Time Warner needs to add ESPN2HD. Every ESPN and ESPN2 college football game will be broadcast in HD this year, but we'll be missing half of them on TWC.
If you're a TWC customer, and as fed up with their game of chicken as I am, shoot an email to the VP of Programming, Fred Dressler at fred.dressler@twcable.com.
I didn't see any instances of Stetch-O-Vision during the broadcast. All the SD shots I saw were widescreen SD, which looks a ton better than stretched SD. I was disappointed by the number of SD shots that were required, but I'll take some widescreen SD to get what we got in HD anyday.
The reason the CBS broadcasts of the Masters didn't have to resort to SD shots is because Augusta National is hardwired with fiber all over the course so no wireless shots were required.
This method only works for SA8300HDs running Scientific Atlanta's SARA software. Support is not fully implemented in Passport models yet. The most recent builds (which have yet to be rolled out nationwide) recognize the drive, but you lose trick play features during live TV (they still work during recorded programs).
I thought the skycams really gave the game a "you are there" feel. It gave a much better reflection of the speed those guys are moving.
Unfortunately, they need to work a bit on the reliability of those cameras before they're ready to work as the sole cameras for a primetime broadcast. Early in the game one of the cameras froze and they didn't switch back to that camera until (I think) the beginning of the second quarter. It was much better when they could switch between the cameras rather than just watching one camera in the corner of the court pan back and forth.
Sidebars most definitely. Stretch-o is just confusing to consumers. I don't know how many of my friends believe that everything TNT-HD broadcasts is HD just because it's shown in 16:9 (no matter how hideous it is).
Matt - My bad. You are correct, googleHDTV.net is NOT redirecting to Google.
In that case, where did this piece of news come from in the first place? I guess I just assumed that someone entered googleHDTV.net and it brought them to Google, which has led to speculation that Google owns lots of different domains lately.
It looks like googleHDTV.net isn't owned by Google. It's just redirecting to Google (there are lots of sites that do this rather than just show the generic parked domain page). A quick WHOIS check shows it's owned by a company called "HDTV Websites", whose domain is "hdtvwebsites.com" which resolves to the same boxing site as googleHDTV.com.
Interestingly though Google DOES own googleDVR.com/.org and googleTV.com.
The funny thing is that I never would have even thought of hacking my DVD-HD841 player until I saw a press release yesterday that said it was easy to do. Last night I went home and tried it out and had the thing all fixed up in about 5 minutes. It even plays DiVx movies now, which is great considering I almost bought another player a few weeks ago just for that purpose.
If they'd just kept their mouths shut, normally law-abiding citizens like me wouldn't have even thought about it. Now that it's out in the open I consider it fair game!
HD signals are only UHF? Odd, maybe you should tell that to the hundreds of stations that are broadcasting (or have elected to broadcast) in the VHF range. Here in Cincinnati we have a station broadcasting right now on Channel 10, which is very clearly a VHF station.
"I have a MacBook Pro and an Xbox 360 and I would like to get a 20- to 24-inch display that will support both devices. The speakers should be inbuilt, or there should be an aux out on the display to hook up external speakers. Help! Please!"
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If you're a TWC customer, and as fed up with their game of chicken as I am, shoot an email to the VP of Programming, Fred Dressler at fred.dressler@twcable.com.