kring

I was all excited to get home from some business travel and watch TDF in HDTV now that Comcast added HD-Versus station... what a bummer to find out they just pipe in the same old SD signal. oh well, maybe next year.

DieselDan

Versus doesn't get an HD signal from the French broadcaster to use.

cuski

Incorrect.

FIVE ONE SIX

not necessarily.

i was looking forward to watching the tour in HD this year, and when i turned on the prologue i threw up a little in my mouth, the image was horrible to say the least. it was slightly better than the standard versus image, and far worse than any HD broadcast i've ever seen before. i'll let the fact that it's a 4:3 image, and not widescreen go. and before you say it was the tv, it's a panny plasma, and i know how to calibrate it...

oilman_15106

So what good is HDTV if the transmission looks like U-tube on a 286 computer?

MIN 

Blame Versus. Not Comcast.

FrankBattle 

oooh, it's one of the daily Versus-is-not-giving-me-what-I-want-for-the-Tour-threads.

MIN 

Yeah... this is an issue of bandwidth allocation and demand. TdF commands none of it in the grand scheme of cable. Sorry that is the way it is.

rollin

We have ZERO coverage in Singapore - 7 dedicated sports channels and nothing! News highlights only on BBC World and CNN. We had the Tour of Langkawi end to end. Go figure.

Last Olympics the local channel interupted the men's 100m final to cut over to a table tennis quarterfinal

I am watching streaming video on the internet, I would pay for SD.

I still think that this tour has had the best starting stages in a long while.

DMF 

It may not be HD, but the image is much better than the analog version. Clearer and better color. Dolby Digital 2.0 is a helluva lot better than mono, too.

PedalMasher

It's similar to any other upscaling of a non-HD signal, such as you find on your local news broadcasts on your HD locals -- it's a little better than SD, but not much.

The problem I'm having is that in Portland, HD versus is actually versus Golf channel, and cyclysm sundays has been pre-empted by golf programs! I've also run into program errors trying to DVR versus cyling stuff, but that's a comcast screwup, which are unfortunately, all too common.

We should have a cycling channel pre-empting golf and nascar - oh wait I'm not in euro land - keep forgetting! ha

DMF 

I have the shared golf channel too. It cut off the prologue broadcast at 12 noon, but the others have played complete, morning and evening.

FIVE ONE SIX

actually, it's not much better, and i'm actually DVRing the analog version over the HD version...

and Dolby Digital 2.0 is still considered stereo, no matter how you word it...

lvleph

A digital signal doesn't use near as much as an analog signal and so HD is still less of a bandwidth hog than analog. So that can't use that as an excuse. Why do you think the over the air digital channels always have 2 to 3 different channels for the same wavelength?

stonecrd

Well, yesterday sucked. They road so damn slow that my recording stopped before the end. I always pad by about 30min but this time I think I would have needed 45. Good thing they show up on On Demand, I'll have to catch the finish tonight.

merlinextraligh

Comcast is Versus. Comcast owns Versus.

Squint

Yesterday's live broadcast was 4 hours and 25 minutes so you would've needed about 90 min padding.

raptor3x

I'm guessing that table tennis quarterfinal was Waldner vs Boll, and to be honest, that was a much more significant event (HUGE upset) than any of the Olympic Track events.

steve_wmn

For the sprint stages my DVR is programmed for the evening broadcast with Al and Bob (yeah, I know). THat way I'll get the fully edited version of the events all the way to the finish. When they get into the mountains I'll set up a manual recording of the live broadcast with lots of padding. My wife and I try to remain unspoiled until we watch it, and we don't start watching until after the kids are in bed. Makes for some late nights on mountain stages, even with the ability to skip commercials.

But really, the fact that they aren't sending HD over the Versus HD channel is a crime. Those mountain stages would look so much better in HD.

jpatkinson

My brother in Japan is watching the TDF in high def!

indygreg

as someone else said, there is no way that vs/comcast (if they own vs) would get a return on that investment. Everything with HD is expensive - they would have to pay the French company who is shooting it more money; it would take more bandwidth to get it over here; it takes more bandwidth to push it out their cable providers (and then downstream . . . like directv, etc). There is a finite amount of hdtv signal that a carrier can provide . . . to to do this they would have to drop something else.

At anyrate . . . the reason the TdF is on VS is that in the grand scheme it gets a meaningless rating. No one cares in the US. We should all be very happy that it is even on.

indygreg

A quick google search shows that last year (and they think this year) averaged under 900k viewers. While nearly a million people seems like a lot . . . in TV terms that is really really bad.

sancocho

at least you don't have to watch it down-converted to analog 480i on a 50 inch plasma. it's hands down the worst looking channel in my 70+ channel analog range.

7rider

I feel like I'm watching an old videotape when I watch the Tour on my 50-inch HDTV.

I've become very picky after watching other sporting events and shows in HD, and HD-DVD through my XBox 360 add-on drive.

mixtery

Just my luck that Versus carries my two fav sports... NHL and Cycling. Why can't it be the 80's when ESPN was great! And oh yeah, I'm watching it downconverted from 480i on a 42" plasma.... rules!