Daytona 500 - awesome

[jaymer]

no probs from brandon.
glad the issues from this week were not present.
even with all the high motion, the quality was perfect... i haven't been able to read #s on the sides of cars this easily ever!

[Floyd]

After they announced that the race would be carried in HD, I assumed that they would make an effort to have great stereo surround sound available to accompany the great pictures. After the race started, my rear speakers were awful quiet. I made a post on the AVS forum about the lack of surround sound on my system (dolby pro logic) but there was no follow up posts from elsewhere to indicate one way or the other if there was any surround. The stereo effect was present. I think the race was in dolby 5.1, which I don't have, and maybe that's where the surround was encoded at, or maybe the local NBC people didn't use a dolby surround decoder.
Anyone else get any surround?
BTW, during these national HD events(Grammys, Oscars, Superbowl, ect) the AVS forum has a live-like running commentary which is also monitored by network engineers and managers. I've been following it to watch for HD anomalies and see how the events play out. Some think that the lack of macro-blocking or other motion artifacts in the race was probably due to a "softening" of the picture. Maybe the resolution was lowered to 720 to prevent any problems. I only had problems for a couple of scenes, and it looked like a breakdown, rather than any limitation of the technology. In some cities they had a failure of the HD system and switched to SD, but I didn't notice that they did it here in Tampa.

[bdraw]

After they announced that the race would be carried in HD, I assumed that they would make an effort to have great stereo surround sound available to accompany the great pictures. After the race started, my rear speakers were awful quiet. I made a post on the AVS forum about the lack of surround sound on my system (dolby pro logic) but there was no follow up posts from elsewhere to indicate one way or the other if there was any surround. The stereo effect was present. I think the race was in dolby 5.1, which I don't have, and maybe that's where the surround was encoded at, or maybe the local NBC people didn't use a dolby surround decoder.
Anyone else get any surround?
BTW, during these national HD events(Grammys, Oscars, Superbowl, ect) the AVS forum has a live-like running commentary which is also monitored by network engineers and managers. I've been following it to watch for HD anomalies and see how the events play out. Some think that the lack of macro-blocking or other motion artifacts in the race was probably due to a "softening" of the picture. Maybe the resolution was lowered to 720 to prevent any problems. I only had problems for a couple of scenes, and it looked like a breakdown, rather than any limitation of the technology. In some cities they had a failure of the HD system and switched to SD, but I didn't notice that they did it here in Tampa.

It was DD 2.0 I was able to decode with Pro Logic just fine.

Not sure why image look soft. My tuner did detect it at 1080i. I did see plenty of compresion artifacts, mostly in the grass, as the camera was keeping pace with the cars. I think it would look alot better if the event was at night. Artificial lighting seems to be better on HD than a bright sunny day.

[shawn12341234]

I thought the PQ was not on par with HD I'm used to seeing. It looked like a lot of detail was missing. I don't think it was a local issue because the PQ on Shek later in the day was much better. The race feed looked overcompressed to me. Overall, it was a great improvement. You just had to watch the Bush race on TNT today to see that.

[teampozer]

In my opinion, it didn't come close to the quality we've seen during the NFL season on CBS and ABC. Channel 8 also needs to add 5.1 Dolby. 10 and 28's audio are consistantly far superior on my system.

[chupacabra]

I agree, picture to me was soft.
Colors looked bright and vibrant, but detail was only good when the car was passing in front of my screen.

For instance, when they showed the cars at a distance as they aproached a curve, the detail was not that good on the car logos.

Anyone else agree?

[mgd2win]

My picture was absolutely PERFECT and even in 3-D...OH YEA MY Motor Coach was only 6 ft from the outside wall half down the backstreatch. Actually Michael Waltrip landed right in front of my motor home what a sight from on top of the coach.

Actually I wish I could have seen the HD quality thought it would be a little tough with the speed and the detail...thats alot of processing to handle especially the grass as someone mentioned in this thread.

Anyone know or heard of any rumors about FOX going HD and doing any other races in HD on FOX or NBC later in the year ?

[chupacabra]

I think it would have been cool to bring an HDTV with a OTA antenna to the race and watch them simultaneously!

C.