Sky Sports UHD anytime soon?

[Koolmacher]

• It's now 3 years since the press statement claiming a deal has been struck with Sky for the provision of movies and sport in 4k uhd. Cinema 4k came in 2021 on virginmedia but when are we getting Sky Sport in 4k uhd?

My contract is up in September and a return to Sky is looking very tempting at the minute. 

[newapollo]

CH 532 is showing Sky Sports Main Event UHD.

Ch 533 is showing  Sky Sports Football UHD

The build up to the Leeds v Forest game isn't available in UHD as that is only currently being shown on Sky Sports Premier League HD according to the Sky listings https://www.sky.com/tv-guide/20230205/4101-1/402 

It would though be nice if we did have a feed to Sky Sports Premier League UHD on 534

Yesterday a complaint was raised on the Sky Community Forums  about the build up to todays Leeds v Forest game not being avilable in UHD - it appears it may actually be a Sky decision

[Roger_Gooner]

The match broadcast on channels 532 and 533 was in UHD, HDR (HLG variant) and 5.1.

[HavencroftKev]

But the St Johnson v Celtic game was on both channels 532 & 533 but the quality was different between those channels. 532 looked like the normal HD channel, 533 was much better quality. 

[newapollo]

Hi @HavencroftKev 

I've switched between both channels and it does take a second or two for the picture to refocus when switching channels and if anything, I would say that 532 is a slightly better quality image. It's also a fraction of a second in front of 533.

I watched part of the EFL game between Norwich and Burnley yesterday on 532 (just to see the score as I was watching Everton v Arsenal on BT Ultimate) and thought the picture quality for that EFL game wasn't as good as that for the PL games shown on Sky UHD

To be perfectly honest though overall I believe that the Sky Sports PL games in UHD are on a par with those on BT Sport Ultimate

I have noticed that pressing the context button on 532 gives additional Subtitle and Audio options that aren't available on 533.

[Roger_Gooner]

I was only able to get a glance at both channels, so wasn't able to judge the PQ (although I didn't see an obvious difference). I've got a V6, though that should give the same UHD result as a 360).

[InfoAddict]

I only have a 1080p TV. The picture quality of UHD downsampled on my 1080p TV looks much better than the HD channels, there is no artefacting, distortion, noise or smearing, and the normal HD looks blurry in comparison due to the lower resolution and detail of 1080i vs 2160p. BT Sports Ultimate is the same. So you don't need a 4K TV to see a benefit of an improved picture. 

But there is one problem. The Sky Sports UHD channel is HLG, which means it has both SDR and HDR colour palettes available. But annoyingly, it forces the HDR colour palette, with no option on the Virgin box to force the SDR palette. The HDR palette looks muted on an SDR TV. 

BT Sports Ultimate on Virgin doesn't suffer from this problem, because it only broadcasts in SDR. BT Sports Ultimate in HDR is only available direct from BT themselves. 

So I hope Virgin add an option in the settings to force SDR. 

The funny thing is, if I rewind or fast forward the UHD channel, for a split second the SDR colour palette kicks in and then it goes back to muted. So it's there, we just need the box to allow us to force it. 

[Richardr1]

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@InfoAddict wrote:

But there is one problem. The Sky Sports UHD channel is HLG, which means it has both SDR and HDR colour palettes available. But annoyingly, it forces the HDR colour palette, with no option on the Virgin box to force the SDR palette. The HDR palette looks muted on an SDR TV. 

BT Sports Ultimate on Virgin doesn't suffer from this problem, because it only broadcasts in SDR. BT Sports Ultimate in HDR is only available direct from BT themselves. 

So I hope Virgin add an option in the settings to force SDR. . 

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Not that I've tried (or can as I have an HLG compatible TV), but do you have the picture settings to only use the 1080 settings?

[InfoAddict]

Thanks for your suggestion. I tried that but it doesn't make a difference unfortunately. 

[Roger_Gooner]

I'm not sure I understand the problem as the vast majority of HD TVs don't support HDR, so the EDID will not identify the TV as an HDR-capable display (meaning that the source - the TV box in this case - won't send the HDR signals).

[InfoAddict]

I don't have a HDR TV yet, but I am interested in the technology and have watched many YouTube videos, read many forum posts and read many articles on it over the last 3 years. 

So my guess is that the box is playing the channel in HDR regardless and not reading the EDID of the TV, so that then when it sends the picture to my TV, my TV is displaying a HDR picture in SDR which looks terrible. HDR playback with a SDR display produces this muted colour palette. 

I have seen this exact kind of thing when I have played a HDR video file on my PC on my SDR monitor.