[quote="Lou Delgresiano"][quote]I'm not sure what you're talking about on the half time show. I was watching the feed directly out of "Silver" and never saw any breakup, either from their output or the feed out of the World truck (SS28). Maybe an encoder choking somewhere?[/quote] But is it possible just one camera can break up through an encoder? I'll have to post a still or video of it (if only I can get express written consent of Fox Broadcasting and the National Football League).[/quote] It's possible for one camera ANGLE to breakup. They had a very cool video "curtain" behind the band that was only really visable with the head-on shot you're talking about. I've certainly seen encoders choke on flashes and stuff being put on the screens. Call yourself a journalist; then you can post whatever you want!

[quote]I'm not sure what you're talking about on the half time show. I was watching the feed directly out of "Silver" and never saw any breakup, either from their output or the feed out of the World truck (SS28). Maybe an encoder choking somewhere?[/quote] But is it possible just one camera can break up through an encoder? I'll have to post a still or video of it (if only I can get express written consent of Fox Broadcasting and the National Football League).

[quote="EIC-Jeff"]First, as to "temperal/spatial" crap...[/quote] :) :) :) How do you really feel? [quote="EIC-Jeff"]...Keep this in mind; even on my $20,000+ monitor in the back of the bus, I can't truly see either format at it's maximum resolution. The best CRT monitors might do 800 lines of resolution...[/quote] On my desk I have a 17" panasonic LCD. It was only $7000. (I can't compete) It interpolates interlace to progressive. What's nice is that it's fast enough to display the field rate. When I'm making graphics I need to know if I have the field order backwards.

[quote="Mike Cumbo"]As the article mentioned Game Creek had several of their trucks there, the Fox HD units, the new Northstar truck and Patriot. I heard the total was eight units, not sure if that included the 4 from the Fox HD 'monster", the A and B units of Patriot and the single Northstar unit or eight A units. The game TD was whoever was Fox's "A" show TD the whole season. I forget the guy's name. As for pre/post game, I don't know. I also saw that NMT provided a feed for the Chinese. Not sure where they were located.[/quote] It was GCV 'FX' (three units) as the main Fox truck and "Patriot" A&B as support. Denali "Silver" was the halftime truck. These units were all down in the area that the field parks when it's outside. Up on the practice field was SS16 (HBO), Slate (Germans), K2 (NHK) and NCP V A&B for ESPN. All the other international broadcaster were in office trailers or had small unlinks. I didn't see any NMT trucks in the international compound. SS28 was the World (international) truck, SS25 was the pre/post truck for NFL Network. SS14 was NFL Networks "Master Control" truck and ESU of course handled all the compound distribution. SS19 was over at NFL Experience, SS27 was at the Media Center, SS20 was at the AFC Hotel, Coreplex was the NFC Hotel and Trio "Tango" was handling Networks "Total Access" show. I'm sure there were other trucks doing other shows offsite but I never got out of the compound. -Jeff

[quote="Lou Delgresiano"]Did anyone notice the break-up/interference in the cart camera used as Tom Petty's main head-on waist up camera? I wonder if it came down to the break-up being acceptable enough to use, because they'd rehearsed with it, and had no quick replacement. It looked really bad for the second highest rated broadcast ever. There were also a few times you could tell the TD got caught in a promo and had to dissolve to replay.[/quote] I'm not sure what you're talking about on the half time show. I was watching the feed directly out of "Silver" and never saw any breakup, either from their output or the feed out of the World truck (SS28). Maybe an encoder choking somewhere?

[quote="sahonen"]Even in the trucks, pretty much the only people watching an actual interlaced picture are in video and engineering. Production is watching on progressive LCDs or downconverted to SD on the 9" CRTs. Just think of how much less complicated (i.e. cheaper!) the hardware could be if it didn't require deinterlacers! DVEs especially would look a lot better.[/quote] Umm, wrong. During a 1080i production EVERYONE in the truck is watching an interlaced picture, even on the downconverts. During a 720p production everyone EXCEPT the engineer, the shaders and the two big monitors up front are watching an interlaced picture on the downconverts. Just my two cents, but keep a couple of things in mind. First, as to "temperal/spatial" crap, 1080i has better (i.e. more) pixels horizontally. Name the sport that happens UP AND DOWN? Wouldn't you want more resolution along the axis that contains the most action? Also, from a purely engineering stand point, most of the equipment was designed to run in 1080i then modified for 720p. With the exception of Panasonic tape machines, most things in my truck behave better when they're in 1080i. Of course if I'm doing my job you'd never know that in the front of the bus. Keep this in mind; even on my $20,000+ monitor in the back of the bus, I can't truly see either format at it's maximum resolution. The best CRT monitors might do 800 lines of resolution; you do the math. NO display that we use in trucks can accurately display ALL the information we're generating. And one last thing; I have to look at the format flag on the scope anymore to figure out whether an incoming signal is 1080i or 720p and I've been watching this crap for the last 8 years. -Jeff

