Olympic broadcast quality?

[gadams]

Anybody else having issues with picture quality of NBC's olympic telecasts? I've found several segments to be literally unwatchable, most notably water polo and synchronized diving. In the case of water polo, of course, the water surface is constantly being churned up and in random motion with the athletes moving in rapidly changing directions; in the case of the diving, the camera has to follow the divers, who are moving in a blur. In both cases, on my TV, the result is the total loss of both fine and coarse object detail, which is replaced with a pixellated grey fog. Gymnastics, swimming, beach volleyball don't seem to exhibit the problem, although still aren't a picture I would recommend to anyone. I get the same results whether watching my local NBC channel OTA or the Dish retransmission.

I am presuming that this is NBC starving the signal to preserve bandwidth, whether via overcompression or some other method I don't really know or care. What a waste! I can't think of a better showcase for HD programming, and this is about the worst "HD" picture quality I've ever seen.

 

[tnsprin]

The HD broadcast and HD LIL look quite good hear in NY DMA. Also in the various other NBC/Universal stations they look good.

 

[KAB]

Water polo was stunning OTA in Indy.

 

[JEFFinINDY]

Anybody else having issues with picture quality of NBC's olympic telecasts? I've found several segments to be literally unwatchable, most notably water polo and synchronized diving. In the case of water polo, of course, the water surface is constantly being churned up and in random motion with the athletes moving in rapidly changing directions; in the case of the diving, the camera has to follow the divers, who are moving in a blur. In both cases, on my TV, the result is the total loss of both fine and coarse object detail, which is replaced with a pixellated grey fog. Gymnastics, swimming, beach volleyball don't seem to exhibit the problem, although still aren't a picture I would recommend to anyone. I get the same results whether watching my local NBC channel OTA or the Dish retransmission.

I am presuming that this is NBC starving the signal to preserve bandwidth, whether via overcompression or some other method I don't really know or care. What a waste! I can't think of a better showcase for HD programming, and this is about the worst "HD" picture quality I've ever seen.

Yes, last night's diving and gymnastics were horrible during fast motion. It seems to vary by day and venue.

Check out some of the screen shots on AVSForum (link below). You're not imagining it, and it appears to be coming that way from NBC.

AVSForum picture quality

Jeff

 

[murphaleen]

My Olympic HD signal is poor, but mainly because I decided to switch the 2 TVs connected to my 622. Yes, I am not very techno-savvy, so I cannot figure out how to hook up the cable lead from my outside antenna to my primary TV. The cable has a 2 MHz splitter attached to it, followed by a short length of cable that attaches to another splitter. I have 2 antenna inputs on my larger Samsung primary HDTV, but am not certain what to hook up to them.
After switching the connections on the two sets, I got all channels, even my 7 locals, but no local HD signals. I know I goofed up somehow, but where?
Do I really need to call DishTV to have them walk me through it?

 

[tnsprin]

Yes, last night's diving and gymnastics were horrible during fast motion. It seems to vary by day and venue.

Check out some of the screen shots on AVSForum (link below). You're not imagining it, and it appears to be coming that way from NBC.

AVSForum picture quality

Jeff

The samples shown don't match what I watched off WNBC-DT OTA in NY. I'll have to see if I still have it on my DVR.

 

[Barry Erick]

OTA it is beautiful. I've watched over 9 hours daily. Primetime and other times. However, maybe the bad ones came out of NYC, as NBC switched most stations to the Burbank feed due to problems in NY.

 

[Carl B]

There are at least two other threads in this forum on this same subject.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-network-forum/145072-olympics-pq.html

http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-network-forum/144977-hd-forum-nbc-olympics-pq-main-channel.html

 

[vicw]

I'm struggling with the sound on NBC tonight, more than the PQ, on both the Women's volleyball, and swimming competitions. The narration is often drowned out by crowd noise or music.

Maybe they think all that racket improves the ambiance of the events, but I think it's painful to listen to, and I've all but given up trying to make out what the announcers are talking about. On top of that, we are experiencing huge jumps in volume everytime they go to a commercial break. We are keeping the mute button close at hand.

 

[tnsprin]

I'm struggling with the sound on NBC tonight, more than the PQ, on both the Women's volleyball, and swimming competitions. The narration is often drowned out by crowd noise or music.

Maybe they think all that racket improves the ambiance of the events, but I think it's painful to listen to, and I've all but given up trying to make out what the announcers are talking about. On top of that, we are experiencing huge jumps in volume everytime they go to a commercial break. We are keeping the mute button close at hand.

