I had the opportunity to watch the last three innings of tonight's game in native 720p on a multisync HD broadcast monitor.
Congratulations to Marvin Bernard for his fabulous throw from right field to end a Dodgers scoring threat in the top of the 12th and his game winning two out double that followed soon thereafter.
That said, I must confide in you all that I am quite disappointed in the overall PQ of ESPN-HD and I think that most of you HDNet/PBS/CBS HDphiles will be as well.
Don't get me wrong: Production values are top notch. Lots of cameras and camera angles. Real HD graphics.
If ESPN-HD had been first out of the gate then perhaps we would not be so spoiled.
But the simple fact is that these native 720p broadcasts simply do not hold a candle to the 1080i sports broadcasts from HDNet and CBS.
The Master's golf broadcast today had a true "you are there" character (at least when the true HD cameras were being used).
Last year's HDNet baseball broadcasts also had that same fabulous quality that only native 1080i video seems to achieve.
NHK MLB broadcasts sent back to Japan from Seattle also use 1080i.
ESPN-HD is certainly a nice overall experience, but it falls far short of industry standards as defined by NHK, CBS, and especially HDNet.
What is really interesting is that Panasonic, Disney, and many of our favorite broadcast engineers have adopted an attitude akin to "The Emperor's New Clothes."
First they were blaming the "outdated" Ikegami cameras. Now that those have been replaced by the new Thomson's it must be "compression artifacts" playing havoc with the ABC/ESPN pictures.
Nobody outside of this forum seems to want to admit that current state of the art native 720p video sourced broadcasts are not nearly as lifelike or satisfying as video sourced native 1080i.
I wonder how long Disney and the rest will remain in denial.
Congratulations to Marvin Bernard for his fabulous throw from right field to end a Dodgers scoring threat in the top of the 12th and his game winning two out double that followed soon thereafter.
That said, I must confide in you all that I am quite disappointed in the overall PQ of ESPN-HD and I think that most of you HDNet/PBS/CBS HDphiles will be as well.
Don't get me wrong: Production values are top notch. Lots of cameras and camera angles. Real HD graphics.
If ESPN-HD had been first out of the gate then perhaps we would not be so spoiled.
But the simple fact is that these native 720p broadcasts simply do not hold a candle to the 1080i sports broadcasts from HDNet and CBS.
The Master's golf broadcast today had a true "you are there" character (at least when the true HD cameras were being used).
Last year's HDNet baseball broadcasts also had that same fabulous quality that only native 1080i video seems to achieve.
NHK MLB broadcasts sent back to Japan from Seattle also use 1080i.
ESPN-HD is certainly a nice overall experience, but it falls far short of industry standards as defined by NHK, CBS, and especially HDNet.
What is really interesting is that Panasonic, Disney, and many of our favorite broadcast engineers have adopted an attitude akin to "The Emperor's New Clothes."
First they were blaming the "outdated" Ikegami cameras. Now that those have been replaced by the new Thomson's it must be "compression artifacts" playing havoc with the ABC/ESPN pictures.
Nobody outside of this forum seems to want to admit that current state of the art native 720p video sourced broadcasts are not nearly as lifelike or satisfying as video sourced native 1080i.
I wonder how long Disney and the rest will remain in denial.