[quote="sahonen"]Don't most stations simply pass the HD feed straight through from the network? That's how it was when I was working at KMSP a few years back, apparently there's a box that will let you superimpose a bug without touching the data from the rest of the frame. It only has to recode the macroblocks that the bug is in. Pretty nifty little trick.[/quote] The box you're referring to is a "splicer." It takes the native mpeg2 stream, and splices in the bug and/or station ID without completely decompressing the signal, inserting the bug, then recompressing. It only affects the area where the bug is inserted, the rest of the image passes through untouched. It's something that FOX uses, I'm not aware of any other network or affiliates using it. [quote="sahonen"]As a side note, I'm so glad that Fox did the Superbowl the year I got an HDTV... 720p is better for sports, period. There's just not enough bandwidth over the air to make 1080i look good. I'm not sure who the guys are at CBS and NBC who decided to broadcast in 1080i but they need to get their eyes checked.[/quote] Ah, the 720 vs 1080 debate. I prefer 1080i. In my market, CBS NFL looks much sharper to me with less compression artifacts than FOX NFL. But it varies market to market and I also have a 1080p set. 720p compresses at 49:1 to fit into an ATSC stream. 1920 x 1080i compresses 55:1, not much difference and for any interlacing artifacts you get via compression (which I don't see), you get extra spatial resolution. With 1440x1080 which is pretty common with satellite, you're looking at 40:1, less than 720p.

[quote="scottgfx"]The only times I see artifacts in our OTA broadcast is when there is a fast swish-pan in a show like CSI:Miami.[/quote] Can't dramas get away with coding frames progressively though? I know the transport is still 60i but MPEG2 lets you code 24p and use flags to split that out into the fields. I'd wager that for native 60i video i.e. sports you can't get away with nearly as much motion without breakups. [quote]I know of some broadcaster that have tried to go cheap on conversion hardware, what's to say that a broadcaster can't buy a cheap MPEG encoder?[/quote] Don't most stations simply pass the HD feed straight through from the network? That's how it was when I was working at KMSP a few years back, apparently there's a box that will let you superimpose a bug without touching the data from the rest of the frame. It only has to recode the macroblocks that the bug is in. Pretty nifty little trick. [quote]I'm trying to find some information on how exactly interlace is handled in ATSC's MPEG2. I know interlace isn't handled well on DVDs. I'll have to go back to the engineering shop and borrow a book.[/quote] I'm reasonably sure that ATSC handles interlace the same way... As I mentioned before, MPEG-2 does have some tricks for interlaced material, like being able to code progressive frames and split them into fields, but only on still images or actual progressive content. [quote]While I was hoping that the Grand Alliance would do away with interlace when the standard was being formed, I find it isn't as big a detriment to the image as I thought it would be. It would also have been nice if they picked a better compression system than MPEG2. H264 would have looked a lot better inside of 19.3Mb/s. Can we just start over on the march to DTV?[/quote] They're actually looking at adding h.264 to ATSC. Too bad it would break everything that's already on the market. But I hear you about doing away with interlace... It's 1920s technology. Never should have even been considered for a modern video standard.

[quote="Lou Delgresiano"]But most feeds to DSS and cable providers are direct fiber to head-ends or uplink sites, bypassing the OTA Weather Plus, so most viewers shouldn't have any loss of bandwidth due to WxPlus.[/quote] We too do the direct fiber to the cable systems, but the cable system then runs the program through their own compression hardware. Our signal on cable does not equal what we broadcast OTA. I don't know how much bandwidth is given to us on cable, but I can tell it's smaller as motion artifacts are really noticeable. The only times I see artifacts in our OTA broadcast is when there is a fast swish-pan in a show like CSI:Miami. (i.e. every pixel on the screen is changing) The image is also at the mercy of what kind of encoder the broadcaster decided to purchase. I know of some broadcaster that have tried to go cheap on conversion hardware, what's to say that a broadcaster can't buy a cheap MPEG encoder? I'm trying to find some information on how exactly interlace is handled in ATSC's MPEG2. I know interlace isn't handled well on DVDs. I'll have to go back to the engineering shop and borrow a book. While I was hoping that the Grand Alliance would do away with interlace when the standard was being formed, I find it isn't as big a detriment to the image as I thought it would be. It would also have been nice if they picked a better compression system than MPEG2. H264 would have looked a lot better inside of 19.3Mb/s. Can we just start over on the march to DTV?

[quote="Lou Delgresiano"]But most feeds to DSS and cable providers are direct fiber to head-ends or uplink sites, bypassing the OTA Weather Plus, so most viewers shouldn't have any loss of bandwidth due to WxPlus.[/quote] I've heard that cable and satellite providers are more interested in being able to shove more channels down the pipe than in the quality of those channels. I wouldn't be surprised if HD on most cable and satellite providers has about the same or even less bandwidth than OTA. Regardless of bandwidth issues, I think adopting an interlaced broadcast standard was a huge mistake anyway considering how practically everybody who's watching HD now is watching on a progressive display that will require a deinterlacer (i.e. will look like crap because consumer deinterlace hardware sucks!). Even in the trucks, pretty much the only people watching an actual interlaced picture are in video and engineering. Production is watching on progressive LCDs or downconverted to SD on the 9" CRTs. Just think of how much less complicated (i.e. cheaper!) the hardware could be if it didn't require deinterlacers! DVEs especially would look a lot better.

