FSW coverage of CWS

Fox Sports Net showed a replay of the Manchester United-Bayern Munich game and it was fantastic compared to most games! The picture and sound was very good considering it was a FSW production and much, much better than their Saturday Night Soccer game of the week. Too bad the same crew didn't do the same thing for MLS. But they do need a little improvement.

 

That is hilarious! If you did indeed drink to those things, I am guessing you got completely rocked! Every other sentence had one of the above five sayings. Good call!

 

You forgot: 1 drink everytime Giorgio says "They need to move the ball forward"

 

FSW doesn't actually produce any games. Local broadcasters provide the feed which FSW augments with graphics and commentary. TWI/BSkyB produce the English soccer telecasts. ChampionsWorld contracts with Brighton Entertainment Co. to produce the telecasts.

 

I think the feed is compressed as inexpensively as possible.

 

What do you mean when they "compress" the feed, or whatever? I'm not exactly tech-savey.

 

I have to agree.

Giorgio Chinaglia has got to be one of the worst colour commentators I've ever heard. He's like one of those guys you sit near in the stands who feels compelled to impart his vast if not shallow knowlege upon any remark you may utter to your friends - he's listening out for something to comment on, he's not watching the game...

Did FSW feel compelled to use him because of his former stature in the NASL? Is this Fox's usual pattern for colour commentators - find a breathing has-been blow-hard and put a mic in his face?

Thank God that doesn't seem to apply for Fox Sports World Report, where Bobby McMahon is truly knowledgeable, insightful, and somewhat humble. And Thank God the EPL games are broadcasted unabated: I can't imagine some former-US league-pro commentating on a level of play they've only been able to dream about.

 

I think FSW had to use Chinaglia because of his work with ChampionsWorld. Small price to pay for the TV rights.

And I'd have no problem with studio analysis, and even occasional match color commentary, from John Harkes on EPL.

 

For DirecTV and Dish Network's DBS service, the compression standard used is MPEG2. It is capable of providing high quality video and stereo audio transmission at a variety of bit rates from 1.5 Mbps to 15 Mbps. For DirecTV and Dish, two basic encoding rates were initially chosen, centered on 3 Mbps and 7.5 Mbps. High-motion program material like sports was allocated a nominal 7.5 Mbps while more sedate material such as talk shows was allocated about 3 Mbps. Several channels were then combined using a statistical multiplexer, a device which combines a number of simultaneous digital television signals into a single transponder signal.

Within the constrained context of DBS, there is only a limited amount of bandwidth available among a group of codecs sharing any particular transponder. For example, if a codec only needs half of its available nominal assigned bandwidth for a period of time, the rest of its allotted bandwidth can be borrowed by another (or several) codec(s). This will provide better motion handling and/or picture definition for one or more of the other signals. Such dynamic bandwidth allocation is a very effective way of providing what seems like more bandwidth than the 23 Mbps available, if the types of services sharing each transponder are carefully chosen. On the other hand, if all the channels on a given transponder are assigned to sports, gains from bandwidth sharing could be non-existent.

Picture resolution is also programmable in each codec, allowing fine-tuning of the available bandwidth for any given type of program. This may also help reduce some decoding artifacts. Most programs are encoded at the ITU-R 601's Nyquist sampling rate of 544 PELs by 480 lines (NTSC) (576 lines for PAL), a good-quality picture. However, resolution can be adjusted from a minimum of 352 PELs x 240 lines (NTSC), (288 lines for PAL), about the same picture quality as H.320 videoconferencing. In high-quality mode, a snappy full ITU-T 601 resolution of 720 PELs by 480 lines (NTSC), (576 lines for PAL) is realized. Incidentally, use of s-video connections from your receiver to TV set and VCR are generally only beneficial with the 544 PEL and 720 PEL resolutions. Otherwise, at lower resolutions, a standard composite NTSC signal works just fine.

Most program signals are MPEG2 coded in real time, a process that can introduce some coding errors. However, an MPEG2 option being used for pay-per-view (PPV) movies involves digital coding of the video off-line, prior to transmission. Effectively, a digital recording is played back from a video server at film's native 24 frames per second (fps) rather than TV's 30 fps, resulting in increased quality and reduced bandwidth requirements.

