I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
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Not even 20 hours into my 1080p goodness (I don’t actually know what 1080p means btw but it sounds cool), and I’ve become a tv picture quality snob.
I MySky’d the AllBlacks first World Cup game this morning. It was TV3 broadcast over Sky. The picture quality was shocking. The picture was dropping out, breaking up and flickering. I thought that it might be my new screen not being feed enough pixels but chatting to family this morning they had the same experience. (There was also consensus that the camera work was woefull - not tight enough into the action. I think we get spoilt in NZ by sports savvy outside broadcast crews).
What gives? Surely the World Cup is the television event of the year. It’s being shot in Europe where they’ve had flash TV’s for years. How come they aren’t hammering us with quality pictures
It was interesting seeing the difference between a big CRT and a 1080p (snicker) LCD. The CRT is smoother and warmer. Watching Inspector Frost last night the line edges around faces were so clear that at times it looked like they were shooting over a green screen.
Over the last year there has been more wide screen content and I was finding on the CRT that often a TV show would be a like viewing through a letter box.
TV3 News is also interesting with picture formats changing every few minutes. Studio time seems to be 4:3 and some stories wide. Toni looks normal though at 4:3 pushed wide :) Like me, Duncan Garner doesn’t need to be shown 4:3 on widescreen. Duncan, write it into your contract next year!
Did anyone else notice the poor picture quality of the Rugby World Cup?
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Yes, the majority of the first half was terrible. TV3 said at half time that it wasn’t their fault, so I would say it was an ill-prepared or poorly setup ground crew at fault.
I watched the game on a cheapy 21″ TV, so I can’t talk about the quality of the picture, other than the fact that TV3 seem to be compressing their recordings such that their replays are of lesser quality than the live game.
Experienced the same problems here, picture kept cutting out at the most inopportune moments. I actually live with a t.v producer (for a channel that shall remain nameless) and both he and his brother (a camera man with lots of sports filming experience) were horrified by both the (constant) use of (extreme) wide-angles and rather odd shots (some of the angles using tele-photo lenses were quite artful, but didn’t really give much of an idea as to what the hell was happening).
At times, the wide angles reminded me of watching a soccer match.
The brothers also both agree that a bad satellite feed was responsible for the terrible quality.
So no it ain’t the new screen, it’s the old-world network again.
Enjoy.
Yea I watched it - shocking for the first half on a 32″ LCD too. Did you notice all the unanswered questions that went to Andrew Mehrtens in the first half? You would think they could have sorted out things like that before the game started. And while on the topic - why don’t sky broadcast a alternative commentary with all their commentators?
“World Cup is the television event of the year”?
For NZ maybe but for Europe? It’s a minority sport with small following.
To Bradley: Sky can’t rebroadcast - TV3 have the exclusive rights to the RWC as far as I’m aware.
“It’s a minority sport with small following.”
Whatever you idiot. It’s the third largest sporting event in the world after the olympics and the FWC.
1080p = 1080 “progressive scan” (ie, non-interlaced) vertical lines of picture information. PAL is 576 (interlaced) lines by comparison.
As bad as the picture was, the commentary was surely worse, Hamish McKay struggled all the way through, Whetton hardly said a word, thank goodness for Foxy.
Watching on a 4:3 CRT, TV3’s widescreen broadcasting has its moments, particularly during ad breaks when they often show letterboxed ads in 4:3 format, which means they have black bars embedded top and bottom in the broadcast signal, more black bars added left and right because the ad format is now 4:3, and still more black bars added top and bottom to preserve the overall widescreen aspect!
We get in 1080i on free to air television (ten) here in Sydney.. though it is let down a bit with the commentary :-) and the fact that it was delayed by a couple hours. Still it looked great! And the result was great as well.
Yup, you’ll find that now you have a decent TV you notice how poor quality broadcasts are in NZ (even satellite over freeview etc). Hopefully it improves when things are broadcast in HD over the terrestial antennae.
Have you tried any proper HD media (either off the net or on HD DVD/Blueray)? You will love the difference (except it will make watching ordinary broadcasts painfull. Or if you really want to feel TV pain, try plugging the VHS player in there… yuk!
On a side note, did anyone notice the itnerviews after the game - how all of the mouths were completely out of synch with the words?
well a couple of things to realise about HD:
- AFAIK we don’t have any real HD content yet here in NZ, just letterboxed/scaled SD stuff - same number of pixels as before spread over a larger screen area
- when we do get real HD we won’t rave about it as much as the americans will …. because the color gamut that PAL already gives us has a lot to do with what fascinates them with HD - they see colours in HD that they don’t in NTSC
In the mean time, while you are waiting for real hi-bandwidth HD broadcasts, make sure that whatever you have has a good scaler (esp one that will do temporal scaling if you like sports and and are looking at an interlaved signal on a progressive TV - like 1080p).
