TDF - anybody else finding the TV pictures poor this year?

[marinyork]

#What changes are coming and how do you get Eurosport International

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/british-eurosport-launches-hd-channels-100710591.html

25th July 2012 Eurosport HD ---> British Eurosport 1HD
3rd September British Eurosport 2 will have a HD clone on Sky. Not on virgin media.
British Eurosport (1) SD stays the same
British Eurosport 2 SD stays the same.
The eurosport international feed in the form of HD vanishes.

At the moment Eurosport HD is actually the international version it just for the most part it is similar to 1. If you look carefully at the programming schedules you'll notice that Eurosport HD isn't a simulcast of British Eurosport (1). For example on the stage today the tour coverage started at different times, on British Eurosport there were the usual 3 people discussing a preview of today's time trial whilst on Eurosport HD coverage was just starting (with the British commentary team). Sometimes you get 3 different programmes over the channels rather than two. Sometimes 1 and 2 show less cycling than eurosport HD. My worry is that it won't effect the TDF, but other cycling things on eurosport will get less coverage overall - and by that I don't mean the trivial differences like today, but the classics and other tours + maybe the vuelta.

 

[albion]

ITV are doing a very good job.

The fact that they can get it on Freeview and make it pay is commendable.
How come Germany gets Eurosport on their Freeview yet the UK misses out?

 

[Rezillo]

Sorry to have to disagree but have been watching mostly on Eurosport HD and the quality is a fecking disgrace.

I've been thinking that the quality on EurosportHD this year is significantly better than it has been. The benchmark for me for the past couple of years has been the Tour of California, where the pictures have been just stunning, but this year I think the TdF tv services have closed the gap.

I don't think the breakups are as frequent either, although it's the mountain stages that will test how well the signal relay routes are working. Breakup on the Giro d'Italia was horrendous and that was sd with lower data rates.

John

 

[just jim]

ITV are doing a very good job.

The fact that they can get it on Freeview and make it pay is commendable.
How come Germany gets Eurosport on their Freeview yet the UK misses out?

presumably they make it pay by hammering us relentlessly with advertising, which I mute and then go on to twitter...

 

[Berties]

Some breaking pictures but the old camera men on the motorbikes have got a lot of bottle and a hard job ,then that info has to be relayed to production then broadcast ,not a bad job I would say

 

[albion]

... and make it pay ...
.......and exist too. ......

Advertising rates are comparatively low these days, unlike the monopoly days of old.

 

[marinyork]

... and make it pay ...
.......and exist too. ......

Advertising rates are comparatively low these days, unlike the monopoly days of old.

As you've reposted I'm quite interested in what you said earlier. Is eurosport definitely part of German 'freeview' or is it merely on DTT? If it is the latter I'd like to point out that a form of eurosport was actually on UK DTT so there is actually nothing unusual in this. It's actually been the case in a few countries.

Eurosport UK has a much smaller share of audiences than it did in the past in some other continental countries.

 

[Basil.B]

Big improvement in picture quality at last!

 

[ColinJ]

There have been a lot of people complaining to ITV about this problem so I suppose they must have finally pinched some bandwidth back from one or more other channels to fix it.

 

[the_mikey]

On freeview, the bandwidth of each channel has been squashed as much as possible. On satellite, a lot of channels are being squashed and moved around to make room for the mass of olympic services both in SD and HD that will be available, expect a massive red button service on sky and freesat.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

I know there is a weight issue, but I would love to see helmet cams used on some of the riders...

Could you imagine that after the two of the riders were taken out by the car avoiding the tree last year?

I can see the CC thread in Commuting or Touring now

'Hit by car today'

'There I was cycling in an event in rural France today when some t**t in a car came out of nowhere, ramming myself and fellow cyclist off the road and into a barbed wire fence! I was reasonably ok, but the other guy got ripped up badly from the Fence.

Thing is, this idiot had some bikes on his roofrack and........'

 

[ColinJ]

The fact is that they could easily give us better quality but instead they choose to squander the bandwidth on broadcasting extra channels with repeated content on, especially those silly '+1' channels.

I like the +1 channels! Wish there were more of them!

I found 2 uses for them!

My Freeview box crashed tonight while doing a recording, but I was able to watch the end of the programme on Ch4+1.

It dawned on me that if there were 3 hour-long programmes that I wanted to record on at once and at least one of them was on ITV or Ch4, then I could record one on the +1 channel later. (It currently happens on Sunday evenings when Andrew Marr's history programme, Dragons' Den and Homeland are all on at 21:00.)