Monday Night Football Oct. 2 - worst HD I've ever seen

Was I having a stroke on Monday night, or was the MNF HD broadcast a
disaster? The picture kept switching from a "normal" HD broadcast to a
blurry mess whenever the HD SkyCam was used, and randomly throughout
normal camera transitions. Not only was the game blurry, but - and
this I just don't understand - the GRAPHICS were blurry too.

I was watching OTA, so I called a friend with Comcast in HD, and he
said he was seeing the same thing - on both the local affiliate (6 ABC)
*and* on ESPNHD.

Did anyone else see this?

What caused this? Bad truck?

~ Zymer

wrote:
Was I having a stroke on Monday night, or was the MNF HD broadcast a
disaster? The picture kept switching from a "normal" HD broadcast to a
blurry mess whenever the HD SkyCam was used, and randomly throughout
normal camera transitions. Not only was the game blurry, but - and
this I just don't understand - the GRAPHICS were blurry too.

I was watching OTA, so I called a friend with Comcast in HD, and he
said he was seeing the same thing - on both the local affiliate (6 ABC)
*and* on ESPNHD.

Clearly you were having a stroke, since MNF is not broadcast on ABC
anymore, so how your friend was seeing the "same thing" on ABC is
beyond me.

In article .com,
says...



wrote:
Was I having a stroke on Monday night, or was the MNF HD broadcast a
disaster? The picture kept switching from a "normal" HD broadcast to a
blurry mess whenever the HD SkyCam was used, and randomly throughout
normal camera transitions. Not only was the game blurry, but - and
this I just don't understand - the GRAPHICS were blurry too.

I was watching OTA, so I called a friend with Comcast in HD, and he
said he was seeing the same thing - on both the local affiliate (6 ABC)
*and* on ESPNHD.

Clearly you were having a stroke, since MNF is not broadcast on ABC
anymore, so how your friend was seeing the "same thing" on ABC is
beyond me.

In some markets where there was high interest, likely in PA and WI, local
stations picked up the ESPN feed for broadcast.

I don't get ESPN HD, so I can't comment on the picture, other than it
appears it may have originated at the game based what the OP said.

whosbest54
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The local ABC affiliates in local markets have broadcast rights to MNF
games and soon, the NFL channel games on Thursdays.

Do you have an opinion about the picture quality, Larry?

Larry Bud wrote:
wrote:
Was I having a stroke on Monday night, or was the MNF HD broadcast a
disaster? The picture kept switching from a "normal" HD broadcast to a
blurry mess whenever the HD SkyCam was used, and randomly throughout
normal camera transitions. Not only was the game blurry, but - and
this I just don't understand - the GRAPHICS were blurry too.

I was watching OTA, so I called a friend with Comcast in HD, and he
said he was seeing the same thing - on both the local affiliate (6 ABC)
*and* on ESPNHD.

Clearly you were having a stroke, since MNF is not broadcast on ABC
anymore, so how your friend was seeing the "same thing" on ABC is
beyond me.

Larry,

I'm the friend who WAS watching on ABC. Comcast Delaware County
carried the broadcast simultaneously on ABC and ESPN. It was of
equally bad quality on both. Is THAT beyond you?

wrote:
Larry,

I'm the friend who WAS watching on ABC. Comcast Delaware County
carried the broadcast simultaneously on ABC and ESPN. It was of
equally bad quality on both. Is THAT beyond you?

I was watching it on ESPN here in NY with Cablevision and I thought it
looked great. Maybe it was a local problem?

Mikepier wrote:
wrote:
Larry,

I'm the friend who WAS watching on ABC. Comcast Delaware County
carried the broadcast simultaneously on ABC and ESPN. It was of
equally bad quality on both. Is THAT beyond you?

I was watching it on ESPN here in NY with Cablevision and I thought it
looked great. Maybe it was a local problem?

Thanks Mike. I really appreciate the input. Were you watching in
hi-def? (Yes, I realize we're in the HD group here, but I want to be
sure we're all on the same page...)

If it was a *local* problem, then either Comcast in Philly would need
to get the feed through the ABC affiliate (O&O by ABC/Disney company)
or the other way around... Maybe CC was getting a bad feed and feeding
it to the local ABC station?

That would *seem* to be plausible, but if that were the case, then why
did the signal deteriorate for 5 seconds or so when the MNF producers
switched between cameras? That makes no sense to me.

