Purdue at Notre Dame in HD on NBC from South Bend, IN. Please post how you are receiving the game (cable, sat, OTA) along with your location with your comments.

Purdue at Notre Dame
Notre Dame Stadium
South Bend, IN
3:30 ET

Hoping the quality doesn't look bad. As a disappointed SC fan, I want to see Notre Dame get blown out

Watching in HD OTA in Houston. There are constant cracks and pops in the DD 2.0 audio. Anyone else getting this?

TWC here in Cincinnati (WLWT) looks pretty good so far. I have not seen the macroblocking that I normally see on NBC so far. WDTN (Dayton) and WLWT both look good OTA as well. No issues heard with the audio either.

I sent an email to the Houston affiliate and by the 2nd quarter the pops had stopped and now I am getting 5.1 audio. Woot!

Watching in HD OTA in Houston. There are constant cracks and pops in the DD 2.0 audio. Anyone else getting this?

I called KPRC about it and talked to someone in engineering. They said they were aware of the problem and about 5 minutes later, the problem went away. Unfortunately it appears they are having the audio issues again during halftime. My Denon receiver displays "Dolby digital" normally, but right now it just says "Dolby Pro Logic." I may need to give them a call. I was watching it on Directv, but switched over to my OTA antenna and had the same issues

I think that NBC's picture quality is much improved over last year's football broadcasts. The one complaint I have today is that the colors don't seem to be as rich as they usually are, especially from a couple different camera angles. I'm wondering if it has to do with the filters on the cameras because of the bright sunlight. When they go down to a camera on the field showing Joe Tiller or some of the cheerleaders or fans in the stadium, the colors do look good, but when they have the distant, full field view cameras, the colors are very muted and are not very vivid. The skin tones look kind of pasty white and the helmet colors aren't near as sharp.

I think that NBC's picture quality is much improved over last year's football broadcasts. The one complaint I have today is that the colors don't seem to be as rich as they usually are, especially from a couple different camera angles. I'm wondering if it has to do with the filters on the cameras because of the bright sunlight. When they go down to a camera on the field showing Joe Tiller or some of the cheerleaders or fans in the stadium, the colors do look good, but when they have the distant, full field view cameras, the colors are very muted and are not very vivid. The skin tones look kind of pasty white and the helmet colors aren't near as sharp.

Get out of my head... I was just thinking the very same thing. I think Notre Dame stadium present quite a challenge for the camera because of the shadow the press box casts on to just part of the field.

I didn't watch the halftime show but I'm still in 5.1 for the 2nd half.

For some reason today's game looks a lot better to me than the past few on NBC. I thought I was crazy, but maybe not!

I'm told NBC is using MPEG-4 distribution, now. You should see improvements.

The primary HD distribution path isn't moving to the MPEG-4 system until Oct 14. They are still on the MPEG2 system until then.

Must have misunderstood the CE at the local affil. Maybe he was telling me he put the gear in FOR that, last week. I was drinking at the time. : )

Yes, the receivers are supposed to be arriving at stations. There is an MPEG-4 MUX on C-band already but that is just a backup feed. The primary feeds are still the Ku feeds and those will be switching mid October. You may have said it a little early, but I do hope you are right that we see an improvement when the switch happens.

Have they changed anything on backhauls? I can remember one year when the Macy's parade (live, backhauled) look like poo while the dog show that followed it (taped on site and walked over) looked fabulous. Same station, same distro. Only difference was the method of getting it to the network. And the year HDNet handled the backhaul of the Winter Olympics & KY Derby, they looked positively stunning (I had the fortune of viewing on an affiliate running full bore with no subs).

Comcast in greater Boston here,

I agree with the other posters, I too thought it looked better as compared to week 1. But that was just on clarity of the picture. It still lacks the color richness/pop.
Which is odd because NBC's NFL games have looked great this season.

I didn't have any audio issues.

I just recently moved my Directv service address to Green Bay, and I was pleasantly suprised to see how great the ND game looked yesterday on the GB NBC feed.

I guess going from 2 subchannels to no subchannels really does make a huge difference :)

Any word if NBC will be running separate HD feeds for Mountain and Arizona?

NBC already has a Mountain HD feed.

For some reason today's game looks a lot better to me than the past few on NBC. I thought I was crazy, but maybe not!

I also felt crazy for thinking the same thing. These games (at least through my affiliate) have had fewer distracting moments of complete pixelization and less mosquito noise compared to last year. Could they have actually improved things?

I'm starting to worry that something has happened to my eyesight in the past year or perhaps the messy Olympics broadcasts have conditioned me not to see them anymore. :confused:

NBC already has a Mountain HD feed.
When did that start? KPNX has been delaying the East feed for years, and the discussion of NBC's distribution infrastructure always includes mention of the 2 HD feeds (E/W) and Weather+ sharing one transponder.

When did that start? KPNX has been delaying the East feed for years, and the discussion of NBC's distribution infrastructure always includes mention of the 2 HD feeds (E/W) and Weather+ sharing one transponder.

The HD East/West only was prior to the Today show going HD. When the Today Show went HD last year NBC added the other Time zones on a different transponder because each time zone gets its own feed of the Today show at 7am local time.