June 13, 2010

ITV1 HD's massive own goal

How could they? A few minutes into England's World Cup opener and we're suddenly watching an ad for Hyundai. Then, when we return to the game ... we've missed the England goal! Unbelievable. Apparently ITV1 standard def channel was unaffected. Nice one, ITV.
Coverage: BBC, Sky, Guardian

12 comments:

den2il said...

Everton v Liverpool in the FA Cup 4th round replay last year and now England v USA.

I know ITV are wanting more ad breaks but this is going to far.

Oh, by the way, they've had 4 years for preparation!

BOYCOTT ITV

Anonymous said...

Typical ITV,Always rely on them for shite coverage.Poor substitute for BBC Sports coverage.

Unknown said...

At the time I was very happily watching A Single Man on Blu-ray.

The joys of caring not one jot about football.

Josh D'acres-Hylton said...

the whole of the ITV1[HD] broadcast was a simulcast of the ITV1 chan, wasn't HD at all, only a fwew moments throughout game, pathetic. BBC would never have let that happen.

Ro-me-ro said...

It was an utter disgrace. I was so furious I wrote an email to ITV, and backed it up with an email to OFCOM.

I also wrote BBC advising them that their collusion to share the games with ITV (they can show any game they choose) is detrimental to the license fee we pay, and that they should broadcast all the remaining England games on BBCHD as ITV clearly cannot be trusted to get it right.

Steve said...

As Josh mentioned the majority of the match was in SD. It did start in HD, including DOG in the corner, but about 10 minutes before the end of the first half, the picture quality suddenly dropped - it was very noticeable. This continued throughout the remainder of the match, including the half time analysis. HD DOG had disappeared too.

Even when the HD was there we only had 2.0 DD sound. BBC hilights later were full HD and 5.1DD

Epic Fail!

Real shame ITV have the next game too :(

lee said...

At times I know there has been some deviation. PLEASE let's not turn this into a football blog, plenty of them about....

Nialli said...

@Lee: This will not become a football blog but will cover to some degree the HD coverage of the tournament (and other games broadcast in HD). I'll keep an eye on comments posted to keep things on the straight and narrow.

Nialli said...

The Guardian today reports:
"ITV apologised "unreservedly" for the "unacceptable interruption" to the game when human error led to high-definition viewers missing about 20 vital seconds of football.
"They instead had to watch an ad for Hyundai cars, one of the station's two multimillion sponsors for its coverage of the tournament.
"ITV immediately switched HD coverage to standard definition already being watched on ITV1 to avoid any other possible disruption to the broadcast."
So the switch to SD was deliberate to avoid a recurrence, which is now being blamed on human error at their transmission supplier Technicolor.
"There are people on the pitch, they think it's all over...Hyundai"

joff81 said...

i know this annoyed a lot of people but it was not as bad as VM`s cock up with the Eurosport HD channel during the night coverage.

Digital fenatic stated on cable forums VM forgot to extend the viewing hours and switched the channel to the "channel not being broadcast" slate from 1:30am till 7am even though the EPG stated that Le Mans coverage should be showing.

i knoow everyone is angry for missing the goal and 20 - 30 secs of the football in HD but i missed 5 hours and 30 mins of HD coverage of Le Mans on VM !!!!!

Unknown said...

got this in my inbox after complaining..

Thank you for your recent enquiry regarding HD viewing of the England v USA World Cup football match.



An error by ITV’s transmission providers, Technicolor, meant that ITV1 HD’s coverage of the England v USA match was interrupted for approximately 20 seconds. ITV1’s standard definition coverage was unaffected.



ITV immediately investigated this issue and a preliminary report has indicated that the cause of the problem was human error at Technicolor, in London. ITV's Sport production team in South Africa, who have produced high quality coverage throughout the tournament, were in no way responsible.



Richard Cross, Group Technology Director, ITV plc said: “We apologise unreservedly to viewers for the unacceptable interruption to high definition coverage of the match. We met with Technicolor first thing this morning to put in place measures to address the issue and to ensure that Technicolor takes the appropriate action with immediate effect."



May I take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to contact us here at ITV as we always welcome viewers’ feedback



Regards



ITV Viewer Services

Tom Chiverton said...

Not the first time, and wont be the last. The same thing happened with their (non HD of course) Formula One coverage all the time.
Thank gods the BBC got that one back...