not covered by optic fibre feeds.

There is also a limited number of channels with HD. so what do people who have Sky HD think of it?

Is it really that good, or do you wonder why you bothered once the novelty has worn off?

Look forward to hearing from Sky HD owners as your responses will help me decide whether or not to swell Sky's coffers even more.

oldun

I don't have Sky HD at the moment but do have Sky+ which is a great bit of kit. I am going to hold off getting it for three main reasons:

There are only a few channels with HD content.
I am sure the £299 price will drop next year, if it doesn't there will at least be more HD channels.
I don't have a HD TV and again I think the price of these will drop even further next year as I am really looking for a 50" or 60" plasma.

From what I hear the picture quality is supposed to be amazing and the demonstrations I have seen in the shops do back this up. The choice is yours, either pay now and be charged a premium or wait and get it cheaper (and more channels).

i personally dont think its worth it yet. i've just ordered sky+ instead after toying with both ideas. i'll be honest hd-tv is nice but its not as earth shattering as the media would have you believe. most of the content is up scaled standard tv anyway, its only on the true hd material you would notice it being more sharper and more vibrant. i've seen a few demos and i'm not that impressed, however i have been using computers in very high resoultions for a while so that could be why.

personally i'd wait till there are more channels for hd and more content filmed in hd and for the extra £10 sub to be included in the premium channel package.

if you are unsure pop into your local comet, most are demoing the hd box at the moment.

My HD box is on order and comes in a couple of weeks.

the way I see is is that if you've got the telly then you have to have to box!

Seems it's two to one against so far, this waiting for the price to drop sounds sensible. Although I'm not sure if I can wait for Sky reduce their price ready for the Christmas rush.

I've just bought a HD ready Plasma TV and it looks great, so wondered how much better HD would look.

Anyone who has had Sky HD for a while care to comment?

Many thanks

oldun

I was toying with getting Telewest HD a few months ago, but then decided against it. I have seen SkyHD at friend's places tho and it is fantastic quality. For me, I found that as I wouldn't subscribe to too much (with either Telewest or Sky) that I wouldn't actually get that much HD content. It all depends what you watch mostly.

Yes there's only a few channels, but if you watch a lot of Skyone, National Geographic, etc, then its worth it. If you also get the movie channels, then that's definitely worth it as the movie's in HD are amazing. If you don't watch much of these though, its probably not the best idea.

The main reason I wanted it at the time though was that over HDMI, picture quality increases across the board, including the SD programmes - so there's another angle of interest there too. If you're anything like me, and an absolute picture quality junkie, that'll will be enough to keep you happy for a while

I know this probably doesn't help much, but I doubt you'd be disappointed if you got it. Also, if you're a reasonably high subscriber, I know people have got off the installation fee

The reason they charge you is they have to replace the LNB on the satellite isch with two and run an extra cable to the new box.

[quote name='Steve ( West Mids )' post='374422' date='Aug 13 2006, 05:51 PM']The reason they charge you is they have to replace the LNB on the satellite isch with two and run an extra cable to the new box.[/quote]

Actually mate, I don't think that's true if you're upgrading from Sky+. the Sky+ dish already has a quad LNB installed and two feeds from the dish to the box.

Rodders thanks for the correction, I'm looking at jumping from normal Sky to Sky HD in the near future hence my confusion.

@ Rodders, sure I saw someone somewhere say that the installer reckoned that they had to go out for Sky+ installs as well because they needed to install higher grade cable - saying that on the same forum someone just tried a box with existing cabling with a quad LNB and it all worked fine....

I was going to order SkyHD but the installation time put me off! upto 3 months wait for the machine! They were more than happy to take the money from me but no accurate date for installation! I'll wait when they are more readily available!!!!

[quote name='oldun' post='374293' date='Aug 12 2006, 11:29 PM']I'm thinking of getting Sky HD, but have certain reservations. I did not mind the £299 charge for the box, but asking £60 for some guy to unplug my Sky+ box and plug in the Sky HD box seemed like pure greed. Unfortuneatly there is no option as Sky have a monopoly in all areas not covered by optic fibre feeds.

There is also a limited number of channels with HD. so what do people who have Sky HD think of it?

Is it really that good, or do you wonder why you bothered once the novelty has worn off?

Look forward to hearing from Sky HD owners as your responses will help me decide whether or not to swell Sky's coffers even more.

oldun [/quote]


my sisters got it installed it's not as great as it is hyped up to be but it is a lot better but very few channels as every one else has said. the biggest improvement they found was from the non hd channel's picture quality as the sky box has a digital output this also stopped some intereference they were getting with there normal sky box

Hmmm- expensive...it's bound to get cheaper!! I thought it was £299 + £10pm for the HD - ??

I'm waiting for the BT Vision to be launched, I heard somewhere it was PAYG TV, and HD transmission will be available sometime in the not too distant future. My company pays for my telephone line and Broadband, so I should be quids in!!

For now we just have Sky+, which is good enough.

It's about time Sky got some competition...