HD Olympics

The principal broadcaster for the Olympics in Australia will be Channel 7, (Prime TV in regional areas). This time around we will be getting it in HDTV (1080i) in addition to SDTV. There is an interesting problem with the live broadcast of HD sports to an international audience: do you capture the image at 50 or 60 hertz?

Naturally, we in Australia would prefer 50 hertz. That makes for a nice clean signal that will produce the highest picture quality that Australian TV is capable of. Americans would prefer 60 hertz, because then it feeds straight into their equipment without any frame rate conversion.

The Olympics is coming from China. China is a PAL country: that is, its internal TV network uses PAL, which is a 50 hertz system. The good news is that initial word from Channel 7 is that the TV cameras will be operating at 50 hertz, so we ought to get the best possible picture quality.

More as it comes through.

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