They are broadcasting in DD 5.1 which puts the crowd noise around you. They think it is great. With DD 5.1 the commentary is usually clear from the center channel, but the noise is loud.

Commercial breaks are often louder particularly where a local ads comes on.

 

[tnsprin]

The samples shown don't match what I watched off WNBC-DT OTA in NY. I'll have to see if I still have it on my DVR.

I no longer had the other night's recorded. But I recorded last night's(4/13). Both OTA and from Dish's LIL (WNBC-DT NY). Looking at the OTA during fast motion (at 1/15 spped) in the diving I see little compression problems mostly optical blur.

We really should only be talking about the DISH broadcast on this forum. For that I do see some moderate compression artifects during these fast actions. Particularly on those camera's that were following the action. For those cameras that stayed stationary, there was much smaller compression problems.

 

[vicw]

They are broadcasting in DD 5.1 which puts the crowd noise around you. They think it is great. With DD 5.1 the commentary is usually clear from the center channel, but the noise is loud.

Commercial breaks are often louder particularly where a local ads comes on.

Yes, I'm well aware that it was in DD 5.1, and normally it would enhance the ambiance, but the crowd noise was extremely louder than the narration track in this broadcast, which made the comments extremely hard to decipher, at least for me. Even after I put the receiver in the Maximum Late Night mode, the narration track was too low, in balance.

I know that commercial breaks are often louder, but these were painfully and objectionably louder, which I don't feel is an acceptable practice.

 

[ka1z0ku]

I know that commercial breaks are often louder, but these were painfully and objectionably louder, which I don't feel is an acceptable practice.

Not only is it unacceptable, it's regulated by the FCC, but I believe the difference has to exceed a certain dB amount, and even if it does, good luck enforcing it. I've been turning volume down for commercials for as long as I've had a 5.1 sound system, lol.

 

[vicw]

They are broadcasting in DD 5.1 which puts the crowd noise around you. They think it is great. With DD 5.1 the commentary is usually clear from the center channel, but the noise is loud.

Commercial breaks are often louder particularly where a local ads comes on.

Not only is it unacceptable, it's regulated by the FCC, but I believe the difference has to exceed a certain dB amount, and even if it does, good luck enforcing it. I've been turning volume down for commercials for as long as I've had a 5.1 sound system, lol.

Agreed. Actually, I've had some success by politely emailing the engineering staff at one of our local CBS affiliate, WRAL, when their volume balance went significantly off kilter on their HD channel.

I wrote them several months ago, after several weeks of resorting to the mute button, and they restored an even audio balance betwen commercials and content within 30 minutes of my email. It has stayed balanced pretty well ever since. I might try that approach with the local NBC affiliate, and see how they react.

 

[ehren]

Well I thought it was good but I can see motion blur and pixels on my CRT on channel 98-HD. And of course it's even worse on my LCD.

 

[EmpireState]

Still blocky via OTA in my local area tonight. Is there any consensus of opinion that this is a national NBC thing or do you think this is a local transmission issue that varies by local provider of OTA signal?

It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the Olympic rings graphic that flies across the screen every so often is always very blocky. It's a constant reminder that this is not as high quality as I want. It could be so much better.

 

[BigTetto]

Interesting to see people pleased with Water Polo PQ... that's the one event that I think has shown the worst. Like gadams said, I find it tends to be a blocky mess due to the constant motion/churning of the water. Of course there are a million variables in the equation, but I'll ask anyway... is it in some ways a limitation of the MPEG codec?

On my end...
622 via HDMI to NEC PX-50XR5A Plasma @ 1080i, noise reduction turned off
Hartford HD locals off the sat and OTA - neither looked appreciably better.

 

[Sammy033]

Thus far I would say the quality has been pretty good. However that didnt help the boxing matches considering quite a few of them they repeated even two days later. Surely there must be new things to show every day.

Just an aside for people to check. Maybe its just a fluke for some people but I think I read in a thread here that some have said there are problems with the 722 often resetting the resolution from 1080i to 480p. Maybe thats the problem for some the quality?

 

[tnsprin]

Still blocky via OTA in my local area tonight. Is there any consensus of opinion that this is a national NBC thing or do you think this is a local transmission issue that varies by local provider of OTA signal?

It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the Olympic rings graphic that flies across the screen every so often is always very blocky. It's a constant reminder that this is not as high quality as I want. It could be so much better.

OTA should actually be discussed in a different Forum.

But HD OTA in NY is excellent and Dish channels including NY LIL are quite good.

IF you want put up a Poll. Here for DISH.

For OTA probably in
Network HD Programming - SatelliteGuys.US