[quote="scottgfx"][quote="sahonen"]As a side note, I'm so glad that Fox did the Superbowl the year I got an HDTV... 720p is better for sports, period. There's just not enough bandwidth over the air to make 1080i look good. I'm not sure who the guys are at CBS and NBC who decided to broadcast in 1080i but they need to get their eyes checked.[/quote] Keep in mind that a lot of NBC affiliates section up their digital channel to put in NBC's "Weather Plus". I believe my local NBC affiliate has 3 separate channels in their 6Mhz digital channel. 720p is the 1280x720 resolution, but it's 60 frames per second. 1080i is of course the higher resolution, but 60 fields per second. My point is, plain unadulterated 1080i looks great as does 720p, they just make different compromises. One has higher temporal resolution with lower spatial res. The other has lower temporal resolution with higher spatial. Some stations mess with a good thing. In fact, I worked at that NBC station over 10 years ago. They were talking about how they would pack FOUR or MORE channels into their digital channel.[/quote] But most feeds to DSS and cable providers are direct fiber to head-ends or uplink sites, bypassing the OTA Weather Plus, so most viewers shouldn't have any loss of bandwidth due to WxPlus.

Pretty much all of the digital channels in the Twin Cities market are sectioned up in the same way. Most of the stations use their .2 subchannel for a downconverted SD feed of their HD channel, while the NBC affiliate uses their .2 for Weather Plus. I think the local CBS affiliate is the only one that doesn't subdivide their digital channel. The content in 1080 breaks into huge ugly blocks at the first sign of any kind of movement onscreen, while the content in 720 always looks smooth except under the most extreme conditions. While 1080i is only delivering about 1/8th more pixels per second than 720p, you have to take into account that interlaced material cannot be coded as efficiently as progressive material. The biggest way MPEG-2 saves bandwidth is by exploiting similarities in adjacent frames. 720p frames are only 1/60th of a sec apart and are thus more similar to each other than 1080i frames which are 1/30th of a second apart, and because of the interlacing the frames must be treated as two separate half-height images instead of a single full-resolution image.

[quote="sahonen"]As a side note, I'm so glad that Fox did the Superbowl the year I got an HDTV... 720p is better for sports, period. There's just not enough bandwidth over the air to make 1080i look good. I'm not sure who the guys are at CBS and NBC who decided to broadcast in 1080i but they need to get their eyes checked.[/quote] Keep in mind that a lot of NBC affiliates section up their digital channel to put in NBC's "Weather Plus". I believe my local NBC affiliate has 3 separate channels in their 6Mhz digital channel. 720p is the 1280x720 resolution, but it's 60 frames per second. 1080i is of course the higher resolution, but 60 fields per second. My point is, plain unadulterated 1080i looks great as does 720p, they just make different compromises. One has higher temporal resolution with lower spatial res. The other has lower temporal resolution with higher spatial. Some stations mess with a good thing. In fact, I worked at that NBC station over 10 years ago. They were talking about how they would pack FOUR or MORE channels into their digital channel.

As a side note, I'm so glad that Fox did the Superbowl the year I got an HDTV... 720p is better for sports, period. There's just not enough bandwidth over the air to make 1080i look good. I'm not sure who the guys are at CBS and NBC who decided to broadcast in 1080i but they need to get their eyes checked. Mischer's crew turned out another great halftime... They've improved a lot since the Stones a couple years ago, the audio on that show was baaad. I liked the super slomo look they had up high... Was that one of the Phantom cameras we're using here in the Twin Cities or something else? The game audio was spectacular, top notch parab work, I loved when they cut to low endzone tight on the QB and you could hear and see him talking.

Don Mischer and his production team. Outstanding group of folks.

Anyone know who directed the Petty performance?

Robert LaMacchia rocked the studio pre-half-post game on Patriot, Colby Bourgeois kicked ass as the game TD in the GCV FOX trucks - despite that jackass who did the sub switch for him ... what an idiot that guy is...

Did anyone notice the break-up/interference in the cart camera used as Tom Petty's main head-on waist up camera? I wonder if it came down to the break-up being acceptable enough to use, because they'd rehearsed with it, and had no quick replacement. It looked really bad for the second highest rated broadcast ever. There were also a few times you could tell the TD got caught in a promo and had to dissolve to replay.

The TD I believe would have Rick Tugman wouldnt it have been? I get mixed up, either Kris Kastro or Rick Tugman?

As the article mentioned Game Creek had several of their trucks there, the Fox HD units, the new Northstar truck and Patriot. I heard the total was eight units, not sure if that included the 4 from the Fox HD 'monster", the A and B units of Patriot and the single Northstar unit or eight A units. The game TD was whoever was Fox's "A" show TD the whole season. I forget the guy's name. As for pre/post game, I don't know. I also saw that NMT provided a feed for the Chinese. Not sure where they were located.

That's the only info I've found. I'm curious to hear more about it and maybe see some pictures behind the scenes...