ITV Sport

[dholdi]

Its nothing to do with Sky so thats why I've put it here.
When are ITV sport going to do something about their SD picture quality - its pants, blurry, grainy and with definite ghosting for tonights England game.
I thought the same for the recent game with Spain which had me playing with picture settings on the TV. They blamed it then on foreign footage.
It almost makes me think they are doing it on purpose to shift customers to HD.
Skys SD sports picture quality for example is a vast improvement.

[reddwarfcrew]

I thought the ITV Sport picture of the England game was spot on.... on ITVHD on the new EPG

I flicked onto 103 and boy what a difference. My girlfriend even said that 103 looked all blurry.

[dholdi]

I've no doubt it was mate.
My wife also commented, she said we could try the tv in the other room ???????
I was discussing this with a friend the other day and we sort of came to a conclusion that it must be the recording equipment. IE they arnt gonna have sd & hd cameras recording. They must record with HD cameras and then transmit in both SD & HD. Obviously Sky have got the process sorted a little better.
Or maybe theres another reason and someone will put me right.
Edit - just watching the highlights as an experiment and it doesnt look any better. I thought it may be something to do with the live broadcast but it seems it must be the recording ?

[Undecided Adrian]

I thought ITV used heavy, ham fisted compression techniques for the smallest possible data stream they could get away with.

[Brian69]

I thought the ITV Sport picture of the England game was spot on.... on ITVHD on the new EPG

I flicked onto 103 and boy what a difference. My girlfriend even said that 103 looked all blurry.

I agree, ITV HD pulled their finger out last night, but wether this is due to the broacast installation at Wembley, or to ITV remains to be seen, still no sound drop outs so a move in the right direction

[dms05]

ITV's SD picture is so bad we don't watch ITV except when it's something like last nights football. For a channel in serious financial trouble you'd expect them to be trying to maximise their viewing figures. However this can't possibly be true as they have made it impossible for almost all HD box owners to watch their HD output (except a few geek Freesat fanboys who sit all day gloating over the ITV HD Test Card). Odd business strategy - broadcast the lowest standard picture of any major network and make it extremely difficult to watch the HD version. ITV continues to behave like a monopoly and hasn't notice the world has changed and they have been left behind.

[big bob]

I have thought for a long time now that the words 'ITV and live sport' don't go together.

The picture quality for live football has been poor for a long time now. The programmes are nowhere near as good as Sky or BBC.

I wasn't half pleased when the BBC got F1 back. Just need them to get FA Cup, Champions League and England internationals now.

[Nigelh]

I thought it was just me, I don't have HD but do have one LCD TV that is HD ready if we watch a BBC programme on that TV, the picture quality is fantastic, much better than on our Sony CRT TV. It is that clear that it appears to be 3D, if watching ITV this just isn't the case.

[Undecided Adrian]

I have thought for a long time now that the words 'ITV and live sport' don't go together.

The picture quality for live football has been poor for a long time now. The programmes are nowhere near as good as Sky or BBC.

I wasn't half pleased when the BBC got F1 back. Just need them to get FA Cup, Champions League and England internationals now.

I must agree the BBC SD F! coverage is way better than ITV.

I like the way ITV are dropping drama as it is "too expensive" and they will produce tons & tons of lowest common denominator reality TV.

I did like the way the spun the fact that the next "A Touch of Frost" will be the last, mainly due to Sir David Jason had enough of it ages ago and ITV kept on waving big cheques under his nose to get him to do it.

Yet Sky offer him almost next to nothing to do something he wants to do and he's on board like a shot.

The interview he did for Hogfather was great he said "Sky is producing high quality entertainment, not the usual run of the mill hospital or police drama"

Anyways the way ITV are going they'll lose the football soon enough.

[Guy H]

The picture yesterday for the FA CUP was the worst I've seen yet on ITV! what a joke outfit they are. The sooner SKy gets all the football the better!