How's NBC HDTV Olympic Coverage Working For You?
 

I've enjoyed good picture quality and nice camera work on NBC's Olympic coverage, but I've been having many bad picture glitches. Every few minutes, the picture will freeze for several seconds. On the midnight show, there was 5 minutes where the picture froze the whole time. Was this due to local cable and DVR problems or did everyone see these same things? I've previously had mostly flawless HDTV performance with this cable service and DVR. Tomorrow, I'm going to record the Olympics on my SD harddrive DVR, off my broadcast antenna, so I can compare it with the cable HD recordings for glitches.

I've had that type of ' freeze frame' on NBC,CBS and ABC and frankly it seems to be the worst on NBC-another one I like alot is on NBCs HD channels in some cases the audio gets lost (meaning the voice is gone but the dramatic music is still there!?!?!?!) whereas on the SD channel its fine. Go figure.
Its too bad that NBCs HD can't give your favorite team an edge!

Don

Any of you guys seen it on ATSC?

I don't have HDTV, but...
 

...am I the only one seeing a pretty bad picture on NBC? It looks like an old analog TV that is slightly off station -- extreme "peakiness" around edges. I was watching the snowboarding stuff, and the trees, uniforms, even Shaun White's hair looked almost solarized. In fact, his hair showed almost normal whenever he turned his head in the interview, but the instant he was relatively still, it just looked bizarre, like a detail filter overdone in post. Bob Costa's eyes are the same way.

Watching the CBC's coverage and it looks great. I'm watching on Comcast. Anyone else seeing this?

Here is Corvallis, Oregon and in Eugene, Oregon the broadcast looks terrible. There is a lot of chromatic aberration, noise, moire... ugly.

Hey Don, who's your cable provider (at least i assume it was cable)?

I saw (or heard, rather) the same problem with the Super Bowl on ABC, but I wasn't able to see if it was different on SD. My theory is that they lost one of the channels of the 5.1 sound that it was broadcast in.

Comcast is my provider. I've never really had picture quality issue other than the occassional "where's the f******g service now" (really only once in a while) but this audio thing drives me crazy (short drive at that) again it doesn't happen all the time or even alot but when it does its really annoying and believe it or not its only NBC-no other network. Oh well why complain, I remember when the only remote I had was my wife! Hey honey change to channel 2-now 5-now 7 now 9 back to 5 hey don't talk to me like that I'm your husband! (just kidding-I used my kids now I'm teaching my grandkids but they know all about remotes) O_O
So far the braodcast looks good no funny looking pictures.
Don

Actually, I just started watching tonight's broadcast and the problems are gone. It now looks fine --- it just took a few days before they figured it out.

Same here, so somebody must've noticed. Watched the women's snowboarding and it looked great. Almost wish I had PVR to step through some of the shots, they were so sharp and detailed. And Costas looks his normal wierd self without the Svengali eyes.

I think this must have been a problem with Crumbcast. They've had other channels that appear almost overloaded. One thing I've had since day one with digital cable is red bleeding. Anything even beginning to approach red purity looks like it was magnified and fuzzy. Definitely the cable, as neither VCR, DVD nor yet good ol' LVD do this.

the winter olympics have had this problem with HD from day1. this is NOTHING new. and it happens on over the air HDTV, not just cable.

I've just watched 5 hours of Comcast HD Olympic coverage on Monday evening and I can't recall any significant glitches. Maybe they have learned how to do it better, with a little practice. Will this last or will the first two days of the next Olympics still be broadcast beta-testing?

On Sunday, the worst pictures came from cross-country skiing, where 50 people in multi-colored clown suits were all thrashing their limbs every which direction. I believe they fully explored the limits of compression for such complex scenes.