Considering nobody else is uploading what it actually looks like on a Digibox, here you go. Also interesting that parts of the Red Button now cease to function.
Here in the US DirecTV still supports SD but those on HD subscriptions, in the event of the satellite can't make a connection, which happens quite frequently because of bad weather. (usually just a bad thunderstorm) will get a popup on the TV that says "Poor connection - would you like to switch to Standard Definition" and there's an OK and NO.
That’s because the SD would probably be on a separate transponder, stroke of genius on one hand but confusing on another. Thanks for sharing this information with us.
That sounds correct. Here in Canada I find that on my Bell Satellite TV service in bad weather the HD Channels don’t come in while SD comes in fine yet Bell is trying to get rid of SD Services
@@CableCable9000 I've seen what Bell likes to do and I don't like that company. They consistently shut down repeaters in Canada and now they're trying to get rid of SD satellite.
Videotron with Illico still has SD channels but i think everything is in MPEG4 now, so the old HD DVR's from before the Cisco days aren't compatible anymore. And then there's Helix which is all HD but the amount of Helix boxes i see for sale tells me that using Xfinity as the basis for the new service was not a good idea.
@@fungo6631 this would also affect Freesat as Sky and Freesat use the same satellite for the BBC. Though again as was said, this only affects really old equipment, even in 2012 when the switchover finished, there were HD satellite broadcasts running already.
About time we got rid of SD and made 1080p the new SD. No one complains we can't get 405 line black and white transmissions any more. The arc of progress carries on.
As someone who has used a digibox for some time, this is hard to see without feeling a little upset. At least the other channels are available for the time being.
sky digibox was my childhood, even when we got sky back via nowtv in around 2017, we still used the digibox for freeview tv up until around 2019. even though I threw my digibox out like 5 years ago now im still kinda gutted
I used to use a Sky+ box as a TV in my own room to give my CRT TV some other use than just to play game consoles and VHS tapes. And I used a Sky+ box rather than a Sky+HD or SkyQ box because of the nostalgic look and feel. However the effects of Storm Arwin blew the plug off the satellite dish. I was gonna find a way to plug it back in but now that I know that the BBC SD channels are no longer in service, it would be useless. Plus I don't really watch TV 🤣
I brought out my grans old digibox just to watch that and i thought "why just why" and i thought they should of given CBeebies and CBBC a more kid freindly "this service has now closed" screen cause if i saw that on my tv randomly as a 4 year old i would start crying-
Yes about 15 years ago with everyone else the UK was on one of the last people to switch over to digital most country did it in 2009 they gave you even more time than most TV providers. It’s Adelong TV. Most TVs built after 2001 had digital tuners or you could get a digital tuner set top box TVs that could HD became common place around 11 years ago.
I like to imagine that the black "This service has now closed" screen with the Weather Channel-esque music is what you see after you die. You're left staring at that QR code for all eternity.
The original Sky Digibox as a hardware and receiver platform are over thirty years old and widely incompatible with the majority of FTA and FTV broadcasts in the countries where they were once used. It's slightly miraculous Sky even broadcast a compatible EPG for them, and it's time for them to go away. For those still with original Sky Digibox receivers, there's also a good chance they'll start to fail soon if they've not already. They were never designed to operate for so long, and there were so many bad batches of components used in the late 90s, plus the units have now passed their end of designed lifespan for parts like caps, driver ICs and resistors. Sky haven't supported them for many years.
Sky looks a lot like Foxtel Digital in Australia... Foxtel now forces everyone to either use a highly evolved but slightly nerfed iQ4 or streaming services Go or Binge. Also Stephen Fry does Jeopardy! ? He is doing it in Australia
@@RyanGonTV Foxtel is owned by News Corporation, who oddly still owns Fox in Australia, and Telstra, Sky is owned by Comcast and used to be part of but not owned by the News Corp group of companies until it was taken private by a failed bidding war with News Corp
I honestly thought about bringing back Digit Al for this closure. I feel like the UK gave everyone a huge heads up with Digit Al. And now, all you get is this:
This one messed with my parents setup like crazy, they had to use some other box and they lost a few channels switching over. The funny part is, they're still using scart cables so they don't get the supposed benefits, not that they'd care (not that I care actually now that I think of it)
@@RyanGonTV don't forget, money they were burning keeping the SD services going can now be used to upgrade and improve the HD services and be put towards maintenance of more important kit. It's our licence fees that fund it, so I'd rather they maintain current technology instead of try to keep ancient SD transmission going for a few thousand viewers at most.
@@RyanGonTVpictures quality,sound quality. 4k tv is enough for any house unless you live in a mansion then you might need 8k. Only other places 8k tv would be useful is cinemas & tv screens in at stadiums. Possibly a school hall if room is big enough. No where else really need 8k
@@RyanGonTV - They are cheap - Only broadcast SD channels - They don't have that much functions (except for the odd Gamestar) - Don't playback the channel by miniscreen on EPG screens (although we do get good EPG music) - etc.
