Game Shows in HD: First opinions

[tpirfan28]

[quote name=\'Brandon Brooks\' post=\'131173\' date=\'Sep 11 2006, 10:03 PM\']
[quote name=\'Joe Mello\' post=\'131130\' date=\'Sep 11 2006, 07:17 PM\']
As for Wheel, their on-screen graphics department definitely looks like they know what they're doing.  The animations were all shiny and crisp-looking as they should, and the new fonts look nice and streamlined. One of the best additions was flashing a graphic with the banked totals during round 3, which does have its advantages for the viewer following the game at home.  In terms of the actual Wheel, it looks like it went back about 10 years in terms of color and texture.  Not sure if it's good or bad yet, but it's definitely interesting.  That pink $900 space does look out of place, though.

Overall, I'd say J!'s changes were questionable whereas Wheel's were fine and dandy.
[/quote]
Wheel is definitely cleaning up it's act.  It looks so much sharper now.  Is it me, or does that $3,500 space look hella weird?
[/quote]
And I thought it was my eyes and my TV.

[BrandonFG]

Haven't seen the new shows, although I caught some of the new J! last week at work (love getting the satellite feeds in advance!). Regarding the ring-in indicators, it's still early in the season. I remember the neon lights not working at first when this set debuted back in 2002. They finally got it ironed out after about a week or so.

[Joe Mello]

Wheel is definitely cleaning up it's act. It looks so much sharper now. Is it me, or does that $3,500 space look hella weird?

I'm starting to believe the Top Dollar Wedges are holographs.

[TonicBH]

All I can say about Wheel's colors: Light blues and greens are back, baby! It does bring back the days of the 1990's. Although that $3,500 space is way too hot pink. Might wanna tone it down a bit.

And everything that has been said about Jeopardy!'s podia has been said already. I was seriously hoping for a throwback to the early podiums...

[Craig Karlberg]

The new J! podia looks nice, but for some reason, I couldn't follow along as to who buzzed in(I need those for visual aids).  The J! board sure looks like one huge monitor even thought there are 36 little ones(6 for the categories & 30 for the $ vaues & clues therein).  At the end when the champ's winnings were displayed, they reminded me of those sokari fonts I use to see from certain 70's game shows.  I liked that.

As I mentioned in another thread, the scoring update in round 3 ia fine as long as it's done right without messing it up.  It would make a nice feature in a tight match during the speed-up round.  The graphics were very nicely done all the way around.  The wheel itself sure looked neat untill that $3,500 wedge screamed weird at me.  I'll have to see it in HD to get a better idea.

Overall, Wheel gets good HD marks & J! gets mediocre marks(unless they fix the situation with the buzz-in lights soon).

[remlap]

[quote name=\'johnnya2k3\' post=\'131140\' date=\'Sep 12 2006, 01:40 AM\']
[quote name=\'remlap\' post=\'131135\' date=\'Sep 11 2006, 04:24 PM\']
Though then that might give them ideas to get The View in HD *Shudders*
[/quote]
Or Oprah in HD (which could happen next season). But we would REALLY shudder if TPIR ever goes hi-def anytime soon!

Jonathan Allen
[/quote]

Hey one of my guilty pleasures is Oprah and ill be willing to admit it, but dont go changing channels if shes on, sadly it bombs here every time shes picked up ITV2 is airing her right now in the UK and have already decided not to renew he contract when it ends.

TPiR in HD would need years of work I guess, but shooting a TPiR in widescreen has been down here and in Oz.

Come to think of it all BBC's Panel and Game-Shows will be in HD by 2010, since its the deadline for all shows to be shot in HD.

[jdhernandez]

Hey guys, I thought I should chime in at this insane hour about Jeopardy...



....I had the same issue with the Jeopardy podiums during the first taping of the new season, but those odd red indicators don't last forever. =)

At a later taping for shows that will air in October, the indicators changed to a much brighter white color where the red bars currently reside. At least it was MUCH easier to tell who buzzed in during the latter tapings. So, fret not my fine GSF bretheren... the fugly and hardly noticeable red bars don't last very long!

I do, however, love some of the background set pieces being used on Jeopardy. They look snazzy in-studio, and I think they look really good in HD. More off-white set pieces make the set look slightly brighter, and I love it.

Hey... the newer set grew on me after two tapings, what can I say? =D

[DrBear]

A little trivia - here in Green Bay, we couldn't see J and WOF in HD even if we had the sets to do so.

