unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

who has the better Picture Quality Sky or NTL. I believe NTL, but many people say that it is SKY.

I believe NTL do not compress the signal as much as Sky, but I could be wrong.

Setch

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

On the majority of channels, the bitrate (in fact, the entire MPEG stream) is identical on cable and satellite. This is because the majority of channels on NTL are taken from satellite.

There are a few exceptions though. The BBC channels (except Parliament and the regional BBC1s) are taken from your local digital terrestrial aerial, as are the ITV channels, C4 adn C5. I beleive that the bitrate is higher on these than satellite, but you'd have to check.

Finally, there are a few channels which are received uncompressed by NTL, who do all the necessary work themselves. Examples of these are most of the Sky branded channels (Sky One, Sky Sports and Sky Movies). These are done this way (in most cases) to give a higher bitrate than satellite.

Of course, picture quality is subjective, and also depends on the quality of the MPEG decoder, the TV, and connecting leads...

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

Having had both, on the same TV, I would have to say that Sky has a better picture quality, without a doubt.

The quality of the Interactive, TV guide etc is also better on Sky.

As for Sky+, I run out of superlatives.

I still have ntl cable and phone though.

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

sky hands down , the mother in law has just had ntl digi put in and the picture is poor to say the least , and that is on a £1000 widescreen tv compared to my £200 ws tv and sky :disturbd: :D :D :D

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

tks for the response everybody.

Setch

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

Is your mother in law's tv very large? as this will make a substancial difference to the picture quality. Same as zooming into an image makes it appear more pixelated.

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

32" , not so big that i would have it would make a massive difference , it is hard to describe , but the picture is blurry when anything moves quickly :disturbd: :D

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

With our current standards, IMO, anything looks bad (or, could look better) on a screen > 28" regardless of tv or broadcast method.

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

sorry dont agree , i have seen sky on 32" and above tv's and it looks fine :)

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

I would definately say Sky was far better but that view is largely because Sky has always had a stable picture for us here whilst the NTL picture was always pixellating, dithering and freezing. Hence the NTL DTV box was dropped and replaced by a Sky+ box. Now Sky+ is in another league and Sky+ recordings are as good as the original stream.

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

Same here!

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

Well according to the DTV courses I went on the DTV standards for data compression are identical for Cable DTV, SAT DTV and Terrestrial DTV. Under normal conditions the picture quality should be identical between the 3 sources as they all have to adhere to the standards set down when the DTv licences where set-up.

And regardless of what anyone says everytime I see ITV1 on My folks 32" widescreen (SKY) on a saturday night It looks horrid. Its all pixallated.

As For variable compression rates this is true but sky should have the same issues Ie. 8mbit multiplex with four channles in and one suddenly shows a live action crowd shot then its bandwidth requirements will rocket. However low bandwidth channels such as QVC should alwyas balance this out.

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

QVC was one of the first channels to start dithering and freezing when we had NTL DTV.

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

Given a reasonable connexion, there shouldn't really be much difference between Sky and ntl on a 32" TV on the main channels.

If anyone has consistent trouble with either, then there is probably a problem with the signal.

Having said that, the level of compression isn't set by the licences. There are enough channels who broadcast with a high level of compression, and who look bad.

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

I beg to differ,
I have ntl, on a sony 32" widescreen, my father has sky on a panasonic 32" widescreen
Day to day its hard to tell the differance, BUT, When it comes to football and other fast paced sport, sky's picture is so much better! No blockyness around the players faces, no wishy washy greenish grass when the cameras are following fast action(please dont say its a Network/HFC/House fault!!! cos it aint!)
Thus leading me to believe they have a better bitrate or compression method

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

Personally I would say the Ntl picture is very, very slightly better on some channel.

90% you can't see the difference but a few times some of the Sky channels have been a little bit blocky on both my boxes.

TBH its not enough of a difference to be noticeable unless you are looking for blocks etc.

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

I've been pretty disappointed with the quality of the NTL stream, in comparison with the DVB-T broascast i've been watching for the past few months. I recall sky was pretty iffy as well. I'd gladly ditch all the +1 channels and the info channels and the radio channels to give the extra bandwidth to the remaining channels. I'd have thought that VOD would've given them extra bandwidth to play with. Perhaps when the entire UK goes VOD for the channels that'll be changing, the bandwidth will be redistributed?

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

Or even something less sinister such as a more efficient refresh rate on the TV (100hz as opposed less)? Scart connection quality can also play a major role in picture quality.

As an example - I have sky (I don't live in a cabled area), and have two boxes connected to two 32" TV's. The TV's are different (one is Sony and the other is Samsung) and the Sony has a refresh rate of 100hz with gold plated scart leads etc..... the picture quality is marginally better than the Samsung TV... but becomes noticeable during fast paced action as you say.

Oh yeah.... Let's not forget that weather still effects the signal on Sky and during heavy wind, hail etc.. your picture may break up or freeze.

I am being honestly unbiased here - but there should be extremely little difference between the both in terms of quality. Cable should, in theory, offer better performance than a satellite stream, however I don't think that cable/fibre optic supplies have yet been used to optimum efficiency.

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

According to other posters (Tristan, I think), for most channels, NTL just send out exactly the same signal that's output from Sky or Freeview (no recompression). For Sky One, and the Sky sports channels, they recieve an uncompressed signal, which they compress at a higher bitrate than Sky do.

So, in theory, the picture on those channels should be better on NTL than Sky. In practice, it depends on a lot of things, such as quality of decoding circuitry (play a DVD on a cheapy DVD player, then a top of the range one for a demo of that), quality of display device, cabling etc.

As for compression method, well, all Digital broadcasting in this country uses MPEG 2.

Re: unbiased answer needed NTL vs SKY PQ
 

I can count the number of times that weather has affected my Sky signal on the fingers of one hand. However when I had NTL DTV very hot weather always used to affect picture quality with plenty of dithering and freezing going on. A few box swaps and engineer visits never solved the problem. Swapping the NTL box for a Sky+ box did. :)