@@RandomBBCStuff BBC SD on Sky and Freesat came back for some programmes between 30 January 2024 and 9 February 2024, then it shown again and on 26 March 2024, BBC SD closure message is gone and only seen black screen
But there's quite probably just as many people who will have an old second receiver or something in a camper van, boat or holiday home, who are *not* old or technophobes without a smartphone. Heck, my dad had a second SD digibox on spare outputs from his satellite dish for a long time which was well past its expiry date. The BBC message offered a spoken version, easy to understand messaging, prompts on screen for many months prior, a blanket awareness campaign and information sent to many newspapers and media outlets who republished the info. You can also see there's a phone number and two web sites to consult. The BBC directly ran a free upgrade scheme for those eligible: the "HD Satellite upgrade" programme ran for over a year prior to SD shutdown. It offered a voucher to purchase an HD capable receiver online, or an engineer home visit who would also supply and install the equipment. I think in this case the BBC went above and beyond their public service obligations. It's not unreasonable to expect viewers nowadays to have a TV and receiver capable of viewing HD channels, HD as a generally available broadcast format has been around since 2006. Freeview and satellite receivers sold since the early 2010s offered this functionality, even if the viewer needed them to downscale their output to SD for their TV. This is still possible and perfectly feasible. The cost and technological burden of running so many SD services for the very small number of viewers had become too prohibitive. It was also a barrier to further upgrades and modernisation to the whole broadcasting chain, which provided numerous cost savings and quality improvements. Getting angry about the BBC not operating an SD service is to me analogous to getting angry with a petrol station for no longer retailing leaded petrol. Technology progresses and at some point one must move with the times a little.
I wrote a long comment with technical info but it's disappeared. I really don't think this is the issue you purport it to be, and the BBC offered significant support to assist users in modernising their satellite receivers, including extra support for vulnerable, elderly or impaired viewers, including free replacement hardware.
I can't believe they are forcing people to upgrade, disgusting that this could be an old age pensioner, losing their fav TV shows, who can't afford to upgrade
They’re probably going to get a used HD set top box off eBay, but they probably dunno that those boxes are sky’s property so that means they’re stolen, and also the decoding card from the old digibox needs to be paired with the new one and activated, but I doubt sky will gonna do that. I wish sky did a promotion to upgrade to a HD box or a Q for a very low price, maybe even for free but I doubt that there are any users with the old digiboxes as many of them replaced ‘em with HD or a Q box..🧐
@@RyanGonTV I actually meant those who have a subscription but with an older non-HD box. I dunno if there are still any of them as I ain’t from the UK nor I’m living there. Probably there are, but mostly elderly folks with old fashioned CRTs.
I’m not sure whether this applies to other countries but Foxtel (Australian sky) had a program in which you could swap out your digibox for the newest model at no cost
Now that I think about it… what’s the point of Set top boxes when your regular tv can connect through a satellite connection and therefore watch live TV
Because not all TV's can do that. Not all TV's have the tuners for that. The reason set top boxes exist is because they have tuners for the satellite TV your tv doesn't. That's also to stop piracy.
@@BackupWhenRU-vidIsntWorking Especially in 1998 when this service launched. There was no other way to receive Sky Digital on the existing analogue TVs.
@@BackupWhenRU-vidIsntWorking Oh that makes a lot of sense now... on regards to that, why do tuners in tvs exist when thats the point of set-top boxes?
@@SadLivingPerson in the 1990s and even into the 2000s, most people in the UK were receiving analogue channels in the form of BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, C4 and if lucky C5 on CRT tellies and even early LED tellies which didn't have built in digital decoders, then slowly people realised that a set top box will be needed in order to carry on watching the traditional terrestrial channels via digital transmission. The analogue signal was finally totally switched off in 2013 and by that point everyone were owning set top boxes connected to "traditional" non-smart tellies and it is only in the last 10 years pretty much everyone owned digital freeview enabled tellies with apps for streaming content eventually negated the need of a set top box altogether.
@@RyanGonTV I think he's talking about how sky sued Microsoft sky drive to make it become OneDrive. But he didn't realise the box is made by the same sky.
Sky digiboxes could only receive and decode MPEG-2 encoded channels broadcast in a digital multiplex, although many were originally (1998) broadcast at 625 line SD resolution. They pointed at 28.2°E Astra 2 constellation which offered no analogue services, unlike the old 19.2° satellites. The Digibox was incapable of tuning or displaying analogue satellite broadcasts.
@@RyanGonTV Do it with Handbrake, and use Bob deinterlacing. Handbrake does pretty good job at deinterlacing, and since recently it even allows upscaling.