The local station, WLUK, isn't showing them in HD because "we don't have the equipment to show HD tapes. We get our Fox HD stuff off the network"

And add to that the station won't let the local cable carry its digital channel because the cable won't pay (but does charge extra for its digital tier).

Gotta love cheapskate TV.

[bandit_bobby]

I don't like those new J! podiums either. You can barely see who's buzzing in, if ever.

They could've letterboxed the shows for us regular TV people, and it wouldn't have hurt us all that much.

[Ian Wallis]

Haven't seen the new shows, although I caught some of the new J! last week at work (love getting the satellite feeds in advance!).

Where exactly are they feeding now on satellite?  I tried tuning in last week but they've moved from their previous locations (or times).  Feud and WWTBAM are also no longer feeding at the same time/place.  Feud fed at the previous time on Labor Day, but when it came time for the new season it was gone.  Arghh!

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Craig Karlberg\' post=\'131235\' date=\'Sep 12 2006, 01:21 AM\']
The J! board sure looks like one huge monitor
[/quote]
Sure does, doesn't it?

(mutter...)

[remlap]

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' post=\'131253\' date=\'Sep 12 2006, 02:15 PM\']

Haven't seen the new shows, although I caught some of the new J! last week at work (love getting the satellite feeds in advance!).

Where exactly are they feeding now on satellite?  I tried tuning in last week but they've moved from their previous locations (or times).  Feud and WWTBAM are also no longer feeding at the same time/place.  Feud fed at the previous time on Labor Day, but when it came time for the new season it was gone.  Arghh!
[/quote]

Is C-band used for Game-Show feeds?

C-band here is hardly used anymore here in Europe nearly everything is KU Band even for feeds which are normally 4:2:2 high profile MPEG-2 (high tech pro MPEG-2) or encrypted.

Though one thing its dam easy to get WABC and NBC Network feeds, thanks to the Peacock Stations Sat Uplink centre

[wheelloon]

Fox 21 (Eastern Shore of MD) doesn't show Wheel of J! in HD, so we can't get the new "full" view of the new sets and all, *yet*...

From a non-HD perspective though, I like what both shows have done. J!'s podiums are seemingly oversized, but I don't think they look bad, rather classy instead. I won't gripe about the podium lights, since that's said to have been rectified.

Wheel's updates were top-notch. I like a lot of the revamped music, surprisingly, and that wheel looks a lot better with the return of the early 90's colors! If anything, change that one pink 900 to a yellow 900 like they used to be, and bring back the top-dollar spaces from last season, all of them look somewhat out of place on the wheel now.

All the new graphics looked sharp as well, you can tell their graphics department put a lot of energy into making sure all that stuff looked just right. There were a variety of new camera angles used, which I thought was cool also. The score recap window seen midway in round 3 had an "it's about time!" reaction from me, I've thought for some time now that WOF should do something of the sort, so that today's audiences can actually attempt to keep up with the contestants and get more "into their shoes."

Now, if that Wild Card space ends up not working well and looking like just a gift tag-ripoff-looking space, my opinion could take a 180...

[Unrealtor]

Lowly standard-def viewer here...

My first thought on the new Jeopardy lecterns was "They've done it again." This is at least the second, if not third, podium design where the ring-in lights are too subtle at first.

It's also far more (far too) obvious on Jeopardy that you're getting the middle 4:3 out of a 16:9 image, between the lecterns taking exactly the width of the screen and the zoom-out clue reveals starting with a font that had been compressed horizontally to fit the 4:3 clue window, but winds up normal-looking by the time it finishes. 14:9 seems like the best way to go for them.

On Wheel, you could see half of the people on either side when there was a shot of the center contestant. That doesn't work well. Otherwise, I have no complaints.

[MSTieScott]

I found it interesting that Jeopardy! now no longer is even pretending that the close-up category reveals are shots of the actual board. There are big vertical black strips between each category that definitely aren't on the real board.

The thing that distracted me the most, though, was that the spacing between lines of the clues was uneven. There doesn't seem to be any specific reason for it (it's not the commas, which was my first hypothesis), it's just that some lines within the clue are closer together than others on the screen. I found it surprisingly distracting, but maybe it's just me.

As for Wheel, having the cumulative totals appear isn't a bad thing, but in round three only? Since there's always a violent dollar swing in the speed-up round, there's no strategy in trying to outscore your opponents in round three -- the strategy is still to just get a huge score, regardless of what your opponents have.

--
Scott Robinson

(It also occurs to me that a Wheel contestant who only solves the first toss-up puzzle or who only solves one puzzle with a score of less than $1,000 will receive the same thing as a contestant who didn't succeed at all.)