NBC's less than perfect Olympic coverage
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Feb 13th 2006 7:19AM
posted Feb 13th 2006 7:19AM
Not being a big fan of the Olympics, I watch solely to judge
its production quality. So far I am disappointed and I wish I could say I was surprised. I was prepared to cast the
blame on my local affiliate for dropping the ball on their Olympic coverage, but then I read an article from Swanni
complaining about certain aspects of NBC's Olympic coverage. I know it's hard to produce HDTV, especially when it takes
place half-way around the world, but I can't help to think that other networks would do a better job. My main complaint is the macroblocking, which I assume is caused from my local affliate multicasting. The other thing that is annoying me is the number of SD shots during the luge and the cross-country sking. I guess it could be worse and the HD coverage could be dealyed a full day with only one annoying Sony commercial played ad nauseam.
Lets give them some credit first at least they are making people aware of HD ten times more than they did just 3-6 months ago. that being said...
I had audio problems too. There was a time during the luge where the audio was doubled and delayed about 5 seconds. aka the most annoying thing in the world.
I really haven't caught much of NBC's coverage. I'm watching UHD on Comcast in NH. There was one glitch yesterday during the broadcast of the hockey game.
Hockey in HD is great.
I am also not impressed with the HD. At first, I thought it was my new Moto 6412 PIII box. This seems to confirm that it's NBC's fault.
I am seeing blocking and, sometimes, no signal at all.
But, I'm glad that I've got 2 HD options for the Olympics. NBC's commitment to HD will help convince other people to adopt HD.
HD TV isn't as wwidespread in Europe as it is in the USA. So we can't expect NBC to have an HD camera at every evnue is the Olypic Poroduction standard feed isn't in HD at ALL events.
Ben, Good blog and I will agree with you on most things (blocking and audio) but why I am writing is because as rapture has said, we are glad they are making such a good effort at trying to expose more fans to HD. The addtion to UHD has also helped. With that being said, they still do need help in a lot of catagories.
I keep expecting the commercial... "We brought chips. And salsa!"
Something I read about on the AVS Forums the other day is that about half the venues don't actually have true HDTV for the pool feeds. That means that what NBC is showing many of times (snowboarding, the alpine skiing events in particular) is not TRUE HD. The pool cameras are 16x9 format SD cameras and the signal is being upconverted. So you have 2 issues: 1) not true HD, and 2) NBC has to upconvert it.
I did have the sound issues, but when you consider that for logistic reason (according to the Torino organizing committee) it's actually pretty good. Those 16x9 format SD cams upconverted to HD looks pretty good when you consider what it is.
I also was wondering about some of the image quality -- some just didn't seem like true HD to me, but I thought I might be anal or something.. I guess not.. As for our reception, I found it really lacking most particularly that within a 5-10 minute window of time, we'd lose signal for 3-5 seconds at a time.. Initially, I thought it was something with my OTA reception (which is usually great for NBC in the LA area), but then after switching to NBC HD on DirecTV, they experienced the EXACT same symptoms and in some cases were even worse (more frequent).. The Greek games didn't seem to exhibit this series of problems from what I recall.. Needless to say, it gets my wife a bit annoyed!
The summer games wher 100x better... if you wanted your Olompic fix all you need to do was turn on your local NBC 's-HD feed and you had 24-7 coverage... sure most the time you could have cared less about the sports... and yes half the time you had second rate reporting but still... If I want to watch the Olompics I want it in HD... sorry the USA/BRAVO/CNBC/MSNBC thing just doesn't work for me... and since NONE of your local programming & afternoon programing isn't HD why not? Bleck... down with NBC's coverage...
Don't forget that all of the video is also being converted from 50Hz to 60Hz in real time as well. It's truly an "Olympian" effort to get all of this stuff to work. I think it's great. Here on TWC in Hawaii we have the Multiview on channel 200. Four channels shown simultaneously. You highlight the one whose audio you wish to hear. Click on it to switch to that channel full screen. Plus we have NBC HD, U HD and those other channels. They are devoting channels 200-209 strictly for the Olympics coverage here.
"More than 50% of the Olympic sports will be shot and produced in HD, including figure skating, hockey, speed skating, ski jumping, freestyle skiing, and the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Other sports will be shot in 16:9 standard-definition and upconverted to HD when they hit NBC’s 75,000-square-foot IBC.
The only sport that won’t be produced and edited in HD is curling..."
Here in Virginia I am seeing alot of motion mpeg artifacts. HD looks soft and sd upconverted looks god awful. I watched the Summer Olympics and was very dissapointed in NBC sports HD. Every sporting event I have watched in HD on NBC since has been poor. Why can't these guys learn from the other networks especially ABC/ESPN. Looks like SNF will also be a dissapointment. Hope ABC can get the next Olympics.
There are details of NBC's HD behind-the-scenes here: http://hdolympics.blogspot.com/
He notes that some venues are indeed in 16:9 SDTV but they have built an enormous HDTV capability. (Take a look at his photos of the equipment.)
On the NBC side, they are doing everything on the production side at 1.5 Gbps. He notes that depending on how you get the NBC signal - cable SDTV, cable HDTV, over-the-air HD or SD, satellite TV and so on - all such compression occurs AFTER NBC has produced the signal. Depending on where you are and who is providing the HD signal content, you may be getting 5 to 15 Mbps of compressed HD video - from what started as 1.5 Gbps.
A couple of days ago I was in a local A/V store with a huge display of HD displays and receivers. They were pulling their sample HD content off of a DISH or DirecTV HD channel that was clearly overcompressing and dropping artifacts all over the (non-Olympic) sports event coverage they had on at the time. It was better than SDTV but not up to HDTV standards. So not all these problems are NBC's problems.
Well I'm in South Florida, And thought these problems were my local affiliate as well... in fact on saturday after many video hits, the primetime coverage switched to SD (with bars on the side). I commend NBC for their efforts, but it really sucks that the quality level isn't higher (I see all kinds of macro blocking in high movement shots). ATSC specs 19Mbits for 1080i... I'm getting it OTA, and my bet it my dumb local affiliate is taking their 19Mbits and splitting it up so they can have a fulltime "weather" channel... I think true high quality HD is still many years away, and most people have no idea.
I have poste about it on my blog!
http://www.sedicinoni.splinder.com/post/7237554
It is in Italian, but is very important that also Italian people can to know the situation.
bye
www.sedicinoni.splinder.com
The local NBC affiliate in Lexington, KY discontinued their multi-casting on 18.2 and 18.3 to broadcast the Olympic feed in 1080i format over-the-air. As long as the network feed held up, the viewing was SPECTACULAR. There have been problems with the feed from Italy, and NBC's weird decisions on broadcast timing/content can easily be faulted....BUT....when it worked, it was great.