The Olympics in HDTV

by **TurfToe** on Fri Feb 05, 2010 2:06 pm

great piece by Zelkovich on the good, the bad and the ugly of watching the Olympics in HD...

Top 10 HDTV Sporting Moments

By Chris Zelkovich
Sports Media Columnist
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/article/761142--top-10-hdtv-sporting-moments

It’s as dreary as February gets, which is to say that the entire city is on suicide watch and it’s so cold people are huddling around Dalton McGuinty for warmth.

You’ve just installed that new big-screen HD television set, the one that required a major renovation and the rental of an industrial crane to hoist it into your recreation room. Visions of spending the entire month in front of your new acquisition are dancing in your head.

Did we mention that it’s February?

You’ve been waiting for that one event that will justify all the effort and expense that went into your new toy. That one, defining moment that will allow you to say to your spouse, “See, I told you it was worth it. Now who’s wishing we hadn’t sucked the kids’ university fund dry?” Well, that moment has arrived: 17 straight days of around-the-clock sports — all in high definition. Or, as they say on television, “glorious high definition.”

Yes, the Vancouver Olympics are coming, and, even if you tried, you won’t be able to escape them. With Canadian channels promising 4,800 hours of television coverage, the sights and sounds of people falling off mountains, sweeping the ice and doing triple Salchows will be everywhere.

So don’t even try to avoid them. Embrace the Olympics, which should provide you with enough superb moments and images to help you survive the worst month of the year.

Here are what should be the top 10 high-definition things to look for, both good and bad, as you subscribe to the chip-dip-of-the-day club:

1. CLOSE-UPS
Prepare yourself for the thrill of seeing actual beads of sweat rolling down faces, individual strands of hair plastered to scalps and veins popping through sheer effort. And those are just the announcers....

2. REAR VIEW
You'll truly realize the wonders of having a widescreen TV when you watch speed skating, which features more powerful hindquarters than the Kentucky Derby. I mean, these people train by cracking coconuts with their thighs. Marvel at the sheer magnificence of it all!

3. NORTHERN EXPOSURE
If you're a regular fan of Luge Night In Canada or Monday Night Skeleton, you're aware that the competitors in these noble sports are in the habit of wearing rather revealing, skin-tight outfits. But until you've seen them in HD, you really haven't seen anything. We're talking Britney Spears getting out of a car here — instant gender test. Suggest the kids do their homework during these events, or you might have a lot of anatomical explaining to do.

4. DOUBLE THE PLEASURE
If you're excited by the prospect of a man or woman falling down a mountainside on a sled, then you'll love the two-man luge. For the uninitiated, this involves one guy in an aforementioned sprayed-on suit lying face up on a sled with another guy — women are genetically too intelligent to do this — in a sprayed-on suit lying face-up on top of him. In HD, this has been known to permanently burn rather disturbing images into the retinas of viewers.

5. SLOW, SLOWER, SLOWEST
If you're a curling fan, you've probably noticed that there is absolutely no difference between a regular curling shot and a slow-motion replay. But the beauty of high definition is that it shows things normal television can't. You'll marvel at the startling realization that a slow-motion replay of a curling shot is actually 0.00001 kilometres per hour slower.

6. THE HORROR, THE HORROR
Like most of those with regular television sets, you probably believe that all announcers are fresh-faced young adults and all athletes are the very picture of health and attractiveness. But if you have an HD set, you know that regular TV hides a lot of wrinkles, blemishes, and, in the case of hockey players, dental work. Be prepared for the realization that your favourite player has fewer real teeth than a pro wrestling audience and has had more stitches than Kirstie Alley's dresses. Then there's the wild-and-crazy short-track speed skating races, which feature more blood than a Quentin Tarantino movie.

7. THE UNSHOCKING TRUTH
As a rule men watch figure skating for three reasons. One is because they like it. This applies to approximately 2.4 per cent of all men. Another is that their wives or girlfriends like it and these guys want to make sure they're sleeping in a bed that night and not on a couch. The other is that, thanks to regular TV, they think they're watching scantily clad women. HD reveals all, including the fact that what looks like bare skin is actually flesh-coloured long johns.

8. HITTING THE HEIGHTS
In addition to your normal Olympic TV-watching survival kit — for example, the Marlon Brando-size sack of taco chips and bucket of salsa — you should add a pack of Gravol, an airsickness bag and maybe even a sedative. High-definition views of the ski jump and downhill can induce anything from vertigo to sheer panic.

9. OPENING SHOTS
Nothing transmits the sheer splendour of the opening ceremony better than high definition, especially the segments where the host city pays tribute to the native populations we destroyed a few centuries ago.

10. ADS BY SUBTRACTION
It's a well-known fact that Canadian television channels each have three ads, which they show over and over again until normally sanguine Canucks grab their pitchforks and torches for a march on Parliament. The danger with some HD sets is that they're subject to burn-in from repeated images. Be prepared to have that broccoli fanatic appearing on your screen like Marley's ghost for the rest of its life!