Sky cinema uhd on demand film selection

[Zafar]

Hi

Just wanted to flag up the inconsistent experience of selecting on demand sky cinema uhd movies (which tend not to have subtitles available) and their hd counterparts (which almost always do have subtitles).

UHD subtitles would be nice, but the point of this post is more about which digital asset is selected to play.

It's never clear which asset is playing whichever of the multiple routes you use to make your uhd selection -and it often erroneously defaults to HD.

I often select a UHD asset from the "also available on" section below film info, after beginning a film in HD, only to have the movie carry on from where I left off - and still in HD(I know this because it's still displaying subtitles).

This same thing occurs when I instead go via "box sets and movies -> sky cinema uhd" - movies I've begun watching in HD revert to the HD asset.

I tested this both with The Conjuring 3 and the Batman trilogy when it was available.

It's only after much fiddling around, perhaps resetting some hidden flag by watching the HD asset from the beginning again, that you are finally able to watch the UHD version - no subtitles giving fuller confirmation of this.

We need UHD subtitles of course, but at the very least a reliable experience of video quality based on you selection. At the moment, if a film weren't to have any subtitles at all (neither HD or UHD versions) I'd literally have no way of knowing what I'm watching - visuals alone don't tell you much because as we all know UHD quality can often be pretty unnoticeable.

NB There is a linked issue relating to video output settings which virgin 360 strictly restricts to one of 'automatic, 4k, 1080p, 1080i,...' (I've set it to automatic which means my TV just marks everything coming through as 4k). Tivo allowed multiple selections thereby letting your TV detect/display which specific video type is coming through, which would mean I wouldn't have to rely on subtitles as an unreliable test of what video quality I'm watching(!).

Both issues need looking at, but basic film quality selection going wrong obv needs fixing first...

[Sofia_B]

Hi @Zafar. 

Thanks for your post 🙂 

I'm very sorry to hear this, I appreciate this is super frustrating and we apologise for any inconvenience caused. 

Can you please confirm what box you have currently so we can best advise on this from here? 

Is it only on Sky Cinema you run into this issue? 

Thanks, 

[Zafar]

Hi Sofia

1) I have a Virgin 360.

2) As far as I can tell none of the other sky on demand uhd channels seem to have this problem - programs are sometimes duplicated across 'Sky On Demand Ultra  HD' and (via 'also available on') 'Sky Max HD' for example, but perhaps because of a clearer separation between the two channels, than exists with Sky Cinema UHD/Sky Cinema HD, you never seem get the wrong asset (HD instead of UHD) playing. Haven't tested exhaustively of course, so could be wrong, but issue seems to be with Sky Cinema alone.

Thanks

[Paul_DN]

Hi Zafar,

Thank you for reaching back out to us and for the update, this isn't something we are aware of however I have fed this back and reached out for some further help to see if I can get an answer, once I hear anything I will update you?

Regards

Paul.