Thank you for contacting the BBC regarding the Match of the Day Live broadcast of West Bromwich Albion v Portsmouth on Saturday 5 April.
We acknowledge that the pictures that were broadcast during this match were not up to the high standard expected from BBC HD.
Currently, we believe this was due to a connectivity issue between some of our cameras and the vision mixer. However we are continuing to investigate the issue with our Outside Broadcast supplier to ensure we fully understand the cause of the problem and to make sure it does not happen again.
We assure you that broadcasting the highest quality images on BBC HD is of the utmost importance to us and we wish to apologise for any inconvenience or disappointment the quality at this time may have caused.
What's disappointing, particularly for us VM customers with so little HD sport, is that it's not the first time - in fact, I'm struggling to recall BBC HD football coverage that hasn't had technical problems resulting in sub-standard PQ, and that's before the debacle over whether they were going to screen the England v Switzerland game in HD.
Technology's a bugger and often if it can go wrong it will go wrong, but Sky seem to have HD cracked and the BBC had no problems with its Six Nations and US Masters coverage. The FA Cup Final in a few weeks and Euro 2008 are all lined up for BBC HD: let's hope they get it right then. At the moment, Sky Sports' Premiership coverage looks better in upscaled SD than the Beeb's in HD - that can't be right.
BBC HD is still a scheduling hotchpotch of repeats with a smattering of new content each week. Summer sport is just about the only sport on BBC looking ahead - let's hope they get it spot on for Wimbledon, Euro 2008, the British Open and the like.
