The Wall Street Journal ran a piece last week that was picked up by other papers regarding the lack of regional sporting events in high-def. I've heard this complaint from others, particularly when it comes to CBS. The network's NFL broadcasts that are in HD look amazing (typically better than FOX, NBC or ESPN) but there are only a few games each week actually shown in high-def. We live in San Diego, home to the AFC's Chargers, which are almost always shown on CBS unless they're a part of the national game of the week as they were this week on Sunday Night Football. I haven't kept track each week, but it does seem like there have been almost as many weeks when the Chargers haven't been in HD as when they have.
I spoke with the head of ESPN HD about this issue awhile back and he told me that it all comes down to truck availability. The networks simply have not made the investment to upgrade all of their production trucks to HD yet -- not even close -- and trucks obviously have to drive between various venues. So if FOX shows a football game in Dallas on Thanksgiving in HD, it probably won't have enough time to make it to Philadelphia for a Sunday early afternoon game. The bottom line here is that once enough consumers have made the switch to HDTV, the networks will be forced to upgrade their entire infrastructures to support the superior technology. The question is, when will that be?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
Broadcast-quality HD gear (like graphics generators, mixers, DAs, etc.) all cost far more than their regular SD counterparts. But the prices are dropping, and have been dropping for years. So each network is just playing that game where they see how far they can push their old trucks before pulling them into the shop for a month to do the SD/HD carpet rip-up. They probably decided to push through one more football season and then go for the work next year.
Post a Comment