Poll: Which network had the best SOTU presentation?
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Jan 24th 2007 11:33AM
posted Jan 24th 2007 11:33AM
We hope you had a chance to check out the pres last night on your network of choice and while some of you left comments in the heads up post, we want to get a general consensus. If you did miss it then follow the link over to the AVSForum for some high res images and let us know what you think? Don't forget to tell us how you were watching and even what kind of TV you have.
My vote for ABC. The other stations broadcasts on my cable(Comcast) didn't look so easy on the eyes (almost not HD looking), plus ABC's was offered in 5.1SS.
TV: Toshiba 52" 720p
DCT: Motorola 6200
We watched on NBC...they took a while to put up the audio, but the image looked the cleanest on our set. The Fox affiliate in Colorado Springs did some nasty down-rezzing...I mean they all got the same source from the same camera, but fox looked like SD. The others looked OK (didn't check HDNet) but we typically watch NBC news here, anyway.
Set is 2003 Samsung 50" 720p DLP.
HD Net had the sharpest / most detailed signal (1080). The others were visibly inferior.
Vizio 42" LCD via HDMI from Time Warner of Maine w Motorola HD box
To summarize my comments from the other post:
1080i from HDNet and CBS looked great. HDNet was slightly better, but not by much.
ABC's 720p didn't look nearly as sharp, probably because I have a 1080p set. (My DirecTV HR20 does the scaling to 1080i.)
NBC's 1080i feed looked sharp, but had some kind of unfortunate resolution or interlacing issue that made it look awful.
Fox wasn't HD, so of course it looked awful.
This is all on DirecTV's HD locals in Philly, hooked up to my 47" 1080p LCD via HDMI.
Sadly, the links are all to low-res thumbnails. Hard to judge HD that way!
Sorry about that I fixed the links to go to the high-res originals.
I don't get HDNet, but of the remaining choices, CBS looked definitively better on my 1080p Westinghouse. Much cleaner blacks.
Thanks, Ben! Much better. Would be curious to see how HDNet looked, too, but I do like all of these stills. (Amusing that the sneer has moved from Bush to Cheney...)
CBS 1080i, despite the ugly intrusive graphics.
NBC 1080i was overly compressed. It was obvious whenever there was panning motion.
ABC 720p didn't look nearly as sharp, and the progressive scan didn't benefit much since there wasn't much fast motion.
Fox sux
I commented on the original about the quality that I saw. I actually watched NBC, because even thought it flickered more, I wasn't really watching, I was just waiting for it to be over.
It's interesting to me that my local ABC affiliate showed a SD boxed picture, even though the local news does the best of nearly always staying in HD.
From a picture only stand point (not graphics or commentary, etc.) I have to go with the NBC on my set. ABC was a close second but darker areas weren't as detailed and then CBS. The NBC still had problems but came out on top with my setup. Fox was very poor, despite a great picture from the American Idol broadcast just before the SOTU.
Comcast HD-DVR cable box w/Sony KV-2500 1080p LCD
From the looks of my set, I narrowed it down to CBS and HDNet as having the best picture. NBC was a close 3rd. But, in the end, I cast my vote for CBS. Really nice looking picture.
46" SONY Bravia 46S2000
NYC - Time Warner DVR box
-Mike
I was watching via my OTA ATI 650 Card and flipped through all the local networks. CBS had the best by far. For some reason Fox looked completely horrible.
Not sure how much of this is influenced by the decoding of my card though.
What I want to know is... what the heck is wrong with Pellosi's eyes that she has to blink with a frequency of 3Hz!!!!! Crimony I could barely concentrate on Cheyney's smirks while he farted her eyes were so distracting.
Did anyone else notice John McCain asleep at one point? LOL...
I gravitate towards the 1080i broadcasts since I have a 1080p TV. And since I only have an off the air antenna, I went to CBS and thought it looked great. The part before the speech where they had cameras in the isles really made me feel like I was there, it looked great.
I don't like how they always slightly blur the faces. They do this for HD newscasts also. The President's face was soft looking but his hair was very sharp.
You have an off the air antenna?! Does that mean you can get Friends and Fraiser with that thing?
I have Cox HD service and thought the CBS version looked the best on my 1080i CRT TV.
I wonder what network had the pool camera responsibilities for the broadcast. If I had a guess, I would say ABC. To me, it looked the best on my Samsung 1080p lcd, while CBS and NBC looked like it was being upscaled or something. And as for HDNet, though I watched the majority of the speech on it, looked the least good because of DirecTV and HD Lite....
ABC. just look at the fuzzy thing pelosi was wearing and that shiny thing in front of her, much better detail on abc. cbs and nbc were a tossup.