After months of promotion to encourage people to make the jump to HD for this World Cup tournament, ITV HD made the mother of all blunders during England's showdown with the USA on Saturday.
Just minutes into the first half England took the lead from a Steven Gerrard goal. But those watching on ITV HD would not have had time to celebrate, as the channel cut to adverts during the moments it took for England to put the ball in the back of the net. To make matters worse, the transmission that then returned was in standard definition rather than high-def format for the majority of the game.
ITV HD's Adrian Chiles apologised for the problems at half-time, saying "apologies for those watching in HD. I believe there was some interruption in your coverage."
An official ITV statement puts the blame down to "human error" and a transmission problem from supplier Technicolor.
But ITV's problems didn't just affect the 1.5 million watching the match in HD. Glitches during the opener between South Africa and Mexico meant that some 90,000 struggled to follow ITV's online coverage of the game.
If you've got a web-connected Sony Bravia TV or Blu-ray player, you're in for a few fantastic footie treats this summer.
Sony have lined up a selection of classic World Cup clips ready to be streamed into your living room as and when you please. Using the Bravia Internet Video portal, you'll be able to watch 20 Fifa World Cup Moments, 14 Official Films from the World Cup including a colour version of the 1966 final, and the Fifa Mini World Cup with highlights of the best tournaments in World cup history.
Christian Brown, Senior Category Marketing Manager for Home Entertainment, Sony UK, said: "We are very excited to offer a catalogue of the FIFA World Cup Collection to consumers in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Thanks to BRAVIA Internet Video and our partnership with FIFA, we can make some of the greatest football moments come to life in consumers' living rooms across Europe at the touch of a button."
Great to see some timely content hitting Sony's web-connected sets, but it's a pity the videos aren't also available on the PS3.
FIFA and Sony today revealed their 3D broadcasting plans for this summer's 2010 World Cup Finals in South Africa.
However, English fans have been left out in the cold, with no group stage fixtures for England making the jump to 3D, nor any TV broadcasting schedule announced. Instead we'll have to hope England get through to the knock-out stages to see Rooney and co. in the third dimension. But even then we'll have to hunt out a cinema projecting the game in 3D, as Sky's 3D channel will not be showing the games.
ITV and BBC are the co-rights-holders of the coverage, and so far neither have announced any further plans to broadcast 3D content from the World Cup.
"You might be curious to know why [sic] the selection criteria," said Niclas Ericson, FIFA's director of TV. "It is a very difficult one but the main issue was that we wanted to have a good spread of the matches in terms of matchdays covered.
"We also wanted to make sure that the key games would be in this production schedule such as the opening, the final stage matches and, of course, the final in Soccer City. There were a lot of other reasons such as production reasons and logistics and space.
"Some of you here I'm sure will wonder why...England versus USA is not being used. It's a very hot match on June 12 and [it] is not possible to do it because of the various constraints that we have.
"But we feel you should not despair. England will make it through the final rounds and then we will show that."
Nice try at smoothing things over Ericson, but considering Brazil are getting three 3D group games and Spain, Argentina, Germany, Holland and Nigeria are getting two apiece, it still doesn't seem all that fair.
All the scrum crunching, drop kicking action of the 2010 6 Nations Rugby tournament will be broadcast in high-def, free of charge, thanks to Freesat HD and the BBC HD channel.
This year's 6 Nations rugby tournament will be broadcast on BBC HD from February 6th until the 20th of March, with Ireland and Italy squaring up in the first match.
It's a good year for Freesat HD-owning sports fans. They can also look forward to The World Cup on the BBC HD channel and ITV1 HD, as well as Winter Olympics, Golf Masters, Wimbledon, FA Cup and UEFA Champions league matches.
For more info, check out www.freesat.co.uk.
The first technical transmissions of Freeview HD have begun today.
The Winter Hill transmitter group is currently beaming broadcasts to select areas of Manchester, with the Crystal Palace group doing the same for pockets of London. They are the first in the world to adopt the DVB-T2 standard and MPEG-4.
James Jackson, BBC head of broadcast infrastructure carried out a demonstration live at the BBC Media Centre. Promotional cuts from BBC HD and ITV HD broadcast by the Crystal Hill group were displayed using brand new IDTV's manufactured by Sony and Panasonic. Both channels were fully incorporated into the Freeview electronic programme guide.
Though the BBC broadcast was the same as is currently available on Freesat, ITV's offering was currently just an upscaled broadcast of the ITV1 channel. ITV have committed however to broadcast most of their top peak programme scheduling in full HD as the service becomes more widespread.
