While not exactly something you can rent, definitely try to catch the opening ceremonis n HD if you can. They did an excellent job on the audio considering the venue. They squelched the announcers but really brought forward the event sound. It feels like your there. The visuals are great too. Kudos to the NBC staff who captured the event & even more kudos to Greece. It is simply an awesome performance.

How are you getting your HD Signal. I watched the cablecast on TimeWarner HD and frankly, I was not impressed by either the sound or quality of the picture at times (not to mention the poor announcing). Whats even worse (or perhaps it doesn't make a difference anymore in these days of tape delays) is that there was a least a 1 hour delay between the HD broadcast and the non-HD broadcast. So when my wife went upstairs to do something and turned it on the bedroom TV the picture was completely different.

I watched portions of it via OTA (Silver Sensor indoor antenna and the built-in HD tuner in my Zenith C32V37) because Time Warner here hasn't yet picked up the local NBC HD feed, and I thought the video was quite nice. The audio here was Dolby 2.0 and was decent, although the announcers were pretty uninspiring. I was a little surprised today to see that the games themselves are not being run in HD here - the SD channel is, but the HD channel is re-running the opening ceremonies.

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gonk -- 950 Review | LFM-1 Review | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | Saloon Links

I pick it up off the local NBC affiliate. NBC is running a really weird schedule. The opening ceremonies are being rerun several times today again continuously. Tomorrow they pick up swimming & some other stuff. Its almost like they do not have the ability to run live HD, but need time to edit & possibly transmit it to the US maybe? The audio is a little schizoid on the opening ceremonies. For the first part it was in 5.1, but then later it was stereo or 5.1, flip flopping at will it seemed. Time Warner may be cutting the bandwidth by adding some additional compression.

While I would have liked the whole ceremony to be of the same broadcast quality as the opening, I was just thunderstruck by the event and the capturing thereof. That central pool of water was huge & the engineering/artisticness of the sculpture flying apart was beautiful done.

I am really disappointed with what NBC is doing with their HD feed. Its almost as if its an undeclared infomercial using the opening cermomonies as something the stores can use to sell HD TVs.

I called my local NBC affiliates sports department and they couldn't explain what was going on and their attitude was more or less "Whats the big deal, the whole thing is on tape delay especially for the West Coast" so why should there be any effort made to show the same thing (more or less) on HD as on the analog broadcast. Its almost as if a desire to see the most current events in HD as not important.

I poked around at AVS some this morning, curious to find out what was going on. It sounds somewhat cheesy to me. The best explanation I could find was that (for whatever reason) they can't track ratings for HD broadcasts like they can for SD, so they are delaying the HD broadcasts by a day so they don't steal away viewers and cut into the SD ratings. Blech - we get an opportunity for some pretty HD demo material, but it's not really useful as a way to watch the games. I've got a co-worker who recently bought an HDTV and was a bit disappointed that Time Warner hadn't added the local NBC affiliate to the line-up, which means he can't watch any of the HD Olympics broadcasts. I told him it wasn't much of a loss - they'll let you watch events at a half-dozen or so venues, but only a day after you've already seen them on SD and read about the results in the morning paper. I guess we can watch the HD broadcast tonight and wonder if the US women's gymnastics team qualified and if the men's swimming team won the 400m relay. Plus our local affiliate seems to still only be able to broadcast in Dolby 2.0, so the 5.1 audio is being downconverted to 2.0. I'm sure I'll watch an event here and there on HD, but it ends up being just to see what quality they are getting on the HD video.

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gonk -- 950 Review | LFM-1 Review | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | Saloon Links

I have mixed feelings about the NBC high def broadcast. First the positives, stunning picture and sound (I get the signal off a motorola High Def box using comcast cable). The opening ceromonies were breathtaking. While watching last night I realized another positive, the high def programming seems to be more "world friendly" what I mean is that the same men's gymnastic qualifying round I watched the previous night, took on a whole new look because we got to see atheletes other than the USA. The same thing during the swimming coverage, it wasn't so US heavy, giving you a much more global feel that I want with the Olympics.
The negatives of course include the day delay so there's no real drama, you already knows what is going to happen. I really can not figure out why the High Def feed isn't the same as NBC's (at least the primetime should sync up).

Is anyone else tired of the same Sony ad at every break???

Lasher

Now that Friends has ended, NBC needs some other ways to balance their income level. I think they are trying to milk it.

Those who are used to hearing the National Anthem played in U.S., do you notice somthing strange about the sound (instruments used) of the one played in this Olympics?

I just heard from someone that it sounds like violin was used in place of horn / trombone / trumpet or whichever wind instrument it was. Well, this is not right, is it? Can someone fill me in on this?

Yeah, I noticed it sounded different too. Maybe they're trying to Class it up a bit?

[This message has been edited by Cadboy (edited August 27, 2004).]

If the IOC wants to "class up" the National Anthem they should have "The President's Own" - United States Marine Band play it. It doesn't get any better.

I'm not saying it needs classing up, I just think the IOC wanted to give it a more International "flavor" by using stringed instruments, seeing as it was played repeatedly

I know this is going to offend some people, and this is not my intention, but the IOC can go fly a kite. (I would have worded this differently, but then I would really p**s people off.) “International Flavor”, “The Star Spangled Banner” needs to be played as it was intended. Slightly below march tempo, and by an organization that has earned the right to play it, “The President’s Own”. By the way, there are other anthems that sound best when groups with similar instrumentation perform them. If the IOC wants to really class things up they can have “The Stars and Strips Forever” played after “The Star Spangled Banner”. That would be a major improvement. God, I’m such a homey.

All just speculation on my part, correct or incorrect. I agree it should not have been altered.....just seems wrong. It was meant to be majestic, not balletic!

[This message has been edited by Cadboy (edited August 30, 2004).]

Oil Can, what you are saying is perfectly valid.

I wonder what U.S. citizens will think about IOC using synthesizer to play U.S. National Anthem? You know, if they decided to modern it up a little. That would be an insult to this nation.

In this day and age when electronic media transfer is so commonly done, it would make a lot of sense to have each participating country to record their national anthem and send it to IOC.

As shown in this example, relying much on International Committee of this and that may prove to be a disappointment.