Bad Sky Hd picture

We have had sky plus for past 2 years, always with a perfect picture. We have a 42" Samsung Hd ready tv...about 3 years old. Other people with Sky themselves would come to our house and comment on the great picture. Anyway, a few weeks ago we upgraded to the HD box, and since then the picture has been nowhere near as good. The background is all blurry at times and it is really noticeable at night time when the room is dark. It was connected to the tv with just a HDMI cable, so I connected up the Scart again to see would it make a difference...it didn't. We don't have the HD pack, so would it make a difference whether I watch it through the scart or HDMI? Also the teletext only works through the scart...is this right? Would it have something to do with a dodgy HDMI cable, or has anyone any suggestions?

Hi Slookie,
HDMI should always be better than scart as the signal is transmitted from box to tv in native digital format, where a scart-based signal is converted from digital to analog and back to digital by the tv. Standard definition channels should still look (slightly) better if you are using a hdmi cable to a HD tv.

The three things I would look at are:
1. SkyHD box - make sure box is outputting highest resolution possible (>settings>picture>HD Resolution output)
2. TV - Make sure TV is set to output highest resolution (should probably be automatic unless..
3. Check HDMI cable - dodgy cable may be corrupting signal or preventing TV from recongnising HD quality signal.

Teletext shouldn't be affected by either scart or hdmi. Some channels transmit "old-style" teletext you access through the text-button on the TV remote, while others don't transmit teletext "old-style" anymore and have to be accessed through the text button on the Sky remote.

Take a look at the following website (http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/skyhd.html) which gives a good overview of SkyHD.
Regards,
C.

If you set the SKY box to the maximum resolution 1080i output, then your TV has to handle the scaling (assuming as a 3 year old 'HD Ready' set that's not capable of displaying a Full HD 1080i image). Your TV may not be doing a good job of this scaling and you could set the Sky box to scale to 720p.

What model TV is it?
Leo

Ok the resolution was set to 1080, so thats not it. This is the tv model...[broken link removed]

If the Sky box is set to 1080, then the TV has to do the scaling. Try setting the Sky box to 720p and see if that makes a difference.

You could also try these settings.
Leo