Here's a related article on TVPREDICTIONS which calims the ESPNHD
signal was better:
http://www.tvpredictions.com/whipgame100406.htm

Commentary
Can Multicasting Hurt HDTV Picture?
By Joseph Whip
HD Observer

Editor's Note: Many high-def owners are concerned that a local
station's HD signal can be diluted if that station broadcasts
additional digital feeds at the same time. This is known as
multicasting. Here's one reader's take on the subject.

Philadelphia, PA (October 4, 2006) -- The effects of multicasting on a
broadcaster's primary video signal was well in evidence Monday night
during the Eagles-Packers Monday Night Football game on ESPN HD. The
game was simulcast on the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia,
WPVI. We therefore had a chance to compare the full bit rate ESPN HD
feed and a bit rate starved HD feed on WPVI which has two subchannels
(additional digital channels).

The results were not pretty. While the broadcast was not one of ESPN's
best efforts, its picture was sharp and detailed compared to the over
the air telecast on WPVI. This was the case whether watching both on
Comcast cable and comparing the ESPNHD feed to an over the air feed on
WPVI.

The WPVI feed was blurry in comparison and out of focus. It was like
trying to watch the game through a haze. As usual, the engineering
department at WPVI, when contacted about this, blamed the setting on
their encoder. I have seen the effects of a Harris encoder set to
adaptive as was the case last night vs.
one that was set to fixed and this was not the problem last night. The
problem last night was continual.

They also claimed that Comcast does not allocate
enough bits to their broadcast and favors ESPN even though they are
both owned by Disney. This is simply an excuse and one that does not
hold water given the poor quality of the over the air broadcast
compared to ESPN HD and given the high quality of the other HD
broadcast signals on Comcast..

Clearly, the over the air broadcast was bit starved. One would have
expected that WPVI (and ABC) would have wanted the game to have looked
its best for those in the Philly market without cable. They did not and
failed
to properly serve the needs of their viewers. Why not simply turn off
the subchannels during a significant HD event in the market? Why ruin a
broadcast by running an infomercial channel and a weather channel of
poor
picture quality?

Of all the HD sets in the Philly market last night, just
how many do you think were turned into the WPVI Accuweather channel
instead of the Eagles game? I can't imagine there were any!

WPVI, please turn off the subchannels the next time the Eagles are on
Monday Night Football and consider turning them off during any HD
broadcast as well!

Thanks Mike. I really appreciate the input. Were you watching in
hi-def? (Yes, I realize we're in the HD group here, but I want to be
sure we're all on the same page...)

Yep it was HD.

wrote:
Larry,

I'm the friend who WAS watching on ABC. Comcast Delaware County
carried the broadcast simultaneously on ABC and ESPN. It was of
equally bad quality on both. Is THAT beyond you?


Is it possible that you were not watching it via the American
Broadcasting Company's feed (ABC)? Is it possible that your local
independent network television affiliate that normally carries ABC
programming (WPVI, maybe?) chose on Monday night to carry Entertainment
and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) programming instead? I mean, were
the two football broadcasts to which you had access different in any
way? Different announcers, etc? If they were the same, then it's almost
a certainty that what you were watching originated with ESPN, not ABC,
even though the signal may have come to you from a television station
that normally carries ABC programming.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

The ABC affiliate was broadcasting the ESPN feed whole-cloth. Same
everything.

I sent a TVPredictions analyst in the Philly area this e-mail:

My first question is, when I was watching the OTA feed why would the
picture (and graphics package) suddenly go blurry SPECIFICALLY on
certain cameras, like the SkyCam shots, if it was a merely a
transmission problem? - That would seem to me to be a SOURCE-related
problem, not a re-broadcast problem.

Secondly, was the ESPNHD feed (as you watched it) ever blurry?

Thanks again!

His response:

The intermittent blurriness you saw was due to the fact that WPVI was
playing with their Harris Flexcoder and had it set to adaptive and not
fixed to see if it would deal with an issue with the color red during
certain broadcasts. ABC has specifically informed all of their stations
to set the Flexcoder to fixed and I was shocked to see them fool around
with it in this way when they knew it would cause the whole screen to
go blurry. This has been known in the industry for several years. In
fact, Comcast Sportsnet had the same issue about three years ago which
was changed after I told them about it. At the time, they had no one on
their staff who had an HD set at home so no one noticed it. As a
result, [they have] asked me to check out their broadcasts for
problems which I still do, although they don't have many these days
thankfully.

My concern was the difference in the picture once the intermittent
stuff stopped. It was NOT on the ESPN broadcast anyway. The issue was
the lack of clarity or snap that was missing from WPVI-DT. That was due
solely to their multicasting efforts. Thanks for the feedback!