The BBC hope to have a national coverage of 50% for Freeview HD in time for the 2010 World Cup, reaching its maximum 98.5% national coverage by late 2012. Channel 4 also hope to launch a Freeview HD channel in the new year, with as many as five other HD channels in the wings from the network.
For news of when your area will be receiving Freeview HD broadcasts, click here.
During the World Cup, some 18 million fans in Germany were able to watch the games on Philips' giant Ambilight Full Surround screens - 77m2 each. Not only is that a record for Philips, but is also believed to be a world sports record.
Philips installed over 34 purpose-built giant screens at 15 locations across Germany, with a combined video screen size of over 8,000m2, enough screen to cover an entire football pitch. From Hamburg to Munich, Leipzig to Cologne, every city created its own individual viewing event to enrich visitors’ experiences. All Fan Fest viewings were completely free of charge, ensuring all fans were welcome to celebrate in the true spirit of the official event slogan, ‘A time to make friends’.
Philips also held similar events in Brazil, where over 20,000 people watched each of Brazil’s games at a specially constructed screen in Sao Paolo’s Vila da Copa square.
Here we see millions of fans celebrating a Zidane goal. I wonder what they made of his final?
Philips hope that similar events can be held for other major sporting events such as the Olympics.
Well, once you've done one World Cup in HD, there's no going back. In any case, if you're a host nation from now on, one of Fifa's requirements is that your broadcasts are in high-definition.
It seems that South Africa is still largely analogue, but Sentech, a South African broadband network, is planning to roll out digital terrestrial TV.
To me, this implies that SA's terrestrial digital service will be able to cope with the bandwidth requirements of HD, but in any case, they'll need to get some serious gear in place in order to capture, edit and transmit World Cup pictures around the globe.
At least by 2010 equipment should be more plentiful and a little cheaper, and there'll be more engineers trained in the art of HD broadcasting.
One thing's for sure, the World Cup will never be standard def again.
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NTL/Telewest, as you’ll know if you have seen its billboard ads, is the home of ITV’s World Cup HD football coverage. Again there seems very little difference between what ITV and the BBC are showing, well they are both taking the feed from the same broadcaster. The in studio shots are also excellent quality too, though the ITV crew should liven up their shirts a little.
The only thing have noticed is that the image has cracked up and disappeared a couple of times. I don’t know if this is the fault of the broadcaster, ITV or NTL/Telewest but it is highly annoying. Has anyone else noticed this? It has only happened a couple of times but that is twice too often in my book.
You know those 50 inch high definition plasma screens? They’re for girls. If you really want to catch the World Cup in all its 1080p glory you’ll need to head down to your Odeon cinema and watch it on a massive 50 ft screen.
Coughing up a cool £150,000 for the technology to make this possible, Odeon has made an arrangement with HD channel Euro 1080 to show all the England games, as well as the quarter and semi-final matches, 3rd place play-offs and the final – 11 matches in total. Fourteen cinemas across the country (list of locations on the turn) will be hosting the event with ticket prices set at £5.50 per adult, £3.50 per child.
The BBC has announced that it will broadcast its 2006 World Cup coverage and major Wimbledon matches in High Definition this summer, as part of a year-long trial of the service commencing in mid-May. The World Cup 2006 will be the first major sporting event to be broadcast in HD in the UK. To view the World Cup in HD, you'll need a HD Ready TV, a HD set top box and a HD service from your satellite or cable provider.
The BBC's HD trial will last for about 12 months, allowing the corporation to test the technical delivery of HD and to understand how the audience values a BBC HD service. Broadcasts will commence on Monday 15th May with a series of previews. The first live HD programme will be the opening World Cup match Germany Vs Costa Rica on Friday 9th June, courtesy of German broadcasters Premiere, with BBC commentary and analysis also in HD.
It might just be one wing of the BBC not knowing what another wing is doing , but a report on the Beeb's website says that ‘The BBC is among European broadcasters due to broadcast matches in HD standard for those with the suitable equipment to receive it.’
It is tucked away in a story on how top trade journal Screen Digest reckons that there could well be a shortage of HDTV decoder chips for tellies.
It doesn't say how the Beeb will screen the programmes in HD but we are guessing that a slot on the Astra satellite – which will be picked up by Sky HD system owners - is likely as is screening the games though cable channel Telewest.
After months of promotion to encourage people to make the jump to HD for this World Cup tournament, ITV HD made the mother of all blunders during England's showdown with the USA on Saturday.
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