If it wasn’t bad enough that signed for the deaf programming is banished to the middle of the night, Sky appear to have employed two-ton Tessie to provide sign on their HD movie channels.

Last night’s broadcast of ‘Rise’ was blighted by a signing presenter who owned more screen real estate than the Duke of Westminster.  Many deaf people find the way sign is presented to be intrusive, and there’s certainly no excuse for putting such a large lady right in the middle of our screens, especially as the 4:3 ‘safe area’ really doesn’t apply to HD broadcasts.

Margo Harshman is about to be eaten by vampires, but her biggest worry is the fat woman standing on her shoulder signing for the deaf on Sky Movies.

The Sky HD receiver has annoying bug that often causes palpitations in viewers of expensive plasma and LCD displays the first time it occurs.  The symptoms look exactly like a group of “stuck” or “dead” pixels – a row of dark grey dots – positioned almost dead centre in the upper third of the picture.  They’ll appear in the same place whether you’re watching SD or HD material and via any connection method, but are considerably more noticeable via HDMI and component with a HD source.

However, it’s not a problem with the display – and relax – it is the Sky HD box at fault.  The bug manifests itself on pin-protected or manual recordings, in other words anything that you set up in the ‘manual recording’ section of the dervices menu, or when pin protection is enabled and, for example, an 18-certificate programme is viewed before the watershed.

There are two methods to remove the dead pixels:

If you’re just starting to watch a recording, enter your pin, play the first few moments, press rewind until the Sky HD receiver returns to the beginning of the programme and the box displays the blue screen and ‘info’ panel, then press play again.

However, that’s not a practical solution if you want to jump to a specific place in a recording or if you only watch half of something, as the dead pixels will reappear whenever you resume viewing.  In those cases:

Select to view from a specific time or resume where you left off and enter your pin as you normally would, then once playback begins, press pause followed by the green button and then ‘backup’.  Essentially what this does is enter and exit the Sky HD box’s ‘bookmark’ menu (don’t be afraid), but doing so has the accidental side-effect of clearing the stuck pixel bug too.

Don’t panic! Those stuck/dead pixels between Charles Colville and Shaun Udal are not the fault of your plasma or LCD TV, it’s a long-standing Sky HD bug.

Escala, the sexy female electric string quartet discovered on Britain’s Got Talent, are fronting Sky Sports’ stylish ‘new season’ 2008/2009 football promotional campaign trailer, which made its on-air debut today.

The group members are – left to right in the image below – Izzy Johnston, 23 (violin), Chantal Leverton, 24 (viola), Nastasya (Tasia) Hodges, 26 (cello) and Victoria Lyon, 24 (violin).  The girls met when they were part of an orchestral group, and having performed as a corporate band and at private functions, made it to the Final of Britan’s Got Talent after which they were duly signed by SyCo Music... and judge Simon Cowell, but we won’t hold that against them.

The music for the Sky trailer is the first track Escala performed together, ‘Theme from Palladio’, written by Welsh classical composer and musician Karl Jenkins, who is also well known for the Adiemus project. Palladio is a popular target for electro-classical arrangements, there’s another excellent version by harpist Catrin Finch.

Something tells us most of these subtleties, together with Escala’s virtuoso talents will be lost on the average football fan.  The phrase “pearls before swine” comes to mind.

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The long and the short of it... two versions of Escala’s Sky Sports new season trailer.

Sarah-Jane Mee is one of Sky’s up-and-coming newsreaders. After joining the satellite broadcaster in January this year, her primary role has been reading sports bulletins and filling the graveyard shifts, but just lately the powers that be at Sky News have spotted her potential and she’s making more appearances in daylight and prime-time hours. Sarah-Jane’s background is with ITV sport, Central Tonight and Heart FM, so she’s done the groundwork.

Now I know what you’re expecting us to say next... that Sarah-Jane is really rather gorgeous and of course there isn’t any doubting that fact, but what impresses us most is her outstanding diction and intonation.

Try playing the clip below and closing your eyes; there aren’t many news presenters, or presenters in any genre for that matter, with such a polished delivery.

We’re predicting great things for Sarah-Jane; she has the looks and the talent.

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