Time and time again I notice that NFL on Fox looks like crap. It's so bad that sometimes the only way you can tell it's HD is that it's wide screen.

Compared to ABC/ESPN or CBS (the best NFL signal IMHO) it looks soft and crappy.

I've seen this problem OTA, cable, and dish.

I know NBC compresses to add that weather channel, but Fox?

Detroit? Paducah?

Where do you live and does your Fox affiliate broadcast a subchannel?

Even the best HD couldn't make the Lions look good

nbc sports in hd is probably the worst of any broadcaster. their nfl is clearly the worst of any of the 4 broadcasters that carry the games.

remember how bad the olympics were in hd on nbc? I just read on the pbs thread that nbc sends out their signal at only 25 mb/s compared to 45 for abc and cbs. that might be the cause right there.

I disagree. CBS HDand NBC HD look stellar for football games. Fox HD is not even close.

Isnt CBS and NBC 1080I and Fox Sports 720P? Maybe its the lower resolution.

Honestly, it's going to depend on a lot of factors: Subchannels, encoder age and display to name a few. And that's going to vary person to person, city to city.

Where do you live and does your Fox affiliate broadcast a subchannel?

I saw this problem in Chicago (Comcast) and OTA Chicago. Also, OTA in Kalamazoo, MI. And, my friend in San Fran (Dish) also says it looks like crap.

I disagree. CBS HDand NBC HD look stellar for football games. Fox HD is not even close.

Isnt CBS and NBC 1080I and Fox Sports 720P? Maybe its the lower resolution.

fox and espn are both 720p, but on my e* signal, they are both superior in pq to nbc's 1080i.

best signal i get for nfl are cbs and nfl network.

If you'll notice, some CBS games aren't as good as the upper level games. Same with Fox. I was watching the Saints-Falcons game and the clarity was nowhere as good as the Cowboys-Giants game the week before with the #1 crew. If you get the top 2 crews with both CBS and Fox, the picture quality will be great. The others will have subpar quality. I see the same thing on ESPN's college football.

We just got our local channels in HD recently via DirecTV. Not everything is in HD though. CBS seems terrible for every show. Better than before the switch...but not HD to me. It may just be your carrier isn't switched over to HD completely yet.

Fox isn't a whole lot better...but the football was pretty nice on the w/end. I personally like ESPN for HD on Monday Night Football.

Cheers,
BT

Honestly, it's going to depend on a lot of factors: Subchannels, encoder age and display to name a few. And that's going to vary person to person, city to city.Subchannels and local encoders do not affect the PQ of Fox network if the station is using the splicer as intended, which nearly all Fox affiliates do. A given network feed will look the same in any market aside from reception issues and downstream processing by cable and satellite providers.

I tend to agree with the source video as being much of the issue. Quite often it has heavy coarse detail enhancement. The studio show looks like it's still using upconverted SD cameras unlike the competition.

Another issue is that the network distribution is likely getting stressed with the number of games being sent. Stat muxing can only do so much, but can't do much when all the feeds require higher bandwidths at the same time.

Of course there is the 1080i vs. 720p debate, but I've seen good results in both formats. From a production standpoint I think 1080i looks better, but is more susceptible to degradation from downstream encoding and processing.

My NBC affiliate has no subchannels but still looks worse with NFL than my CBS affiliate that broadcasts a Retro TV subchannel. My Fox NFL looks good when it is HD and not so great when it is upconverted SD. Perhaps that is the OP's issue. :rolleyes:

CBS and NBC look fine here in NNJ--CBS has no subchannels and NBC has 2.

Fox looks pitiful on most games, looks like widescreen SD a lot of times even though it's supposed to be HD. They have 1 subchannel, My9.

If you'll notice, some CBS games aren't as good as the upper level games. Same with Fox. I was watching the Saints-Falcons game and the clarity was nowhere as good as the Cowboys-Giants game the week before with the #1 crew. If you get the top 2 crews with both CBS and Fox, the picture quality will be great. The others will have subpar quality. I see the same thing on ESPN's college football.


I have to disagree with you on that. last Sunday I was able to see bonus coverage at the end of 2 games.

SEA@MIA FOX WNYW-DT NY OTA looked great.

KC@SD WCBS-DT NY OTA looked great as well.

To me NBC has the opposite issue with PQ on SNF. The source video looks superb, but with any motion will start to have lots of artifacts. Fox NFL is far less susceptible to motion artifacts. NBC seems to have improved a bit, perhaps due to the high bitrate backhauls.

