How could anything but football be the best sport to watch in HD?
By Richard Lawler 
posted Oct 18th 2005 12:51AM
posted Oct 18th 2005 12:51AM
If any other sport had won our recent poll, I'd have to see if Kevin was on the take. I just watched Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison break the record for TD's by a QB-WR combo in the NFL, an amazing feat. As Harrison caught the ball he appeared to get his feet down while going out of bounds, but it was so close, my friend who I was talking to on the phone at the time thought he was out. But in ABC's 720p broadcast of Monday Night Football I could SEE the FieldTurf fly up from his feet even in real-time and knew he got his feet down, and with Comcast's HD-DVR, back it up and play it in frame-by-frame without losing any quality. Yeah, MNF is at my house next week with HDTV.
What sports moment could possibly be better captured in HD than that?
....of course, I did just catch the highlight of Pujols' MONSTER home run so it may be a little closer than I thought
I'd like to think Albert Pujols' homerun in the top of the ninth last night would be better, but maybe I'm just a bit biased.
yup, that blast from that Latino off that whitey was so good...there was football? no more Rivera comparisons...ahahhaha
Ummmm... Not to rain on your parade, I saw the FieldTurf fly up in standard def, too. I've been seeing that FieldTurf fly up in end zones for years. It's really more of a testament to the turf itself than to HDTV -- though I'm sure that catch looked even better in HD.
Where HD REALLY might have come in handy was the previous Monday Night game between San Diego and Pittsburgh, where the non-HDTV in the bar where I was showed visible lines of resolution, and nobody could really tell if Hines Ward's foot had been touched, making him down by contact. After further review, the refs ruled he was down, and the Steelers fans were NOT happy. (Until five plays later, when Big Ben Roethlisberger got them back into the end zone...)
With HD, you can see the wobble on every forward pass. Two weekends ago, Matt Schaub of Atlanta threw a TD pass to Alge Crumpler that had no wobble whatsoever. None. Prettiest thing you ever saw. It almost made you wish the Falcons could trade Michael Vick.
I would have to say NASCAR is the best sport to watch in HD even though the in car camera shots are SD.
Just don't watch it on an LCD though, they can't handle the panning and the noise is terrible even on the latest Bravia. Need HD CRT for this!