2008 NBA Playoffs in HDTV - First Round on ABC / ESPN / TNT / Local Sports Nets!

ESPN seems to have put a gold border around their score bar. It looks kind of strange and it's up very high on the screen.

Suns @ Spurs on WLS-DT via Comcast.

I like it. It finishes the look off. I'm not crazy about the fact it takes up a few more pixels of space, but it has tons more character than the old version. It also looks like it was re-shaded to give it more overall texture. Better.

Orlando / Toronto looks horrible on TNT... so much macroblocking.

i've never seen a TNT game look so terrible

i was just about to post the same thing

This is the worst looking TNT game I have ever seen.. This must be the "F" truck that they're forced to use when they do 3 games in one day.

The graphics are out of focus and blurry...edges look very blurry and bit-starved..horrible aliasing on the out of bounds lines and pixelation when there is just a little bit of movement.

Even that "playoffs" swoosh that they have before replays looks messed up..like it's at the wrong framerate?

I was hoping it wasn't just me that thought this game looked horrible. I'm guessing this game is upconverted, with their HD cameras in Boston and Detroit?

TNT always seems to have problems with games in Orlando.



no, its not an upconvert

The Toronto/Orlando game also does not have the score bug framed for 16x9 as other TNT broadcasts do.

The Nuggets/Lakers game on ABC (Sunday) main center court cam looks terrible. Very soft. Every time a flashbulb goes off the picture pixelates in large blocks and breaks up.

Watching WEWS-DT Cleveland (no subchannels) OTA and D* on a Panny 50" 1080p plasma.

76ers have their first playoff road game in HD, plus other shows airing from Detriot during the first 2 games in Round 1.
Good to see some money being spent on a playoff run by comcast, love to see it on the Flyers too.

Atlanta @ Boston looks terrible. TNT

I'm watching on E*.

I watched the game of Orlando vs toronto just for 5 minutes and then I turned off. This game was the worse that I ever seen on TNT. The detroit one also was so so and the boston one was terrible too. I am with TWC NYC. I don't know about the lakers game because ABC here in NY decided to broadcast the Pope instead of the NBA playoffs, so the game was in ESPN2 Standard. I bought my first HD TV set which is a SONY back in November, I paid top dollars and so far the experience has been average at best.
It seems to me that many of the cable channels and cable companies are not on top of HD broadcasting yet.

Orlando @ Toronto, Saturday 4/26 on TNT

Watching via D*. Center court cam looks terrible. Looks all around bitstarved. Pixelation with motion. Looks worse than some of the other NBA playoff games I've seen on TNT.

Orlando at Toronto, 4/26, TNT, D* in Houston -

I only watched for about 2 minutes near the end of the game, but this was one of the worst broadcasts I had seen. Picture looks fine when camera is not moving or not showing the court, but when the camera is panning, the court looks horrible - I think it is macroblocking, but I'm not quite sure if that's the right technical term. The court doesn't look crisp and clear, but all the lines seem to be real fuzzy instead of sharp. Not sure if it is more from D*'s MPEG-2 compression or TNT related. Audio was slightly out of sync as well.

+1 for the TNT feeds looking horrible on D*. As stated in another thread on this topic, the NBATV HD games, the OTA games, and even the ESPN2HD games all look better.

--Mav

I'm frustrated right now as I'm in Chicago but am from Detroit and want to watch the Pistons game!!

It shows up as currently playing on MojoHD in my RCN cable, but when I go to the channel I just get a blank black screen. Otherwise, every single hd channel I have (48 channels now) are coming through just fine. Why oh why can't I see the Pistons play!!

Oh yeah, and +1 to the games looking AWFUL on TNT. They should be ashamed.

I watched my beloved Dallas Mavericks last night on TNT and the quality was EXTREMELY good. Much better than what i'd ever seen on TNT, or frankly even better than the broadcast networks...

I was switching back and forth between the Mavs and the Pistons on Mojo, and the Mojo picture looked significantly worse than TNT. It seemed like it was widescreen 480...

I think the Mojo airing is them re-encoding the downlinked NBA TV HD feed. So lets say it comes down at 15mpbs (just an example) and Mojo transmits at the same 15, it is a re-encode of a decoded 15 you are seeing. Not the original 15 encode.

TNT looks so washed out in HD for all Celtics home games, when Comcast Sportsnet HD does them they are crisp and full with rich color.