Time and time again I notice that NFL on Fox looks like crap. It's so bad that sometimes the only way you can tell it's HD is that it's wide screen.

Compared to ABC/ESPN or CBS (the best NFL signal IMHO) it looks soft and crappy.

I've seen this problem OTA, cable, and dish.

I know NBC compresses to add that weather channel, but Fox?

NFL:
FOX-HD via Cablevison NJ is sub par HD
CBS-HD is stellar
NBC-HD falls between the two
ESPN-HD a little better than NBC-HD

I disagree. CBS HDand NBC HD look stellar for football games. Fox HD is not even close.

Isnt CBS and NBC 1080I and Fox Sports 720P? Maybe its the lower resolution.

I second that I think that NBC games look great in HD

Time and time again I notice that NFL on Fox looks like crap. It's so bad that sometimes the only way you can tell it's HD is that it's wide screen.

Compared to ABC/ESPN or CBS (the best NFL signal IMHO) it looks soft and crappy.

I've seen this problem OTA, cable, and dish.

I know NBC compresses to add that weather channel, but Fox?

Its been inferior to CBS from day one. Its filtered to fit in 15mbps video and 1 mbps audio. No motion artifacts like on NBC though. Notre Dame was an embarrassment to watch last year on NBC.

CBS, NBC, and NFL Network are all comparable to me (minus motion-artifacting on NBC). ESPN looks good, but not as crisp.

On Fox, only the Aikman/Buck broadcasts look comparable to ESPN. The rest are noticeably worse.

Fox PQ varies widely depending on how much bitrate they decide to allocate to a game. When they have 5 games on at the same time and each one is only getting ~13Mb/s, the PQ is marginal. When they've only got 1 game on in the late slot and max out at 15+Mb/s, the PQ is as good as all but the best CBS games. One other thing to keep in mind is that many STBs (especially Moto boxes) will not output native format and will instead output everything in 1080i by default. This crossconversion will lead to inferior PQ when viewed on a progressive-scan display. And of course, the same applies when viewing in any output mode on a 1080i-native display.

I agree on the point that CBS has the best looking HD I've seen.

I agree with everyone for the most part, but I will say that I've NEVER seen macroblocking on FOX. Or on my ABC affiliate for that matter. While the picture on CBS is generally sharper and colours are gorgeous, with the multicasting on my affiliate any fast motion causes it to completely fall apart. I do appreciate the smoothness of the motion and how robust and consistent the encoding is when I have to watch on FOX.

I agree with everyone for the most part, but I will say that I've NEVER seen macroblocking on FOX. Or on my ABC affiliate for that matter. While the picture on CBS is generally sharper and colours are gorgeous, with the multicasting on my affiliate any fast motion causes it to completely fall apart. I do appreciate the smoothness of the motion and how robust and consistent the encoding is when I have to watch on FOX.

I believe that has to do with the fact that Fox, ABC, etc. are 720p and CBS and NBC are 1080i. If the day ever comes (doubt it will) that broadcasters do 1080p, it will blow the others away.

It always looks great to me...
No macroblocking, no shimmering, looks like full bandwith.















But I'm in one of their trucks every week....

:D

I saw this problem in Chicago (Comcast) and OTA Chicago. Also, OTA in Kalamazoo, MI. And, my friend in San Fran (Dish) also says it looks like crap.

here's Chicago. Fox and CBS.

http://thumbnails7.imagebam.com/1819/cfedb318183168.gif (http://www.imagebam.com/image/cfedb318183168/) http://thumbnails3.imagebam.com/1819/9a04f418183172.gif (http://www.imagebam.com/image/9a04f418183172/)

Fox bitrate was 14.8Mbps while CBS bitrate was around 17.3.

I agree with the poster above. If you get the late game on FOX, it'll always look better. Of course NBC will look good because they focus on 1 game only

I can get channels OTA from both Fort Wayne and South Bend, IN affiliates. NBC is garbage, CBS is a little better, and Fox is the best by far. When there is no movement on the screen, like in the screenshots above where the line is set before a play CBS and NBC do have a sharper picture and look better. But as soon as the ball is snapped and there is any motion on the screen the picture falls apart. CBS seems to be a little better than last year but NBC is still terrible.
Some games on Fox do look worse than others but I haven't seen any I would say are widescreen SD quality. Their long shots like the ones above seem to be the worst, and sometimes it looks like they will loose focus for a few seconds, but I have never seen any macroblocking on Fox. I'd rather watch a game that looks a little soft than one where the blocking is so bad I can't see what is going on.