Tennis HD: What the Crap?

[jgags6]

Im a big tennis fan, and i love the tennis channel. So i was happy when dish added this on monday.

Ive been home sick a few days, so ive been watching it quite a bit. The shows, like Destination Tennis, are in HD and look fantastic, but this morning i am watching Live coverage of the Masters Series in Hamburg and it looks utterly crappy. I believe they are upconverting SD television. Hopefully they are becuase if this is their live HD coverage I might throw up.

What do you all think?

 

[bhenge]

Many (most??) overseas tennis events are not produced in HD, but in their version of SD which has a slightly higher resolution than that used in the USA. So yes, you are looking at upconverted SD for many of the events. Each year more tourneys are done in HD, so it will get better. Don't assume because a channel is HD that the content is HD... just be glad that you have the channel so when the HD content is there, you see it.

 

[Weezknight]

Im a big tennis fan, and i love the tennis channel. So i was happy when dish added this on monday.

Ive been home sick a few days, so ive been watching it quite a bit. The shows, like Destination Tennis, are in HD and look fantastic, but this morning i am watching Live coverage of the Masters Series in Hamburg and it looks utterly crappy. I believe they are upconverting SD television. Hopefully they are becuase if this is their live HD coverage I might throw up.

What do you all think?

I wish I could remember what match was on last night, but it looked like it was in HD, not upconverted SD.

 

[richiephx]

I've been watching the Masters Hamburg and Rome last week and the picture quality is heads above the SD channel which is terribly bit-starved. I'll take it even though it's not in HD.

 

[grb]

It appears to be in ED (Enhanced Definition, not Erectile Dysfunction) which is what Fox used last season for their Saturday baseball games. You may remember that there were a number of ED plasma tv's on the market a few years ago. I believe it is 480p rather than 480i and is shown, of course, in the 16x9 format rather than the 4x3 480i format...

 

[photoman76]

The feed from Germany is 720x576i 16x9 Mpeg2 4:2:2 video running at 6.5 Mbps.

The Tennis Channel distribution feed to Dish is 1440x1088i 16x9 H.264 video running at 9.7 Mbps.

The source is not HD, but it's very good looking SD. The upconversion by the Tennis Channel actually enhances the video quality. To me, it looks better than the source feed.

I can't compare it to the Tennis Channel HD on Dish since I'm still using my 942.

 

[jgags6]

Thanks for the replies guys.

 

[kvnfl]

The feed from Germany is 720x576i 16x9 Mpeg2 4:2:2 video running at 6.5 Mbps.

aka: PAL

SPEED.com goes out of the way on their message boards to explain that F1 races are FOM World Feed in PAL and not what the US knows as HD (or ATSC).