I read somewhere a while ago that sky reduced the quality of SD in order to make HD look better.
I guess they're all at it now.
That's a joke, as only a minority of channels were SD to begin with. Same with HD, they often halve the width and let the box stretch it back out again, and that when I last checked probably 10 years ago now. Seems this is the
current way to check.
I'd be willing to bet some HD channels are closer to SD. It does make streaming way more appealing though, as they actually use correct resolutions so look vastly superior to most Sky channels. Plus there's the fact Sky use MPEG2 for SD, MPEG4 for HD vs streaming that can use far more efficient modern codecs and progressive scan, native frame-rates rather than interlaced PAL.
By far the biggest put off for me is I can't stand PAL speed up which is largely unavoidable on broadcast TV.