Eurovision 2013 - 14/16/18 May 2013

OK tecchie question.
With TVC closed (although I know the satellites on top of the engineering block are still receiving the signal) we know last year the feed came through the gallery desk as an OS (TC4 IIRC)

Anyone know where the signal is being routed to via to this year? Is it still a studio desk at TVC, or direct to pres at Red Bee, or even via one of the studios at NBH?

The official running order for tomororw's final is here on eurovision.tv.

So that means song number 8 is Belarus "Solayoh", which features dancing which will be fun to join in and copy, i.e. an adult kids' Boogie Beebies big video. Song number 19 is Iceland "Ég Á Líf", i.e. a sweet, soothing ballad, or as I see it lullaby - adult kids CBeebies Goodnight Song. Well spaced apart are they not? Anyhow, no matter how close or far apart they are, it wouldn't be a ESC final without one of each of those styles of song, would it?

Funnily enough Iceland's said ballad / lullaby comes immediately after Denmark "Only Teardrops" (song 18 ) which is the bookies' red hot favourite to win. "Only Teardrops" has really fast paced choruses, i.e. light years away from the aforementioend song style of "Ég Á Líf". Could "Only Teardrops" make "Ég Á Líf" immediately afterwards dull, or could it make "Ég Á Líf" stand out and become Iceland's first win? Time will tell.

Who were the artists on stage that did the opening act for the 2nd semi final? Their take on the Eurovision theme at the end was fantastic!

The official site says the dancers were called "Urban Orchestra"- there's no background on them as far as I can see so I assume they're a group put together for the show. Possibly the same dancers who did the "Nothern Lights" sequence in the interval of the 1st Semi Final?

I agree though- overall Sweden are doing a fantastic job at their openings/intervals!

Sweden take it very seriously, and with their Melodifestivalen, it's proving to be in good stead. I hope that other countries in the future can look at Sweden and SVT, and take some notes.

It doesn't need to be huge and showy to provide a decent show. Perta Mede is also doing a fantastic job at hosting, unlike other foreign presenters who 'um' and 'er' their way through, she seems to on top form with the English!

Scoreboard is pretty similar to the last couple of years (rehearsal images, so these scores are meaningless):


Despite the graphics saying Spain this is actually the Finnish spokesperson.


There's a "whoosh" sound as the points fly from the bottom to the side.


As the top 3 scores are awarded the country receiving it disappears (with the "frosting" effect) then reappears in the correct position.


This has a little sound effect with it (sounds like the same effect used on the reveal of each semi finalist). There's also a "Top 3" added to the right hand side after a few countries.


Scott Mills clearly isn't around at the moment, so there's a rather attractive girl in his place for the UK!


In the rehearsal the scores ended with a three way tie- Jon Ola Sand stepped in to explain the tie break procedure (no graphics to accompany this) and announced that in this case Iceland won.

I think it is worth pointing out that Eurovision entrants, in all likelihood, haven't copied their ideas from CBeebies and the shows on it.

I very much doubt RTE are sweating! Not a chance in hell of that song bothering the top 5.



And to add to that I wonder what studio Scott's points will be coming from?

I wished i had tuned into the rehearsals now, for the techies it is FTA on 7e and 10e for the source feed without any commentary but you need a PCI card to watch as its in 40mbps MPEG-4 HD 4:2:2

10E is actually MPEG-2 4:2:2 worked fine on my AzBox Elite HD.

Thinking about it anyone with a networked enabled DVB-S2 reicever should be able to watch it streamed to their computer through VLC.

Both feeds look equally as good but I prefer MPEG-2.

It's gone with Studios & PP to Elstree Film Studios.

The rehearsal last night was pretty interesting (I didn't watch the main show, only the voting). Basically the voting began with Albania and they couldn't make contact, moved on to Azerbaijan and got nothing from them either. Jon Ola Sand then read out the points from both countries. It quickly transpired after a few different attempts that they'd managed to completely lose connection with everyone. No video or audio from any of the countries, just a black screen.

Petra (who looked a bit hacked off by this point) just closed the show! It finished really abruptly, IIRC she just said "We end the show here" then there was the titles sting. Anyway, the audience in the arena left and they had another attempt about 20 minutes later, which is when I got those caps I posted yesterday. Poor Petra just looked like she'd had enough (it was well past 1am at this point) and she had to force a smile whilst all the spokespersons sang at her and practised their Swedish for tonight

Pretty interesting to see what happens when it goes so disastrously wrong, although I assume if the same happened during the real show they'd just have to stick with Jon Ola Sand reading everyone's points (which I think would get rather boring quickly).

Also with the tie break situation (which I assume they do deliberately), the tie was so close that the winner was eventually decided by who got the most "5" points!