One for the presenter stalkers here - but keep an eye on the waistline of the Snooker presenters in Sheffield over the next two weeks. The best cupcake shop in Sheffield is literally five metres behind the cameras.
On a tech note, no sign of the normal BT van this year outside the Crucible, just a SIS uplink truck.
Is there really much point in the BBC broadcasting an hour of snooker on BBC2 in the evenings when it is the beginning rather than end of (part of) a match.
I guess it kind of acts as a pointer to the red button, though even something as simple as a two stream service now fails to work with just the one Freeview stream (whilst BBC Parliament broadcasts three weeks of recorded content nobody was even interested in watching first time around!), but considering the questions around BBC2 output they could surely make better use of their coverage. Why don't they show the morning sessions for example - there is no Daily Politics/GMT for the next couple of weeks, and the additional costs to make it fit for broadcast would surely be negligble.
I don't think it is an issue with the Snooker - but AIUI there are issues with switching some content between Red Button and a linear channel. That's because the Red Button stuff doesn't count towards the in-house/independent quota calculations whereas content on a linear channel does.
I don't know if BBC Sport work to the BBC standard 25% min independent, 75% max in-house rules - which now mean 50% guaranteed in-house with 25% WOCCed to allow either in-house or independents to compete for commissions. There were promises made to BBC Sport as part of the Salford move - but I think those may not have been as concrete as first thought...
What's up with ITV? Another HD gaffe during a football match.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one to notice. Switching between 103 and 178 on Sky, it appeared at times that the HD feed was in a worse resolution than the SD feed.
The London Marathon, despite being broadcast on BBC One HD and Eurosport HD, is not being broadcast in HD!
I would have thought they would broadcast this in HD, but clearly they aren't this time. Maybe the budget didn't stretch to it.
It's probably the trickiest BBC Sport event to cover in HD as it makes massive use of radio cameras. These still take up more bandwith than SD rad cams, and are a LOT more expensive.
Five separate OBs, two helicopters, four motorbike cameras - it's a big undertaking! I've heard talk that next year's could be HD - though it's going to require significantly more bandwidth than what they're using at the moment.
Five separate OBs, two helicopters, four motorbike cameras - it's a big undertaking! I've heard talk that next year's could be HD - though it's going to require significantly more bandwidth than what they're using at the moment.
I would guess the Olympic marathon will be in HD, though that is a much smaller field to cover than the London marathon - and held over two days too, so perhaps the elite races at least may be covered in HD next year as a "test event" for the broadcasters.
Talking of which, do we know if the official test events are usually produced by the relevent Olympic host broadcasters, or just by whoever would be covering that event usually.
