Following on from yesterday when I mentioned that The Box was being updated to a new picture and sound quality I received a few emails from GenSTEPS visitors who were interested as to why the picture is so bad in the first place. Yes its not directly related to Steps, but Steps are one of the most popular artists on The Box so without boring too many people I will try and explain. If you know more on this or think I am taking rubbish then email me and set me straight on this matter.

From what I know The Box is an automated computer system. The videos are encoded in MPEG (the format which DVDs can be encoded in) but obviously these aren’t DVD quality. It seems The Box use a low MPEG compression giving them smaller files but also worse picture and sound quality. But that isn’t the only factor The Box also uses an NTSC playback system. UK TV works in PAL so they must be some sort of NTSC to PAL conversion taking place in such a way that it reduces the picture quality more. To stop this becoming a huge boring essay, EMAP the people who own The Box, launched Kiss TV on Sky Digital. It recently was moved over to the new digital playback system and from what I’ve heard its picture quality and sound is like MTV’s. I have read today that between today (Saturday 29th) and next Saturday, basically this week The Box should move to the “System 2” with a sharper picture and sound. It will have new fonts on screen etc following the same as Kiss TV (If you have that on Sky Digital).