Invaluable SKY HD Workarounds
October 29, 2008 (52 Responses)
I JUST upgraded to SKY HD and discovered two nasty issues which I just now found workarounds for. Trust me, these will save you hours of grief from Wifey…
I suppose I should start with a definition of the two problems. The scenario is that I upgraded from a 2 year old SKY+ box to a new shiny SKY HD box, thereby switching from a SCART connection to a HDMI connection. Originally my SCART connection for the SKY feed was coming in on channel AV1, and my DVD player was coming in on AV2.
I should also say that these workarounds were ok for me, with my specific equipment, but I’d recommend you check out the forums at places like http://www.avforums.com and http://www.digitalspy.co.uk and check for help against your specific equipment. In my case I have a Sony Bravia 32inch LCD Flatscreen HD TV (Model 32V2000), a current generation SKY HD box and a Pioneer DVD 626 home cinema system. The two specific problems I ran into are as follows:-
- Upon power-on the TV no longer ‘found’ the HDMI channel so I had to scan through the TV Remote in order to find the SKY broadcast. Every time.
- My ‘Smart’ picture format capability vanished; in other words everything was widescreen by default and I couldn’t change it. This is a real pain when viewing non-HD or non-widescreen content which should be in 4:3 or 16:9 aspects.
OK – so how do you correct these issues? Well actually there are a number of things you need to do. Firstly you need to ensure that SCART CONTROL is switched OFF. The reason for this is that when switched ON, the SKY box will try to prioritise the SCART feeds over everything else, so when you switch on your TV it will find the first available feed, usually your SKY satellite feed. However – now that I’d upgraded to SKY HD I had only one SCART connection left (my DVD player) because my SKY HD feed was now coming in on a HDMI feed… but unless I switched off SCART CONTROL it kept defaulting to my DVD feed when powered on.
Now comes the tricky part. There is a little know series of key depressions which you can use on your SKY HD remote to force it to scan to a particular channel on power up. It ain’t pretty but it works. Here is what you need to do, and you need to follow these instructions to the letter! :-
- On your SKY Remote press the TV button.
- Now press the HELP button and the SELECT button at the same time, and hold them down until you see your remote flash twice in quick succession (red light flashes twice on the top of your remote control).
- Now you press the HELP button as many times as necessary to find the correct channel you need (In my case I needed to keep pressing it until it displayed the AV6 channel, which was the one the HDMI feed was coming in on).
- Now press the SELECT button to confirm the channel.
- At this point you then need to press the TV button again.
- Then hold down the SELECT and GREEN buttons together until you see the remote control flash red twice again.
- Press the HELP button once and then press the SELECT button to store your settings.
That’s it. You’re done. From now on when you power up your TV/Sky HD box it should automatically seek out your HDMI channel (in my case AV6). You will notice a 1 second delay or so while it does this and probably a flash on your screen, but it’s nothing to worry about.
So now to the last piece of the puzzle. The last thing you need to do is make sure your SKY HD box is not presetting the picture quality on HDMI to the maximum. In other words, by default my setup was pushing out the image at 1080i, which was fine for a HD feed but a pain in the ass for non-HD feeds because I couldn’t get my ‘smart picture’ settings to work from the TV remote. To correct this simply change your SKY HD OUTPUT to ‘Automatic’ rather than a defined number (like 720p or 1080i). You can do this by accessing the usual SERVICES menu from your SKY remote and then select PICTURE OPTIONS and down the bottom you will see your SKY HD OUTPUT option. Change it and save your settings.
So – what was the net result of all this jiggery pokery? Well, now when I power on my TV and SKY box it automatically finds the right channel, so no more manually searching for it. Also – when I watch a non-HD feed I can now use my TV remote to set the viewing aspect to ‘smart’, which means it will auto-sense the correct aspect ratio and change it for me on the fly, and when I view a HD feed it will automatically change the aspect to match.
One other thing you might consider if you are a new SKY HD user like myself… I found out that the HDMI cable the SKY installers provide by default is shite, or to put it another way, barely adequate. I’ve ordered a decent cable from http://www.hificables.co.uk which should improve my picture quality. I’m also told that at 32 inches (my LCD size the quality might actually be better displayed at 720p than 1080i, but I’ll let you know how that goes when the cable arrives!
The biggest win however is that by doing this you will remove that nagging voice in your left ear from wifey who keeps wondering why you upgraded in the first place if it causes this much trouble. Trust me – the workarounds above are worth their weight in gold 
cheers, thanks for sharing that useful info!
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Does anyone know of a way to disable option one as now the input selector menu keeps appearing on my screen
just got my new sky hd+ box everything works fine,have read the info booklet from cover to cover. however there is no mention of the usb slot next to the sky viewing card slot or what it can be used for!!!!
info please anyone
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However – now that I’d upgraded to SKY HD I had only one SCART connection left (my DVD player) because my SKY HD feed was now coming in on a HDMI feed… but unless I switched off SCART CONTROL it kept defaulting to my DVD feed when powered on.
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At first my SCART link for the SKY feed was pending in on canal AV1, and my DVD player was pending in on AV2.
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