IIHF Hockey Tournament Video Quality Sucks!

[jborchel]

If you are watching the tournament you have seen the poor quality of the video. It almost looks like it’s in 480P. Anyone know what’s causing it? I’m thinking it has to do with the info strip on the bottom being inserted instead of overlayed. The result is that the 1080P picture gets compressed and somehow this results in the blurry look.

Could be because of mismatches in technology between US and Europe but that has not been a problem in the recent past.

 

[KyL416]

I just saw some highlights online taken from TSN's telecast, it's probably how the feed is originating as their video quality was pretty bad too, while the on screen scoreboard and graphics were much higher quality.

 

[jborchel]

I wonder if NHL.Com has a feed on Twitter or Reddit where one could comment and at least find out the source of the problem. In the past I have seen games shown in full screen and then compressed vertically when they put of that bottom banner with the scores. It definitely affect the video quality.

 

[KyL416]

The NHL doesn't actually run the NHL Network, they outsourced the operations to the MLB Network in 2015 after TSN shutdown the original Canadian channel because Rogers won the national NHL rights and didn't want to takeover operations of the NHL Network.

Also keep in mind the Latvian host broadcaster is lagging way behind the rest of the world when it comes to technology, their HD feed only launched 2 years ago and it is still not universally available.

 

[jborchel]

Except that the Finland feed broadcasts are just as bad. As I said above, I believe it’s the compressing of the 1920/1080 in order to put the score banner at the bottom. On some networks the take the banner off and put it on based on the game situation and you can see the difference in the compressed and non-compressed picture. Too bad.

 

[KyL416]

It's not the compression, TSN's feed in Canada doesn't have a ticker during the games, and the video quality was just as bad in their highlights.

Looking at some of the coverage, it probably doesn't help that they seem to be using a lot of hard cameras in the stands panning and zooming. Like a lot of the "close up" shots are at an overhead perspective you would get if you were zooming in from the stands instead of using an on the ground rink side cam.