I also like a bit of spill for the announcers, dialogue on movies, or vocals from singers in music.

Most people don't have a huge center speaker and this spill also helps to "spread the load" a bit.

Forum newb chiming in. Everybody run... :)

Myself, I haven't found the mix of announcers in centre only to be distracting at all. Even better, when the announcers themselves are distracting, I can mute the announcer(s) by unplugging the centre speaker. If spill-over is employed, muting the announcers is only achieved by muting the entire program. With centre-only though, stadium/arena noise spills out of the other speakers, unaffected by "muting" an annoying announcer. It's a beautiful mix! :cool:

As for whether "most people" have adequate centre speakers to handle announcers centre only, I don't find that relevant. If sufficient equipment for most people was a driving factor, we'd barely have digital television by now, never mind HDTV. Besides, our setup is not a high-end system by any stretch, and our centre speaker handles it just fine.

If I'm not mistaken, many receivers include options for re-mixing audio. For those distracted by the centre-only mix, it should be possible to select a mix that forces spill-over. Might be a downgrade of sorts--instead of 5.1 discrete, it's 2.1 surround or similar to Dolby Pro Logic. Not perfect, but considering that the other direction isn't possible (remixing announcer spill-over mix to centre-only), centre-only could be considered the more flexible of the two options.

For me, announcers in centre only is the ideal mix for sporting events.

On my Pioneer VSX-1015 I can enable the "dialog enchance" mode which spreads the sound from the centre channel across the whole front soundstage.

There will be HD hockey and football this Saturday.

Hockey: WAS vs EDM 10PM eastern time
Football: MONTREAL at TORONTO 2PM eastern time

Update: CFL will be widescreen. Only hockey will be HD.

I caught a few minutes of the fifth estate piece on the lottery problems on Wednesday at midnight, and it was either WS or HD. I thought it was HD at the time, but looking at the current schedule (http://www.cbc.ca/hdtv/schedule/CBC_HD_nextweek2.pdf), it was neither for the 9 pm or midnight airing. Was I dreaming?

It was wide screen.

One last question; will the 5 CFL playoff games (East/West semis, East/West finals, and Grey Cup) all be in HD??

I looked at CBC's HD sched (http://www.cbc.ca/hdtv/schedule/CBC_HD_nextweek1.pdf) for next week and it doesn't show either game (Nov 5.) in WS or HD. It's not on the CBC CFL Sched (http://www.cbc.ca/sports/football/cfl-on-cbc/schedule.html) either.

Marc, say it ain't so... The last and biggest games of the year aren't in HD??:(

I think the West final and the Grey Cup will be in HD, East final will be in WS just like last year.

quick question,
sometimes I see white lines at the top of the screen on upconverted material. Where does this come from?
thx.

Typically, it's closed captions from video line 21 of the SD signal. It's supposed to be removed during upconversion.

on the same note of curiosity as above, what's that white box in the top right corner that I see sometimes on upconverted material on the CBC? Is is a commercial cue?

and tonight's Wash vs Edmt game looks good (even better now that the Oilers are leading), good to see the HD truck trek out west, but the audio track is just DD2.0, how come it's not 5.1 like eastern HD games?

According to the "HD Schedule for October 30 - November 5, 2006" the Carolina @ Ottawa game will be in HD in Ottawa and the Toronto @ Buffalo game will be in WS on the rest of the network. Since WS requires a DT signal, this means that only CBOT-DT will be broadcasting a game in HD. Can this be true?

Do any cable or satalite providers show CBOT-DT? Last I had heard, even Rogers Ottawa were showing CBLT-DT. It would be funny if the only way to watch HNIC in HDTV is OTA in Ottawa. :)

Regardless, this doesn't bode well for getting the CFL semi-finals in either HD or WS.

The sound techs place MANY mics at venue.

I read in a different forum that the CBC uses about 75 mics to do 5.1 sound in a hockey game. It is probably similar for football although they may want even more if the stadium is large.

The actual mix is the artistic decision of the person on the audio console.

Cool, thanks Marc!! So they can do this on the fly? That is crazy man! This technology amazes me every day man!

Although they can make changes when the camera angle changes, I doubt if they change it all that much (if at all). They are probably more concerned with providing a good overall sound experience.

...the Carolina @ Ottawa game will be in HD in Ottawa and the Toronto @ Buffalo game will be in WS ....

Perhaps both games will be on HD channels.....one of the games will be shown on a carriers demo channel. An interesting problem.:)

The white box is a warning to affiliate stations that a commercial break is coming up.

Thanks, now I finally know how the upconverter box is working.
711x486-> 1440x1080 (centred in 1920x1080). This is a "zoom" of 2.222.

For the curious: First point, 720x480 uses "skinny" pixels. Converted to square pixels (HDTV and computer size), it's 658x480. Second point, video is only supposed to appear in the middle 711 of 720 pixels (the extra ones are only there to catch slight timing errors). So a true 4:3 TV picture is based on 711x486 of skinny pixels, or 648x486 of square pixels (hint: verify 648/486=4/3). Now that we have the real picture in square pixels, just upsize it to fit the 4/3 area in HDTV, 1440x1080. Since digital editing only uses 480 lines, we can expect 6 of these lines to be blank. 720x480->1458x1067.

About line 21: closed caption is defined in EIA608 and line 21 in SMPTE170, in plain english they numbered the TV lines so we could talk about them. Line 21 should be nearly at the very top of an upconverted signal, and above any picture area (ie, not part of the 480 lines in SD). Also digital video uses a different CC system, EIA708, so it's ok to erase these lines.

FYI, it seems that BBC pre-converted Dr. Who to NTSC for us, using a blended frames standards converter. This adds a slight ghosting effect to the video.

Was the Montreal - Toronto game (CFL) in HD this Saturday? It looked DAMN good for SD. It was really sharp out here in Shaw-land. It was only 2.0 though, but matrixed into DTS Neo:6, it sounded great!

Man I hope the 5 playoff games are in HD. If not, the CFL seriously needs to think about selling them games to TSN. I wouldn't care if they were PPV.....I would pay to see them in HD.

Its 2006 for @%&*%&!! sake.

Man I hope the 5 playoff games are in HD. If not, the CFL seriously needs to think about selling them games to TSN. I wouldn't care if they were PPV.....I would pay to see them in HD.

The CFL wants as many people to watch the game as possible. At least 10% of Canadian households with a TV don't get TSN. What percentage of households can watch TSN in HD? I don't know, but I would susspect that it is less than 10%, but even if it isn't, is it better to have people complain that games are in SD or complain that they can't watch the game at all? This is assuming that not all of the games will be in HD.

Its 2006 for @%&*%&!! sake.

and most Canadian stations aren't broadcasting in HD (or even digital SD for that matter).

Maybe Marc can enlighten us....