Michael Kimb Jones

I finally found a local shop that has SkyHD to play with before I throw £300 at something I have never seen/used.

The SkyHD box was connected up to a 42″ Bravia LCD and I was given free reign over the remote and told to play around.

It was very disappointing

Here is why:

Interface
I expected sky to update the almost-10-year-old UI. I wanted to see swish HD menus, similar to Media Centre PCs or the Xbox 360. Sadly its the same old boxy blue bland stuff.

Also the HUD for the Sky+ function looks TERRIBLE in HD (you know the Play and Pause circle). Its blocky, nasty and irritating. How much work would it have been to increase the resolution of a simple icon? It makes the whole experience seem cheap.

Content
Most of the HD channels looked mediocre at best. I expected National Geographic to be one of the best but a documentary on Apes had pixelated motion blur and the colours and details were washed out. Discovery was slightly better but nothing like the Demos I have seen in the past.

Fortunately SkySportsHD looked rather good. Unfortunately it was the Cricket. However it still gave a good indication of what live HD video should look like. The picture was crisp colours were natural and detail was by far the best of the HD channels I had available.

Movies looked ok, they were DVD quality and nothing really stood out.

Hardware
The box is huge and ugly. Talking original Xbox design school here. It looks great on the website and in the press but in the flesh its a monster coming over the hill.

The ‘new’ remote is a waste of however much money Sky put into its re-design (probably very little) its STILL too large and the button config is still as mis-placed as ever.

Overall
I am glad I found the demo before signing up. I would have been red with rage if I had ordered this and it be this inadequate.

For now Sky+ will do until they work on updating there HD services.

SkyHD Links

• SkyHD Official Site
• HDTV UK - Sky HD clips reviewed
• AV Forums - SkyHD section