My Review of the Olympics in HD

[Magoo]

I reckon the Olympics picture quality on TVNZ ONE on DVB-S has been pretty good. Looks really good on oiur 32" LCD via component output from a Topfield STB.

My 7 year old said it all when we were watching the womans beach volleyball on Saturday in HD from DTT on a 40" Bravia "Dad its like watching a TV but through a window", I thought that summed it up perfectly.

So if you think it looks really good in SD on an LCD wait till you see it in HD with live 5.1.

Started the olympic warmup by checking Rove out in HD via a Native 720p Projector projected onto an 83" screen, unfreaking believable, I have never experienced a picture this good ever full stop, and I have been playing with several HD sources, yet to experience Bluray though. I would have to catergorically say that I would rate the picture as flawless.

Olympics opening ceremony also viewed via the projector, all I have to say is that it had to be the best way for TVNZ to launch the HD feed. One issue we did have was the Live 5.1 mix was a little borked with the commentary coming from the center speaker being mixed way to low and this also carried over to the events held on Saturday and Sunday, this has now been adjusted and the mix is much better.

One thing that does crack me up though is how we can have live event and studio feeds all the way from Beijing in HD, yet they cant yet do a live studio broadcast locally.

My advice, If you have an HD ready TV and want a fantastic picture and you are in a coverage area get Freeview DTT.

[paulw]

One thing I have noticed at somme events and last nite it was the swimming was that some cameras seem to have problems with the lite or something as there is so much video noise on some scenes. Mybe they are using SD cameras upscaling.. Same applied to the equestrian on Monday in fact I could see sparkling in the trees on some shots. I see tha the center channel on the 5.1 feed has been brought up in level.. generally all very nice in HD..

[wiredr]

i have watched the sports extra along side the web stream and at 2.1mb/s the web stream looks almost identical to the dtt signal , questions are
is the original feed for terrestrial broadcast suspect ?
or is the se terrestrial feed coming from the same web stream and not direct from the Bejing studio.?
if as i suspect tvnz are feeding us content delivered by internet on tvnz sports extra then we are being conned . what a bunch of cheapskates,

[Spyware]

I think you'll find that all feeds come into NZ over fibre in HD and are downscaled at this end and feed into mpeg2 and H.264 encoders at higher bitrate on input to output. Obviously the downscaling leaves a lot to be desired but there are a lot of technical issues we know nothing about. SE looks bad on both DVB-S and DVB-T.

Olympic production is 1080i 100 Mbps exclusively and the artifacts visible on some HD are simply due to the fact that 7.5 - 8 Mbps output for H.264 is a bit low but this can't be helped as entire mux can only support 26 Mbps. A DVB-T2 system would have been even better.

[wiredr]

that sounds logical however the se channel had way better pictures when they had the v8 supercars on and that was from a sd source ( uncompressed ). i still maintain that the video on se is from a highly compressed source and not from a 100mb/s fibre optic connection.

[kiwisteve]

I think you have hit the answer wiredr sounds like the downscale is the problem not the SE channel itself

[paulw]

Which begs to answer the question. Why wasn't the SE made to Hidef?? If as some say there are not the HD resourses avialale then give the HD demo channel the chop for the duration of the Olympics..

[kiwisteve]

The TVNZ DTT Mux is prob full The HD Demo is on the Kordia mux

[paulw]

The TVNZ DTT Mux is prob full The HD Demo is on the Kordia mux

But it's showing TVNZ promo loops so why not SE??

[kiwisteve]

I would think Kordia would charge for a feed such as the games

[wiredr]

i emailed tvnz yesterday about the low quality of video on tvnz sports extra (se). a person by the name of doug stevens Doug.Stevens@tvnz.co.nz replied with "TVNZ SPORT EXTRA is a standard definition quality channel that is
broadcast with resolution 720 pixels by 576 lines. It is broadcast on
both Freeview digital satellite and Freeview digital terrestrial
platforms.

It does compete for capacity with all other channels in the associated
multiplexes.

I am sorry that it does not meet your viewing expectations, but there
are no options currently available to TVNZ to increase the viewing
quality. In time the associated technologies will become more
efficient and the viewing quality will then increase.

Kind Regards

so that apears to be an admission of guilt .

[kiwisteve]

Yes exactly and looking at (( other )) SD feeds from other broadcasters via other satellite feeds its quite poor in comparison

[danger]

Not only is the Sports Extra picture quality terrible but the quality of the editing etc is also very poor. The few times I have watched it:


the audio was cut off (track and field)
the picture was left on a single and poor camera angle (high in the stands for the mens beach volleyball)
the event fast forwarded (missing much of the gymnastics final), and
the coverage cut away to some unimportant view during several important moments (track and field, volleyball, swimming)


It is by far the worst tv work I have ever seen. I have totally given up viewing the channel and have only been watching TV1 - which is quite fantastic except for the long ad breaks!

[wiredr]

on tv3 this morning there was a mention about Valarie winning the shot put and that dispite the restrictions put on tv3 (no camera exclusion zone of 1 mile and video segments to be less than 2 minutes )they still managed to show a good news item of her winning the gold . They (tvnz ) are not only trying to hobble the competition but are giving us the viewers a very substandard coverage. the chinese broadcaster is providing hdtv feeds to 37 networks plus over a hundred high speed internet connections so there is not a problem with the source material . the standard definition coverage from the last americas cup was way better . its a pity that the video content is not open source . just look at the success of youtube. it is so effective that bbcworld have their own section. eventually tvnz's narrow vision will be their undoing.

[felix]

Anyone noticed how blocky today's synchronized swimming on TV One HD was? :(

[kiwisteve]

Yes looked like the feed was of low bit rate across the games venue.
I have seen several cases . Anything with water and lots movement
will be very noticeable