[BC] An HD Tuner for $110--vanishing tennis balls

[Steve Michaels N4AY]

I was head-end tech at a cable company that picked the CBS affiliate
off-air.  There was a constant source of noise in the signal that couldn't
be found.  The solution was a "DeSparkler"  It did get rid of the sparklies,
but footballs during a pass disappeared, the lines on the field became
jagged when the camera panned and there was generally a "soft focus" effect
on everything.  The cure was worse than the illness.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net
[mailto:broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of WFIFeng at aol.com
Sent: Saturday, December 24, 2005 12:20 PM
To: broadcast at radiolists.net
Subject: Re: [BC] An HD Tuner for $110

In a message dated 12/24/2005 11:44:37 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
dpuopolo at usa.net writes:

> Yep...Just try and watch a hockey game on HDTV - the slurring will drive
you
>  nuts! But this is the FUTURE, so it must be better - RIGHT?!

Several years ago, a few stations started using some kind of digital 
compression that made most sports totally unwatchable. It's effect on tennis
was 
extremely pronounced. Not only did the ball *completely* disappear every
time it 
was in motion, the lines on the court blinked on and off with every movement
of 
the camera. It was maddening. When she asked me why it was happening, and I 
told her that it was some kind of digital video system, my wife started
calling 
it "That stupid digital thing". Thankfully, that is history, now, and tennis

is watchable again.

Thinking of hockey (neither of us care for it at all) I do remember the 
experiment to highlight the position of the puck electronically with some
kind of 
computer-generated "streak". Apparently, it was a colossal flop as we only
saw 
it used a few times, then never again. (We tuned in a few different times
just 
to see what the fuss was about.)

>  Even Dish TV has artifacts by the tons now (NTSC). Whenever anything goes

to
>  black, what you see are a bunch of square pixels with differing amounts
of
>  black.  So much for "digital quality".

I've seen exactly that effect on several different shows about a year ago. 
Most noticable were a few scenes in Star Trek: Enterprise, where the room
was 
dark, and when the camera angle changed, you were left with a blocky,
pixellated 
after-image of what was on the screen before. In a dark scene, when 
characters talked, their mouths became blurred and pixellated, also. It
reminded me 
very much of low-bitrate WMV streams, which have a similar after-image
effect. 
I'm glad they fixed that problem, too.

Willie...

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