AFANA Footy BBS

I was thinking of all the possible places Footy could come up.. all I could think of is World Sport HD,which is an exclusive for the VOOM satellite service.. it would be great to see a footy match in High Definition.. for the people who can afford it (me not included)

Selfishly I would like to see something more affordable to the average joe, but some of you people on the high end might have something to ook forward to....

do they broadcast AFL in australia on HD?

Hi Tony,

> World Sport HD,which is an exclusive for the VOOM satellite service.. it would be
> great to see a footy match in High Definition.. for the people who can afford it (me
> not included)

It's an interesting idea and I like all the ideas I can get. . Two concerns though: First, it fails the "widely distributed test" I try to apply to all potential outlets. In other words, if it's in fewer homes than FOX Sports World that's not good. The other is that VOOM has been bought by DISH Network and it's fate is still unknown.

> Selfishly I would like to see something more affordable to the average joe,

Short of ESPN, which isn't the most likely of possibilities, I can't imagine the future home(s) of footy will be any cheaper than FOX Sports World. In other words, unless you are willing to pay for digital channels or pay per view, you'll never again get footy on a free or basic channel. The medium to long term future is probably pay per view in some form if more than a tiny percentage of us are to access it.

> do they broadcast AFL in australia on HD?

Not sure but I can tell you that it is recorded in digital by all stations in a format with higher resolution than standard US television. That may not reach the level of HD though.

Thanks for starting a interesting thread.

-Rob de Santos
AFANA Chairman

AFANA Blog

> Not sure but I can tell you that it is recorded in digital by all stations in
> a format with higher resolution than standard US television. That may not reach the
> level of HD though.

Australian television uses the PAL format so it should be 625 lines. Definately better than NTSC (US format) but not quite HDTV.

Phil

> Australian television uses the PAL format so it should be 625 lines. Definately
> better than NTSC (US format) but not quite HDTV.

Yep, Phil, but I assumed that much. To clarify: the issue is what is the resolution of the digital format that the Australian networks film the matches in (what pixel resolution)? That may or may not be the same as standard PAL.

I can find out easily enough thru my contacts down under but I was hoping someone frequenting this board already knew.

-Rob de Santos
AFANA Chairman

AFANA Blog

> Yep, Phil, but I assumed that much. To clarify: the issue is what is the
> resolution of the digital format that the Australian networks film the matches in
> (what pixel resolution)? That may or may not be the same as standard PAL.

> I can find out easily enough thru my contacts down under but I was hoping someone
> frequenting this board already knew.

> -Rob de Santos
> AFANA Chairman

All I know is that the picture ends up looking like Garbage by the time it gets to FSW That's sort of weird too, both the tape-delayed games that arrive via courier AND the live via satelite Grand Final have a low resolution and washed out quality to the image. I could "maybe" understand the Grand Final (given satelite compression), but shipped videotapes? Then again, the image quality of FSW in general tends to be bad so that's probably it! It's too bad they don't preserve the "Dolby Surround" for the matches on FSW since I remember always seeing the Dolby logo during the games, it would be neat to hear it. I've got one of those receivers with Dolby Pro-Logic II decoding so I'd imagine it would sound great.
und great.

> All I know is that the picture ends up looking like Garbage by the time it gets to
> FSW That's sort of weird too, both the tape-delayed games that arrive via courier
> AND the live via satelite Grand Final have a low resolution and washed out quality
> to the image. I could "maybe" understand the Grand Final (given satelite
> compression), but shipped videotapes? Then again, the image quality of FSW in
> general tends to be bad so that's probably it! It's too bad they don't preserve the
> "Dolby Surround" for the matches on FSW since I remember always seeing the
> Dolby logo during the games, it would be neat to hear it. I've got one of those
> receivers with Dolby Pro-Logic II decoding so I'd imagine it would sound great.
Hi Rob,
Just happened to receive in my letterbox junk mail an brochure selling HD TV set top boxes for A$499
Says in part " Decodes all high definition modes -576p -720p - 1080i"
does p= pixels and what does i mean on the 1080
Cheers
Keith in Oz

> All I know is that the picture ends up looking like Garbage by the time it gets to
> FSW ...
> I could "maybe" understand the Grand Final (given satelite
> compression), but shipped videotapes?

Part of the problem is that the image undergoes several "transformations". From the digital source to analog PAL to analog NTSC then onto tape. Further, since the original image is 16:9 aspect ratio it is converted to 4:3. All of this, plus whatever FSWLD does to it results in a mushy image. Something I've mentioned to AFL Films before. It was marginally better this year but not great. I get copies of the video that FSWLD gets so I have the chance to compare the over the air product to what AFL Films sends on a periodic basis and report back to the AFL.

> ... It's too bad they don't preserve the
> "Dolby Surround" for the matches on FSW since I remember always seeing the
> Dolby logo during the games,

Just a guess on my part but since the international version of the matches is produced in dual track (one video track, one audio track) so that non English language broadcasters can overdub the audio, the Dolby SS info never gets onto the international tapes. But it would interesting to ask AFL Films that question and I might when I get the chance.

-Rob de Santos
AFANA Chairman

AFANA Blog

> Says in part " Decodes all high definition modes -576p -720p - 1080i"
> does p= pixels and what does i mean on the 1080

The "p" stands for progressive scan, while the "i" stands for interlaced scan.