CBS to produce all NFL games in HD, but will you see them that way?
By Richard Lawler 
posted Sep 1st 2008 2:35PM
posted Sep 1st 2008 2:35PM
We'd never doubt our old friend Ken H at AVSForum and his magic 8-ball, so it's no surprise that when Sports Video Group interviewed the VP of engineering at CBS, he confirmed all of the network's NFL games this season will be produced in 1080i. Unfortunately, due to a lack of network capacity, it's possible that the late game of a double header could start out distributed in SD, before switching to a high definition feed later, and halftime highlights will be SD-only. Both of those situations will be resolved by the '09 season when CBS' NFL contract requires it go all-HD, all the time - as the last NFL-free weekend comes to a close, news that the suffering will soon end eases the pain...a little.[Via HD Sports Guide & AVSForum]
I hate the CBS half time show for this exact reason
I suppose Ken H is technically correct. He said that CBS plans to have all NFL in HD this season, which is true, although they admit that it may not be possible to reach that goal. The bigger question is how many telecasts can CBS distribute in HD simultaneously.
I wonder if we will get complaints on this practice of potentially starting with a game in 4:3 SD. Remember, the west coast will be the ones who will lose out on this situation, as CBS has said it may start with games in 4:3 SD during late telecasts. Very few games on the east coast are given late starts, and those that are usually chosen for late telecasts are games featuring top teams (or games featuring the Jets). The west coast was very unhappy with NBC for offering tape-delayed Olympics and they may have the same grudge with CBS, as games featuring their teams are more likely to have to start off in 4:3 SD (although they will be live).
CBS has had to do a major shift of their feeds to affiliates over the last few months due to the failure of the satellite virtually all of their program and news feeds were on. The amount of bandwidth that was available on their original bird was not available on others (due to several factors) and they had to do some creative work to keep all their feeds getting to the affiliates. It was either utilize the limited bandwidth available, or split the feeds across two birds and force every affiliate to put up a brand new satellite dish within a matter of weeks, not something feasible by any means.
On a side note, I won't see ANY CBS programming in HD, since our local affiliate, KSWT, still has NO HD capability, and according to the GM, they MIGHT by early next year.
But isn't the NFL on CBS brought to us by Sony, who has HD in their DNA? How could they do anything other than HD??