Question Sky Q box which resolution looks best ?

panman40

Distinguished Member
Joined
Oct 19, 2008
Messages
20,982
Reaction score
8,564
Points
4,033
I’ve been running my sky Q box at 1080p resolution, recently though I tried 2160 4k but to me it doesn’t look quite as good an image as 1080p on my 4k TV. I don’t have sports or movies, just boxsets.

anyone else find this ?.
 
Your mk1 eyeball is the best test. Leave it on 1080 if that's what looks best to you.
 
And even that may not be a dramatic difference.
 
Depends on the upscaling ability of your tv.
i have sky q set to 1080i as that is what it is natively running at.
so if you set to 1080p or higher, the sky box is upscaling, and I know in my case my tv will do a noticeably better job.
 
I have a 77" C8. With regard to Sky Q and which resolution is the better setting for HD I wanted to get an example so I downloaded Season 10, Episode 4 of Curb Your Enthusiasm last night. I had the Sky Q box set to 2160p. There is a scene (17 min mark) where the cast are exiting a plane onto the runway. If you watch the character Susie Greene, she is wearing a red and white striped top. I see jaggies and bleed when watching this scene in 2160p. If I switch to 1080i this is cleaned up by the C8's upscaling. It looks perfect with no jaggies or bleed.

This test scene has also been confirmed to work by @Andrew1472 here:
LG OLED C9 Owners and Discussion Thread

It might be that some Sky Q boxes are better at upscaling than others? I can see that my C8 is better at it than 'my' Sky Q box.

Update: it appears that it is the progressive sstting that is causing the issue. As pointed out by @Parry in the C9 thread the scene above is not affected when set to 1080i but is affected when set to 1080p and 2160p.
 
Last edited:
I have a 77" C8. With regard to Sky Q and which resolution is the better setting for HD I wanted to get an example so I downloaded Season 10, Episode 4 of Curb Your Enthusiasm last night. I had the Sky Q box set to 2160p. There is a scene (17 min mark) where the cast are exiting a plane onto the runway. If you watch the character Susie Greene, she is wearing a red and white striped top. I see jaggies and bleed when watching this scene in 2160p. If I switch to 1080i this is cleaned up by the C8's upscaling. It looks perfect with no jaggies or bleed.

This test scene has also been confirmed to work by @Andrew1472 here:
LG OLED C9 Owners and Discussion Thread

It might be that some Sky Q boxes are better at upscaling than others? I can see that my C8 is better at it than 'my' Sky Q box.

Update: it appears that it is the progressive sstting that is causing the issue. As pointed out by @Parry in the C9 thread the scene above is not affected when set to 1080i but is affected when set to 1080p and 2160p.
The puzzling thing for me is that while 1080i clearly sorted out the issues in that scene you found, the Sky Q menus are softer. At 2160p they are sharp and distinct, but slightly blurred at 1080i.
Experimenting just now with the football on BT Sport on Sky, 2160p seems sharper too with more detail on the grass for example. I can’t do a side by side obviously which is what I really need, but having switched between the two resolutions several times, I’m fairly certain my eyes aren’t deceiving me.
i have no explanation for this. Logically 1080i would be best, but it’s not. Whether that’s my eyes, my Q box or my TV I have no idea.
 
The puzzling thing for me is that while 1080i clearly sorted out the issues in that scene you found, the Sky Q menus are softer. At 2160p they are sharp and distinct, but slightly blurred at 1080i.
Experimenting just now with the football on BT Sport on Sky, 2160p seems sharper too with more detail on the grass for example. I can’t do a side by side obviously which is what I really need, but having switched between the two resolutions several times, I’m fairly certain my eyes aren’t deceiving me.
i have no explanation for this. Logically 1080i would be best, but it’s not. Whether that’s my eyes, my Q box or my TV I have no idea.


The menu and epg overlays are likely to be 720p (uses less data for the epg) . They are 720p on Freesat-HD boxes . If you elect to show native resolution they look a bit blurred because of the double scaling.
 
The puzzling thing for me is that while 1080i clearly sorted out the issues in that scene you found, the Sky Q menus are softer. At 2160p they are sharp and distinct, but slightly blurred at 1080i.
Experimenting just now with the football on BT Sport on Sky, 2160p seems sharper too with more detail on the grass for example. I can’t do a side by side obviously which is what I really need, but having switched between the two resolutions several times, I’m fairly certain my eyes aren’t deceiving me.
i have no explanation for this. Logically 1080i would be best, but it’s not. Whether that’s my eyes, my Q box or my TV I have no idea.
Iv noticed that 1080i is best for standard viewing, eg. Friends on comedy central, bbc news, itv soaps etc. Then I switch to 2160 for UHD programs. The exception to this is all football, hd or otherwise looks better when sky q upscales and not the TV.
 
The puzzling thing for me is that while 1080i clearly sorted out the issues in that scene you found, the Sky Q menus are softer. At 2160p they are sharp and distinct, but slightly blurred at 1080i.
Experimenting just now with the football on BT Sport on Sky, 2160p seems sharper too with more detail on the grass for example. I can’t do a side by side obviously which is what I really need, but having switched between the two resolutions several times, I’m fairly certain my eyes aren’t deceiving me.
i have no explanation for this. Logically 1080i would be best, but it’s not. Whether that’s my eyes, my Q box or my TV I have no idea.
I noticed this too on the BT Sport football last night after switching from the Man City game, in UHD, at half time. I reset to 1080i and it did look poor.
 
I noticed this too on the BT Sport football last night after switching from the Man City game, in UHD, at half time. I reset to 1080i and it did look poor.
Thats good to know. I did wonder if I was seeing things.:D
I think I’m going to leave the box on 2160p to be honest. The odd scene that looks odd isn’t enough to make the hassle of switching resolutions worthwhile for me. Most of the time it looks identical either way to me.
At least I’m aware of what sort of artefacts to look for now, so can carrying on testing as needed if something doesn’t look quite right.
Thanks for finding that particular scene and thinking to test it. It’s one of the most useful things I’ve ever read on AVF. Nice one.
 
Thats good to know. I did wonder if I was seeing things.:D
I think I’m going to leave the box on 2160p to be honest. The odd scene that looks odd isn’t enough to make the hassle of switching resolutions worthwhile for me. Most of the time it looks identical either way to me.
At least I’m aware of what sort of artefacts to look for now, so can carrying on testing as needed if something doesn’t look quite right.
Thanks for finding that particular scene and thinking to test it. It’s one of the most useful things I’ve ever read on AVF. Nice one.
Yes I think I will just leave it set to 2160p. It's always interesting to test just to see where improvements may be had, even if you end up going around in a circle! :D
 
I’ve got mine set to 2160, just seems to look better. Plus i can’t be bothered changing it for different programs.
 
Depends on the upscaling ability of your tv.
i have sky q set to 1080i as that is what it is natively running at.
so if you set to 1080p or higher, the sky box is upscaling, and I know in my case my tv will do a noticeably better job.
So if you set the Q box to 1080i then the TV will do the upscaling, and if you set it to 1080p then the Q box itself will do the upscaling?
 
Strictly speaking conversion from 1080i to 1080p is deinterlacing. At the end of the day the tv always displays it’s native resolution and its i or p. Most TVs display p or progressive scan and nowadays are HD (1080) or 4 k (2160). If you feed them anything other than their native 1080p or 2160p they convert the picture to that. I’ve never noticed any difference when watching content. Menus and home pages yes.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom