Daily Blog – Brian Florian – August 21, 2008: FOCUS PLEASE

Like a few billion other people, I’ve been spending probably a little too much time watching the Olympics.  At least I’m getting to see them in HD though… or am I.

Sticking mainly with CBC-HD’s coverage for its nicely rounded (not just Canada biased) coverage, I noticed the other night that video footage of the race I was watching was so soft as to seem almost out of focus.  I would say about as good as really good DVD.  Yet the overlay graphics (times, scores, titles, etc) were razor sharp, pixel-for-pixel perfect, so we can’t blame Rogers for over-compressing this time.

Are all the camera operators not pulling focus?  Unlikely.  Was something lost in a signal rate conversion somewhere between Beijing and Toronto?  Does anyone other than me even care?

Granted most of the coverage has been pretty good (like the now famous “super slo-mo” diving shots), but the bottom line: overall less than compelling HD.

And service providers wonder why HDTV has taken about 20 years longer to be adopted than it should have…