I was briefly fast forwarding through both the Today show and NBC Nightly News in HD tonight - both Tivo suggestions, don't ask me why, now thumbs down - and saw something that surprised me a bit, although perhaps that's because I normally watch Jim Lehrer when I watch broadcast news.

Brian Roberts did a clip about OJ and then switched to an SD interview of the father who is publishing a book from the Today show. Was fast forwarding through this and then stopped for a minute, thinking wait a sec, didn't I just blaze through this in HD?

Went back to the deleted programs folder, and pulled up the Today show - voila.

More curious than a rant. I'm thinking of Sportscenter doing some but not all game clips in HD, and always thought that it was some function of reciprocal content agreements, editing time, and uplink capability that prevented them from universally using HD highlights.

This just struck me as weirder, given that the content was both local and owned by NBC. Is this a function of NBC Nightly News just broadcasting all interviews in SD so they center on the screen, or could there be a technical issue that I'm not aware of?

Any other examples of this?

I'm guessing the first interview you saw was live HD, but the Nightly News does not have HD capable recording/replay equipment.

AFAIK, this is the same reason a lot of local affiliates play network programs in SD if they are delayed by an overtime football game, etc. They don't have/can't afford the new HD recording gear required to "tape-delay" an HD program.

The interview was most likely edited for time for the Nightly News. Las I saw, NBC has not started editing packages in HD for the Nightly News.

Yea NBC may not yet have fully capable HD edit rooms for Nightly News, or the aircheck of the Today Show that they used in edit was a SD copy. This happens occasionally on ESPN, where you will see a clip from a show earlier that week that originally aired HD, but the copy they pulled from the library was the SD copy (this is kinda a sloppy to do, but content folks aren't always as concerned with a little thing like PQ).

Yep - if the Nightly News is HD in-studio but SD for VT/Server replay, any replays of an HD interview are likely to be in SD as they have been edited in the SD VT/Server domain.

When Nightly News starts editing features in HD, then they will probably be able to repeat sequences in HD.

Any other examples of this?Lots. It's just a matter of getting the HD content where it needs to be with the desired edits.

At this early time in HD network productions, as opposed to the relatively simple task of playback or even live events, the needed HD infrastructure is not in place.

Interesting stuff. Thanks to all for the education.

While most of primetime drama is shot on film and transferred to video on a single device (or shot on a single or several HD cameras) and sports trucks may have half a dozen to a dozen video storage/playback/editing devices, network news infrastructures have an enormous amount of that equipment. We are talking about hundreds of Video Tape Recorders, Video Servers, and Edit Systems, both linear and non-linear. None of that comes cheap even in the Standard Def domain. In the High Def domain that equipment is even more expensive. No news organization can afford to turn around and replace it all even over the course of several years. All three of the major networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) have been in the process of overhauling their studios for Hi-Def Cameras, Switchers and Graphics equipment, and they are also transitioning from tape based video storage, playback and editing to non-linear sever based video, while also transitioning this gear to HD. It will take time, but it is definitely happening Also remember that news organizations will always have SD archive footage and material received from outside sources that they have limited technical control over.

Another thing to consider:

Even if a facility has HD editing capabilities, sometimes stuff gets cut in SD because that equipment is readily available when needed. For example, we have to go to one particular area to have an HD shot recorded to the server from HD file tapes. However, we can go into any edit room and take in the SD version if the HD area is tied up at the time. Sometimes being faster means going SD.

Today, almost 10 years after HD broadcasting was introduced by the Networks (OK, maybe just nine years ago) full HD production moves at an agonizingly slow pace. Some Networks treat(ed) their HD efforts as a niche market, even when they knew that digital (maybe just SD) would eventually be the only way to go.

It's a bit of a "chicken-and-egg" problem. Plans for true HD were not being created with any real belief that HD would evolve beyond just a few program types. "They" seem to be wrong about that, now that local news is now going HD, due primarily to competitive forces.

Some Networks say that the slow transition is not their fault, that the tools to do what they want still aren't available. Maybe it's more likely an inverse chicken-and-egg thing. If you don't create the budget to get this new gear, that will pretty much guarantee that suppliers won't build the tools you will eventually need.

It's frustrating that I'm hearing the same warnings from transmitter and tower crews about lead times for installations before 2009 that I heard from the same group in 1999. The claims are still valid, it's just that stations had 10 years to drag out the original build, if they chose to.