My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

Hi everyone - my first post. Hoping you can help me.

A couple of days ago I have had V+ installed however I am finding that the picture quality on both SD and HD is noticably poorer than SkyHD I had at my previous house (using the same TV)

Both SD & HD seem to have motion blur espically around the faces when they are moving quickly. When fast movements happen you just don't seem to notice. Text appears to have blurring around the egdes too

The channels look like they are zoomed in too much. The TV is set to Dot to Dot so isn't doing this

The menu is blurry, i feel like my eyes have aged 50 years. It is better on 720p however this TV is a 1080p set so I don't really want to use this setting

My TV is a 46" Sharp Aquos DH77. I am getting the following technical details on the SA box
SNR 32db/31db/32db
AGC Signal 10db/9db/5dvmv
Return power 40dbmv

I have been told by faults that my return power is low and they will send an engineer out. Not getting my hopes up as the person who installed it said i couldnt have the remote to control volume (which i have now managed to do)

Any help is much appreciated.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

I found pretty much the same when I had both I now have Sky HD which I find far superier

:welcome:

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

Same I find skyhd picture much much better.

The V+ upscaling is just annoying to me but hopefully someone can help you out with this, welcome to the forum btw

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

I have found the picture far superior to SKY HD - maybe it depends on the install?

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

the SA has an issue with the menu where is is slightly blurry in 1080i (V+ box does not do 1080p all broadcasts are 1080i max here in UK).
check to see what gives you the better image 1080i (wide) or 720p (wide) taking no notice of the menu. once you have decided then re calibrate yout tv as its a different device to the Sky HD box and every device is unique in terms of how the image looks.

i have a Sharp Aquos 37" LC37X20E and it looks fine after being re calibrated on 1080p.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

See if when the engineer comes whether they can swap your SA box for a Samsung ;) (Providing they have some on the van)

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

Ben B is right i have found the samsung v+ to be a better picture to the SA v+ might be worth asking ;)

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

I have seen a lot on these forums that the Samsung seems to be a bit better. Is there a reason why I didn't get one (i only had it installed on the 16th).

With regards to TV settings I have reset all picture settings. The sky box must have a much brighter output as I have had to increase Backlight and Contrast by quite a bit to make the picture look any good.

Last night i pressed the reset button on the box and notice that this has made the menus clearer. All the menus now have a dark grey square around them which they did not before. All channels seem a little better and my TV has now recognised the box as an Explorer 3000 (and set it as the name for the HDMI input).

Still getting a kind of fuzz around faces when they move. Channel changing is soooo sloooooowww too.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

Don't get that problem, I have the SA V+ box and a sammy HD TV. I have never had Sky HD so can't compare, but I am perfectly satisfied.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

Its an Explorer 8300DVB

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

ive seen a samsung HD box and a SA box running and to be honest there is very little difference if any at all in the overall image quality, especially once the tv`s are calibrated. remember they are both connected to the same VM network, accepting the same signal from VM and using the same compression and bit rates (all limited by VM).
the only difference i saw was that the menus are not fuzzy with the Samsung box on 1080i but thats about the only difference there is.

sure these Samsung boxes supports MPEG 4 but as VM dont use it its an option that is not being used and therefore of no use.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

Is there anything that can be done to stop the zooming in on the channels? If i switch the the analogue version of BBC 1 for example when the sport relief has been on you get bars top and bottom. On Virgin SA box I am not getting any bars no matter if i set it to 1080 wide or normal. I notice on most channels hair is being cut off peoples heads and everything just looks too close.

On sky the pictures look liquid when viewing HD. On Virgin the pictures look bitty/dotty. Like when you sharpen a picture too much.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

alter the V+ box to 720p wide or 1080i wide. if you keep it on 720p or 1080i it will alter the image between widescreen and non widescreen dependong on the broadcast. once you do this alter the tv aspect setting on your TV to full rather that dot by dot.

also for the bitty/dotty effect turn down your sharpness setting a notch or 2 on your tv. if you are still not happy with it enable DNR on your tvs settings. beware that enabling DNR will clear up the image but also has the effect of causing ghosting on some broadcst images, its a sharp spacific issue.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

Cheers for info. I have tried this different settings but you still don't get the bars as you do on terrestrial. You do on say futurma and simpsons but they are the vertical bars. The box is getting rid of the horizontal bars.

I thought Dot by Dot should be used as this ensures the TV does nothing to the picture? Full stretches the picture even more.

I had a lot of problems with the TV with ghosting with SkyHD at first. This was fixed by turning DNR, Film mode, and Active Contrast off. These are still off now.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

dot to dot gives you 1-1 pixel mapping on your tv but the problem is that some of the channels are not centered or have bars that annoy. setting the tv to full does stretch the image but it gets rid of the bars.
as for the vertical bars are you watching a HD channel as any HD channel that broadcast non HD content has to display the broadcast in its original broacast resolution so on FX HD with Family Guy or C4 HD with The Simpsons you get the vertical bars as its not HD content.

totaally agree with the DNR, Flim mode and active contrast issues its something that Sharp have an issue with ghosting once these settings are enabled (including mine) and if possible you should really leave it off but the DNR will clear the dotty effect up but at the cosr of ghosting. the way i get rid of the dotty effect is to lower my sharpnes and that solves the issue.

one thing ive found on the internet browsing the AV Forums is that the image in VM is generally slightly softer (slightly fuzzy/blurry) on VM as apposed to SKY. i think its part of the effect from upscaling that the SKY HD box does not do.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

I'm not really sure what you mean by horizontal bars? You'll see them on analogue as that is not a widescreen broadcast, you'll see 14:9 letterboxed in a 4:3 frame on say BBC if I remember rightly (been a while since I watched analogue!). On digital the programmes should be widescreen (16:9) so should take up the whole screen and there shouldn't be any borders. There are a few exceptions, with 4:3 programs like Simpsons as you rightly say. There are a few 4:3 channels left too (MTV is one example - you may see letter boxed content here).

Personally I'd recommend not using the "Wide" settings on 720P/1080i as these will stretch the 4:3 images to fill the screen. I prefer to watch the programs in the correct aspect ratio. These are the only stretch/zoom options on the V+, anything else must be on your TV I'd think?

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

The reason is simple. Although they have two v+ boxes in use, Virgin do not offer a choice. While the engineer may have both models in his van and be willing to offer you a choice, more often than not, you get what the engineer happens to have in his van.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

like i mentioned before there is very little difference between the SA and Samsung boxes in terms of image quality. the differences between the 2 ive seen can even be put down to user preference in tv calibaration rather then the boxes themsleves.
the thing is most people who have had both boxes are having a faulty box swapped so the samsung is bound to be better as its a fully working box.
remember they are both using the same compression, bandwidth, signal that is supplied from VM so the limiting factor is VM.

after calibration there will be hardly any difference at all between the image produced by both boxes (other than the SA box has the 1080i menu bug making the menus slightly soft). the box performs better as in remote response is faster and there in less lag with the box in general but image is pretty much the same.
we as human are funny things and can be sure we see an improvement in something just because its new and i think this is what most people are doing with the Samsung box

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

I wasn't actually saying one box is better than the other.

Re: My brand new V+ poor compared to SkyHD
 

I find the samsung box very poor in terms of sd compared to the SA V+.