 

Could you translate this into English please?

 

Yeah, what he said! I understood a little of that, but someone is gonna have to put the pieces together for me LOL

 

here it is. a satelite can only transmit a certain amount of channels. in order to fit more channels they compress each channel. when channels are compressed, video quality suffers. and the type of compression we are talking about is not at directv, but at the source of the video. when TWI sends live video of premeirship matches to the US they use a lot of compression because satellite space costs money. the more compression the less money they have to spend, but also the more video quality will suffer.

the reason MLS and CWS games have much higher picture quality than the typical premeirship match is because satellite space is cheaper when only sending the signal within the same country, so less compression is used.

bundesliga matches have always seemed to have higher quality video so sportsfive (the company that distributes international broadcasts of bundesliga and french ligue 1) must get a better deal on satellite space than TWI

 

Thanks jammy and chicagoon.


BTW, what's supposed to happen as HD becomes more popular?

Will improved compression methods be able to handle the move to HD, or does it look like they'll have to put up more satellites and/or cut back the number of channels offered?

 

well put. sorry I got techinical there, but I wasn't sure what I was dealign with here.


Here's the deal...with the PPV feeds you get compression plus scan conversion somewhere in the signal chain to adapt PAL to NTSC. Plus you are going from analog to digital unless the source broadcast is digital.
All that degrades the signal a bit and causes artifacting or blockiness in the image.

The PPV b-casts are heavily compressed already, and it would be alot worse if they b-cast it in stereo because that would use up more bandwidth and require more compression.

The way to think about digital media delivery, internet or tv, is to imagine a section of pipe. You can only fit so much through that pipe. You've got a choice to put one BIG thing through that pipe, alot of little things or a combination of both. Do you try to put one tennis ball through or a bag of marbles?
A uncompressed digital PPV bcast in stereo would use up the whole pipe (a tennis ball), but a compressed mono signal (a marble) uses up quite a bit less allowing the satellite owner and broadcaster to push more data and signal through the pipe.

 

Alright, that makes much more sense! Wow...FSW must be cheap cause they compress the hell out of their broadcasts like no other. They really need more money. (So is that why the whole channel overall seems to be quieter than others? Cause i always have to turn up the volume to hear it better.)

 

lithium it's not FSW compressing. it's the distributors of foreign content that are compressing. look at MLS games and MLS Wrap, Fox Sports World Report, etc... Pretty much everything looks great for me except the foreign stuff that is being transmitted to Fox Sports World from foreign satellites.

but you're right. somewhere down the line, one of them is a real cheapass

 

vw, you mentioned about HD on satellites. (wow, satellite TV is my hobby and i imagine jammy is the same too) DIsh Network and DirecTV are running out of room for HD channels because they do take up a lot more space on a satellite than a regular Standard Definition channel. DirecTV has so little space that they will only be adding 2 more HD channels for the rest of the year. Rightn ow the only way to get HD locals with DirecTV is with a Over-The-Air antenna that is run through the DirecTV box. The same can be said for Dish Network and Voom. One of the reasons Voom has so few channels is because they are running out of room adn they only have 21 HD channels!

 

I'm actually a TV director/producer. My bread and butter is live events like concerts and sports. Actaully, I'm in LA right now working the X Games. I've been attending HD related conferences and events since 1998 when the electronics companies convinced the government to force consumers to adopt a new standard. Of course nobody knew what they were talking then but they were all so excited about what the potential was they just went along with it. We're still trying to sort it out and the funny thing is that the original DTV charter by the FCC said that all analog broadcasts would cease in 2003. Obviously they got that wrong.

A true HD broadcast (1080i, 16x9) is a nightmare for cable and satellite providers because of the amount of bandwidth it takes up. It fills the pipe and doesn't leave room for anythign else.
Now that said, it is scalable. You can send a lesser quality signal, 4:3 aspect ratio and something that resembles what we see now on DBS or digicable and you can then use to the rest of the pipe to send data and offline content. This is known as "multi-casting".
Here's a snippet from the FCC DTV FAQ: