2012 NFL Week 4 - Television Coverage Maps, NFL ST, etc.

From the "Hot Off The Press" Thread (top of 'HDTV Programming' page).

TV Sports
Daopoulos: NFL, NFLRA deal is done
By Mike Florio, ProFootballTalk.com - Sep. 26, 2012

NBC picked the right year to hire an officiating consultant.

Jim Daopoulos, a long-time official and supervisor of officials, joined NBC this season. And he tells PFT that the NFL and NFL Referees Association have signed a new deal.

A crew is being assembled to work Thursday night’s game between the Browns and Ravens. Then, on Friday, the officials will travel to Dallas to retrieve their equipment and receive their game assignments for Sunday and Monday, with the same crews working together as last year.

Details are still not clear, but Daopoulos says that the much-debated pension issue was resolved with the current defined-benefit plan remaining in place for five years before switching to a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan.

Also, it’s believed that the deal will cover five more years before this one, which means that we’ll potentially be doing this again in 2018.

UPDATE 10:56 p.m. ET: Daopoulos has provided some more facts. The officials will vote on the deal in Dallas on Friday, at which time it will become final. They’ll then participate in a clinic, and head on Saturday to the game sites. Also, the officials will receive a pay raise of four percent, with 12 guaranteed game checks this year and 19 in subsequent years (including preseason). As to the checks they’ve missed this year, the officials will divvy up $2.5 million.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/09/26/daopoulos-nfl-nflra-deal-is-done/

FYI, for the Browns/Ravens matchup on NFL Network's Thursday Night Football, OTA simulcast stations are

WKYC-Cleveland
WBAL-Baltimore

Tonight Rich Eisen will be having a conniption:

"Welcome time warner / brighthouse peeps....Welcome regular refs !!"

Tampa Bay game won't be carried in Tampa Bay...wait, what?

Also, WGN-DT 9.1 will carry the MNF game in Chicago.

Yep, blacked out because fans down there won't go to their games.

That's a problem that won't get corrected until they figure out a way to make the upper deck Hoveround accessible.

The honeymoon between the refs, fans, and coaches, will be a short one...very short.

The funny thing is, there will come a point in time when you will have the fan saying they need to bring back the replacement officials. Crazy for sure, but they don’t call them fanatics for nothing.
Edited by Aliens - 9/27/12 at 3:10pm

I have an idea. Keep Rich Eisen and **** can the rest of them. #icantlistentothemamymore

The NFLN broadcast on WKYC is repeatedly dropping out. This is not happening on the NFLN broadcast (must be a local issue).

Watching via DirecTV.

NFLN HD FiOS NYC

The score bar is way to high. They need to move it down.
Audio on FiOS here is stereo.

What else is new?

Anyone watching today?

Anyway, this question is probably more for the viewers in Tampa, but I was just curious, after the NO/GB game was over on FOX, they switched to the final 2 minutes of WAS/TB ( I'm assuming they did this nationwide). Since the game was blacked out in Tampa ,do the viewers still get to see the end, or does the local station blackout the game somehow for the final minutes until its over?

I think part of the reason there aren't as many comments is because these NFL threads aren't at the top of the forum like they were in past seasons. I was watching actually looking for it before as I was watching the NE/Buf game today in Chicago OTA, and noticed more pixelation than normal on CBS. Was curious if anyone else had that same experience.

99% of the issue's anyone is going to have with picture quality will be from their local OTA broadcast,Cable company, and or Satellite provider. Back Haul for the networks is a very high bit rate of MPEG-2 or MPEG-4. Tonight's NBC feed is 25Mbps of MPEG-4.

FYI, tonight's OTA simulcast stations for tonight's ESPN Monday Night Football presentation of Bears vs Cowboys are:

WGN-Chicago (Chicago DMA only, not on WGN America/Superstation WGN)
KTXA-Dallas/Fort Worth

Watching EPSN on Comcast in Elgin IL. Picture is fine, and the audio is better than usual. ESPN broadcasts often seem to lack a strong surround effect, but tonight the sound is approaching SNF levels.

ESPN HD FiOS TV NYC

Always get good PQ on the MNF broadcasts. VBR MPEG2 video maxes at 17.5 MB's.

We came back from the local commercial break at 1:03 in the 1st and the Chicago play was already in progress.
Did anyone else miss the play or was it just FiOS?
Edited by icemannyr - 10/1/12 at 6:09pm

Has Espn changed something in the chain? Because the pq this year looks better than I remember.

Watching via d* on a 50" 1080p plasma and not seeing the nasty artifacts I usually see on 720p sports broadcasts

The surrounds could use a slight boost in volume IMHO

Is it the switch from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4.

Not sure which mpeg4 conversion you speak of. Espn has been mpeg4 from d* to the home for a few years now, no?

That doesn't mean the original signal was in MPEG4. DirecTV converts MPEG2 signals to MPEG4 all the time, virtually all your local stations are MPEG2 to MPEG4 conversions for example.

I don't know what's changed, but I also have noticed that ESPN's MNF image has been much better this season.

Understood. But usually those mpeg2 backhauls are very high bit rate (45 mbps?) or fiber to Bristol? Or did the feed to d* change for the better?

Am I correct that last year ESPN switched it's delivery method to MPEG4? Cable systems had to install new encoders so they could covert the video from MPEG4 or MPEG2 if needed and create SD versions of the channels?

Found the answer http://www.multichannel.com/content/espn-pull-down-mpeg-2-feeds-june-30

Couldn't help but notice paule123, that friends don't let friends watch 720p, which is odd since ESPN natively broadcasts in 720p HD.

Indeed, i am a harsh critic of 720p, but Espn has seemed to improve its game and I am giving kudos and would like to know why the pq has improved dramatically.

That is correct, New Motorola IRD's that are MPEG-4, Most cable companies are transcoding to MPEG-2 in their Muxes. A few are leaving it as MPEG-4 and a few FTTH systems don't even touch the stream= what they send is what you get in picture quality...