Sat Tv With Hdmi Cable

[zzSleepyJohn]

Just wondering if anyone locally has a satellite decoder box with an HDMI connection and tried hooking up to a decent 16:9 TV with an HDMI cable.

I've heard that when people buy a new 16:9 TV and connect it to satellite by ordinary AV cables, the results on Thai TV are disappointing, but that with a proper HDMI cable and sat box, even Thai TV looks much much better. Then there are a few slightly higher than normal definition programmes and a couple of high def demo channels that you can get on a free-to-air C-band dish.

I'm not sure how easy it is to get a satellite decoder with an HDMI connection here these days, or whether they're affordable. I know in UK they've come down a lot in price and believe they're now available there for about £130. I even wondered about bringing one out here from there, but am not sure if they'd be compatible with transmissions in the Asian skies.

Anyone any experience with this at all?

[mcgriffith]

Well, zzSleepy, if we are discussing hookups for pirated signals off satellites, unfortunately Thai Visa does not condone or permit these discussions.

Closed unless ample reason and proof are shown demonstrating legal signal acquisition.

[mcgriffith]

Topic re-opened.

[surangw]

if you have fta receiver ( free to air) the latest ones have hdmi output

the format from the sats to the receiver is the same everywhere.

however I have not seen many fta dishes in use ( most I see in thailand have logo from pay services)

please inform me if I am wrong

[zzSleepyJohn]

if you have fta receiver ( free to air) the latest ones have hdmi output

the format from the sats to the receiver is the same everywhere.

however I have not seen many fta dishes in use ( most I see in thailand have logo from pay services)

please inform me if I am wrong

I think there must be special new format on high definition satellite links, because none of my old receivers will lock into them even when I've set the frequency and symbol rate correctly.

There is some limited free-to-air on small ku-band dishes, but most of it comes on large C-band dishes. C-band sats have very much larger footprints so the selection of available programmes is Asia-wide and beyond. Whilst many of these transmit in 4:3 format with 544x576 pixels, there are now a few doing 16:9 and 720x576, so it's these latter that would benefit most from an HDMI cable connection.

What I've heard, though I've yet to see it demonstrated, is that even the Thai channels via UBC/True or via Thaicom C-band benefit greatly from an HDMI hookup, so that's why I'm interested to hear from anyone on here who's tried it. There were quite a few posts on here a few months ago saying how Thai TV looked worse on a new 16:9 TV than it had done on their old TV. They cited that their big new screen only served to emphasise grain and poor resolution from Thai TV. I'd like to find out whether that poor quality was really down to the Thai TV source, or to the way they were connecting their new TV to the satellite.

By the way, the logos you see on the ku-band dishes around here don't mean very much. It's which satellite they're pointed to that tells what they're doing.

[Benjie]

720x576 is not a 16:9 format.

Probably best to wait until some HD channels appear as all HD is in 16:9.

SHouldn't this be moved to the Audio & video subsection?

[zzSleepyJohn]

720x576 is not a 16:9 format.

Probably best to wait until some HD channels appear as all HD is in 16:9.

SHouldn't this be moved to the Audio & video subsection?

DeutscheWelle on AsiaSat 3S is 720x576 and is 16:9. Similarly Dutch BVN on Thaicom 5 I believe. Those aren't MPEG4 HD, admittedly, but wouldn't they and the other 720x576 channels around benefit considerably from an HDMI connection? Othewise why would modern MPEG2 sat boxes be equipped with HDMI connectors at all?

Reason for specifically posting here on Chiangrai was to try and see if anyone locally in this area has hooked up with HDMI.

[Benjie]

DeutscheWelle on AsiaSat 3S is 720x576 and is 16:9. Similarly Dutch BVN on Thaicom 5 I believe. Those aren't MPEG4 HD, admittedly, but wouldn't they and the other 720x576 channels around benefit considerably from an HDMI connection? Othewise why would modern MPEG2 sat boxes be equipped with HDMI connectors at all?

Reason for specifically posting here on Chiangrai was to try and see if anyone locally in this area has hooked up with HDMI.

A HDMI connection is simply a digital connection, the compression is the main reason for poor image from satellites if you are already using S-Video or Scart /Component I don't think there would be much noticable improvement,

720x576 is obviously a 4:3 image (PAL).

[zzSleepyJohn]

...... I don't think there would be much noticable improvement,

That used to be my conclusion too, until an acquaintance told me they'd seen vastly improved quality on Thai TV when they'd tried HDMI, so now I want to see it for myself before I totally swallow my acquaintances' story. Hence my question whether anyone around Chiangrai here has an HDMI connector on their satbox and tried it.

720x576 is obviously a 4:3 image (PAL).

Obviously I can't argue with the arithmetic there, but if you look on Asiasat 3S http://satcodx4.tele-satellite.com/1055/eng/ under 3.760 GHz H 26000, and compare the entries for TV5 (France) and DW-TV (Germany), you will see they are both 720x576 and MPEG2, but the former is listed as 4:3 while the latter is 16:9. Also my satbox displays them quite differently. DW-TV (and Dutch BVN on Thaicom 5) fill my 4:3 screen height even though the picture content is 16:9 and there's definitely something different with them, compared to the way other channels display blank screen top and bottom when they're got 16:9 content.

So I'm still curious. I haven't got any satbox equipped with HDMI myself, nor have I got a 16:9 TV. Those two items are both waiting for each other like chicken & egg once I've seen for myself if my acquaintance's alleged big improvement is real.