BTW - though the americans will be/are amazed by the colour - there is a down side - NTSC can’t represent saturated colours in the same way that PAL can - those ads that use bright saturated colours to get your attention (just like they up the sound level) - don’t work in the US - they will soon ….
Theres lots of third largest sporting events in the world:
“2003 Rugby World Cup, the third-largest sporting event in the world after the Olympics and the Soccer World Cup,”
“Germany to submit a bid to host the third largest sporting event in the world - the IAAF World Championships in Athletics”
“Commonwealth Games ranks as the third largest sporting event in the world after the Olympics and Soccer World Cup”
“Ryder Cup is the world’s most prestigious golf event and the third largest sporting event in the world”
“World Cup Cricket, 2007 What A Challenge!From a global audience perspective, the 47-day event, from late March to end of April, is the third largest sporting event in the world.”
“European football championship is the third-largest sporting event in the world.”
“the Asian games, the third largest sporting event in the world”
“Formula One world championship the third-largest sporting event in the world”
This is worth a read
When It Comes to TV Stats,Viewer Discretion Is Advised
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112180840215889963-0heH1LSDovgHdjc0ribnrPO2TbY_20060721.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top
Hi all
I live in London and we watched the game live on ITV, on a normal good old fashioned Sony television. The picture quality was just fine, as was the quality of the sports photography / replays / and so on…
However, I was horrified that the commentator was none other than Murray Mexted - he of “And Fitzpatrick just loves to take it from behind” fame. I really cannot stand the absolute drivel that he spouts, it completely spoiled the occasion for us. We had to increase our beer consumption to compensate.
Half time was a panel with Fitzy, Martin Johnson and Francois Pienaar which was fine, and interesting - then it was back to Mex to ruin the second half for us.
Sigh of frustration
But, go the boys, let’s hope they can do it this time, I really think they have a good chance….
I get HD content here in the US and even coming from PAL it totally kicks butt. TV shows like Lost etc… are great, but where it really sings is in Sports. Just amazing. (Discovery Channel in HD rocks!)
Funny side effect of HD is that people you thought were quite good looking on TV are NOT so good looking in HD. In fact there is a lot of talk here in the US about new ways to do makeup and set dressing because it all looks to strange in HD.
I dont get any channels here that carry the RWC for free … however I just found out that i can Pay per View any game … in HD!!! So they must be shooting it in HD at the source.
-CJ.
PS: even when NZ does get HD content it will be the same here and really only be 720p not 1080p. Due to bandwidth issues most broadcasters deliver in only 720 so they can squeeze more down the pipe.
I was really dissappointed by the quality of coverage of the RWC. I guess over the years having gotten used to TJ, Nisbo and (dare I say it) Mex, the TV3 coverage by comparison is poor and basic. For a start, I cannot get excited listening to Hamish McKay and to have him backed up by the lifeless AJ Whetton, duh! I don’t ming reading Grant Fox but do I really need to hear him?
The whole TV3 take on the pen portraits and pre prepared build up content that the ABs were made to do made them look uncomfortable and embarrased. I wanna see them look tough and grunt!
I don’t recall the picture quality from the Olympics in Greece being this poor. Surely the technology is better than that.
I see now there is a reason for PPV TV.
What’s all the fuss about the wide angles? I actually find it an improvement. Atmosphere aside, the thing I miss about not being at the game is the view of the whole attacking formation. You get a completely different sense of the game seeing how the teams lining up in attack/defence.
OK, some closer shots give you a better feel for the close play around the ruck, but IMHO we really overdo it in this country.
The quality was so poor it lead me to believe that I had a problem with my TV. After much cursing and swearing and unplugging my whole system and restarting it I SMS’ed a friend who advised that he also was having a problem. What’s worse is the commentary was as bad as the picture quality can we PLEASE have Nisbo for the remaining AB’s games.
FYI, there was an article in the paper IIRC about why the first ~20 minutes was so bad - something to do with dodgy satellite encoding… not really TV3’s fault but they could have sorted it faster by the sounds of it.
The quality was shocking. It was a satellite transmission problem, however, even on the most recent game the compression artifacts are terrible. Basically I think that they are over compressing in order to reduce the bandwidth, to ultimately save money.
A really fun way to watch the games is with the alternative rugby commentary http://www.arcrugby.co.nz/ download the mp3 and sync up (helpful to have a mysky box to fine tune the sync). A lot funnier, and a total change to the standard commentary.
I don’t think these tv reception or quality problems affect too many people. The rugby “world” cup has a small overall following on the planet. Football is the main game, and rugby nuts need to get used to that fact.