Any Vancouver Olympic observations? 1080i 29.97 sure helps here vs 25.

[edDV]

Great advance vs. previous 1080i 25 fps conversions from China. (from USA perspective)

HDTV sets have improved for deinterlace.

Broadcast/cable/sat are better but have bandwidth starvation issues.

NBC here is hogging all the bit rate they can.

The best games (e.g. hockey Canada vs. USA) still on SD while multi HD channels are doing ice dancing and worse. Wha dat?

What is your opinion of SD/HD coverage from where you live?

[Soopafresh]

Compared to the macroblock mess of the 2006 Winter Olympics ?

[edDV]

I think NBC is programmed by 18 yo girls.

We do now have Russia vs. Canada in HD but on a hidden CNBC-HD channel.

1080i shows most improvement for hockey. A real tough case.

[Vidd]

best games (e.g. hockey Canada vs. USA) still on SD while multi HD channels are doing ice dancing and worse. Wha dat?

In the NYC area, USA vs Canada hockey was on MSNBC HD. (MPEG-2, 1080i, ~14 Mbps)

What is your opinion of SD/HD coverage from where you live?

OTA/Cable NBC channel bitrate is low (MPEG-2, 1080i, ~11-12 Mbps) compared to my local CBS station which broadcasts 1080i at 16 Mbps.

I think NBC is programmed by 18 yo girls.

Don't insult 18 yo girls by calling them NBC programmers.

[edDV]

best games (e.g. hockey Canada vs. USA) still on SD while multi HD channels are doing ice dancing and worse. Wha dat?

In the NYC area, USA vs Canada hockey was on MSNBC HD. (MPEG-2, 1080i, ~14 Mbps)

I have been to many cities but never saw MSNBC offered in HD. It is their lowest rated disappointment.

Here I get the following NBC networks in HD via Comcast

Local NBC affiliate
Universal HD
Bravo HD
USA HD
CNBC HD
Weather Channel HD
and in QAM only, Telemundo (Spanish)


SD only are

MSNBC
CNBC-World
Universal Sports
SyFy
Local NBC Affiliate weather sub-channel

They could have carried the game on the HD weather channel at least!

Correction; I now see that SyFy HD is in the listings. Not MSNBC.

Local O&O CBS here has no subs. It uses the full 19 Mb/s and has a CW duopoly with a split 14 CW/5 LATV.

[vhelp]

I've been capturing the games to a 1TB external hdd from a directv dvr unit through my Hauppauge HVR-2250 capture card uncompressed avi via svideo.

Quality is good from that standpoint, but the quality from the feed is another matter.

Directv uses mpeg4 now (not the mpeg2 in previous years) and the image is more compressed but there are a lot of noticable compression errrors. On the plus side, the unit seems to record the stream directly to the hdd and not re-encode it. So far that is what I have been able to discern through a couple of tests.

I would say that the games have less pixelation than the 2008 summer games. The only difference are based on my cabletv feed vs the directv feed of the 2010 winter games.

What I dislike about the broadcasts so far is that each station adds a certain amount of additional filtering to selected program content, that is what I am concluding to though still reviewing.

Anyway, the quality of the games aren't so bad this time around. I've been enjoying all of them. Last winters and this winters games have been the best so far. And, Apolo Ohno's disqualification is baloney. I reviewed the sections (better than the officials) and clearly seen that he was *not* at fault. The other skater was holding onto Apolo's ancle and as he was turning around the corner and proceeded to lay his hand on the ice, is when lost his balance in his left leg/ice skate. This is easy to review when you have a free-style wheel mouse that you can rock back and forth-I recently picked up a new one and its great for this kind of work. The angle of the camera used during the "live" broadcast were against us, and Apolo.

-vhelp 5334

[edDV]

HD MPeg2 content has been excellent over my Comcast connection. The QAM direct NBC feed is cleaner than the Motorola cable box outputs. Most NBC cable channels had the IEEE-1394 running free.