Virgin Media Community

[Leedsgooner]

Just put the Huddersfield v Peterborough game on via the red button and the picture is purely awful, admittedly i am watching on a 75" screen but i think i will have to switch off as i am sure it is damaging my eyes. I am sure Sky show the red button games in HD or am i wrong ?

[japitts]

Red-button feeds are generally SD, so you're looking at a lot of upscaling going on there. I'm not surprised it's a poor picture.

One of various reasons for sport to remain on linear broadcast channels, but that's another debate.

[nodrogd]

On some Sky boxes pressing the Red Button allows access to Broadband streams that show these games in HD. For customers with older boxes, plus Sky’s competition they only offer the satellite distributed linear broadcast SD versions. This only echos what Sky have been doing for years. Sky are in control of the app that runs behind the red button on VM & could easily modify it to access the Broadband streams if they chose too.

[newapollo]

Hi @Leedsgooner 

I generally watch red button games using the Sky Sports app. It's a far better quality picture.

It works great when using either my desktop or laptop via the Sky Sports Desktop Player which it will ask you to install

https://www.skysports.com/videoplayer/instructions .

I haven't tried this but it may be possible to connect your laptop/desktop to the TV via HDMI.

I've also managed to sideload the Sky Sports app onto my Firestick and use that to watch red button games.

[Roger_Gooner]

An SD broadcast means that the resolution of 576i has to be upscaled to 2160p, and the result is going to be poor on a 75" TV. If you watch a lot of SD your TV is too big, and a smaller (e.g. 50" or 55") will be better.

[nodrogd]

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@Roger_Gooner wrote:

An SD broadcast means that the resolution of 576i has to be upscaled to 2160p, and the result is going to be poor on a 75" TV. If you watch a lot of SD your TV is too big, and a smaller (e.g. 50" or 55") will be better.

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To add to this you have to bear in mind that the broadcast stream Sky is using is fixed bandwidth. Sky is only using one satellite SD channel to broadcast however many streams they are providing. The maximum they can get away with is 6. So when 6 games are being broadcast the streams are at the lowest quality (bandwidth). If only 4 games are broadcast you should see a noticeable improvement, & 2 games considerably more so.