HD Skysports Bad Quality picture

[Seals74]

Sky sports football picture quality on HD is absolutely terrible. What is going on? Rebooted the box and got a brand-new HDMI cable, had the engineer out and checked all the cables and signal coming in. Other channels are fine. It’s been like this for years. Why is this? Is it being sent at a lesser bandwidth from Sky itself??. It’s getting so bad I’m thinking of going over to Sky permanently. No proper answers are ever given.
Lots of people are complaining about it so why is nothing being done about it. 

[jak1951]

I have solved this same issue by changing the Video Output !

This has been mentioned by someone before.

In settings go to Video Output (mine was automatically set to 2160).

I ticked the box to set it to 1080p. This means 2160 and 1080p are both selected.

When I did this the picture quality all round was much better. Specially Sky Sports HD.

[Seals74]

Thanks for that information, I've tried this and I can't see its made much difference.

I will say though, by changing the the settings to 1080p you won't be seeing Ultra HD in its true form?! when you switch over to those Ultra HD channels. You then have to switch back to 2160 to enjoy the full Ultra HD.

Am I right in saying that???? I'll stand corrected if not the case?! 

I can't be assed switching to and throw if that is the case. Seems ridiculous, so I keep it on 2160.

thanks 

[Sofia_B]

Thanks for getting back to us @Seals74. 

I'm sorry to hear the advice given by jak1951 hasn't help resolve the issue. 

As advised, we're happy to schedule an engineer in for you to come take a look at things should the issue persist. 

Thanks, 

[jgnotts]

I believe this is a Sky broadcast issue as I've noticed a lot of examples of very poor picture quality on football matches. I've turned off a few times because in my opinion it's been unwatchable. Last night's Southampton game was a typical example. On the distance shots it was awful but turn over to BBC for their FA cup broadcast and it was far better and looked like HD.

I'm still viewing on my old HD plasma television so only watching in 1080 but I can see a big difference in picture quality between Sky Sports HD and BT Sports HD picture quality. It's almost like the Sky Sports broadcast is at a lesser bandwidth.

It makes me wonder if Sky are deliberately crippling their HD broadcasts to get people to upgrade to 4K?

[KliqKlaq]

I'm bumping this because I've just got a new 4k TV and have exactly the same problem. I've double-checked the settings on the Virgin Box, but that isn't the issue. It's just that Sky Sports HD looks very obviously, very noticeably terrible compared to BT Sports HD and other HD channels. It looks so bad that I was convinced I was on SD, and when I flick between the two there isn't much difference. The only positive to take from this is that Sky customers also think it looks terrible, to the extent that one person on their forums had cancelled the HD channels because they couldn't tell the difference, so it's not anything that Virgin can do. I suppose I'm just waiting now till Sky Sports is available on UHD on Virgin.

[pavmas]

I just gave 30 days notice for my TV contract, I have 55 inch 4k TV as well, when I took the contract out I was told the box upscales it to HD, If you remember Setanta 20 years ago the grass was like a smudge of green paint, well that is what I have, £124.50 for football I can't watch, kept the BB and phone but not paying for football I can't watch, wife watches Netflix, prime, and youtube she never watches TV and we only have it for the footie, my contract was up in Sep and I told them back then it was unwatchable and still the same so calling it quits as no one at Virgin seems interested

[Tonino1]

Totally agree Sky sports HD rubbish. SD like watching VHS video 

[apwebb]

Agreed. I have a 4k Philips TV and the quality of all channels is great - except Sky sports which is like old VHS. The faces of players are just blurs. You can't see who's who. The other channels are pin sharp. When you show picture in menu, the menu is sharp but the sky picture is obviously blurry. Really poor service and wouldn't recommend.

[Kath_F]

Hi apwebb, 

Thanks for your post and welcome to the forums. It's great having you on board with us in the Community. 

I'm sorry to hear that your picture isn't great when watching Sky Sports. 

I've tried to check things this end but the box is showing as unreachable. Can you please turn the box on, pop a post here to let us know it is on and then leave the box on until you receive a reply here. This way we can run through diagnostics to help further. 

Thanks,