Playstation 3D

Days 9 and 10 of the Olympics 3D coverage saw the end of the swimming competition.

The last swimming competition of the day saw the 4×100 men’s swimming team for the USA win gold, which happened to be Michael Phelps’ 22nd and last Olympic medal. Here are the guys celebrating after their win.

A ton of coverage was given to the trampoline competition, one that most people would normally skip but which I suspect was chosen for 3D coverage because of the heights the participants reach.

One very, very cool thing was seeing the 3D view from the top, which is cool enough in 2D but even more interesting in 3D where the gymnast literally popped out at the screen toward you.

There were more track and field events that got the 3D treatment, including the long jump where one of the camera shots has the jumper running toward you and literally jumping out of your TV.

Hurdles were also pretty neat. Again, the cameras seemed strategically placed to give you a feeling of depth.

I’m getting a kick out of Bob Costas’s introductions. Today he made a hurried introduction to the action, very quickly ratting through the day’s events and then getting a little obsessed with repeating the name “Aliya Mustafina”. I get the sense that the 3D intro is probably the last thing he does before he gets out for the night, so he gets a little punchy. I’m a big fan of his humor, so I definitely appreciate it.

One thing that NBC/Panasonic also did was add in what sounds like the BBC’s coverage of the action, which quite frankly I prefer to the American coverage at times. I get the sense that NBC’s announcers get paid by the word and get paid double for superlatives. The British announcers just seem a lot calmer and lets you draw your own excitement from the action itself.

I admit, there are still moments I see the 3D and gasp. I think so far in the first couple of days, the most spectacular shots have been of the gymnastics and the kayak/canoeing.

Here are some more 3D shots of the kayak.

And another 3D shots of gold medalist Gabby Douglas in her floor routine, popping right out of the screen at you. I have to say, I have a whole new appreciation of the sport, seeing the lengths, depths, and heights the gymnasts really have to go through that a 2D TV doesn’t quite give justice to.

Swimming is coming to a close. here’s Missy Franklin in the Woman’s 200M backstroke shattering the world record.

And finally, with the start of the track and field events we get a few new scenes to admire. Here’s the stunning Olympic stadium by night.

The track events also got underway. Again, 3D gave a really unique perspective on the events. Here’s a shot of runners lining up for one of the ladies’ races.

And Tomasz Majewski of Poland getting the first track and field medal with this shot put throw.

Overall, I’d say the 3D was effective in two ways. First, it really made you feel like you were there. Second, it really helped in understanding perspective that’s lost in 2D, such as the length of the track and the heights and distance of the shotput.

By now I’ve gotten a bit used to the raw and unedited stream of 3D content from NBC. At first I tried to watch the 3D action instead of regular Olympics coverage, but I found myself constantly seeing spoilers on random Web sites and social networking sites. So, I figured I’d watch the coverage live during the day, watch some of NBC’s primetime coverage, and then for any “special” moments I’ll tape the 3D action and watch it the next day.

Days 3 and 4 of the Olympics brought us some new sports in 3D. The first was women’s gymnastics. Here’s Gabby Douglas in the preliminaries on Team USA’s way…spoiler alert…to the team all-around gold.

The 3D really helps you appreciate how very narrow that balance beam is.

They also aired some canoeing. I normally don’t watch this sport at all, but watching the water splashing out from the TV made it fascinating television.

Finally, there was synchronized springboard diving. Again, fascinating to be able to watch the divers in sync in full 3D. You could see every twist and turn.

Overall, not a bad selection of events to be shown in 3D. I’ll be DVRing the whole day tomorrow to watch…spoiler alert…the women’s gymnastics team and men’s relay swimming team take the gold

Well, since I’m officially obsessed with 3D Olympics coverage, I thought I’d give some more observations.

NBC started broadcasting again today (Sunday, July 29) right on time at 5 AM. They covered swimming (including Michael Phelps’ stunning loss), as well as men’s gymnastics. While the NBC 3D Schedule is now completely filled out until the closing ceremonies, it’s clear that there’s very little production that went into scheduling these events. You’ll basically see a block of several hours of one event, followed by several hours of another event, a few random rebroadcasts in between, and even some random 3D general interest segments. And of course the same commercials over and over and over again. What the advertisers don’t realize is that after watching the same commercial 50 times in a row, it puts a pretty bad taste in your mouth. Also, I kind of wish that NBC would have given more detail than “you’ll see swimming and gymnastics for 8 hours”, especially since we’re on 24 hour tape delay. But we’ve already covered why they don’t.

Once again the coverage started with no commentary, just the ambient noise from the arena, which I loved. It really made me feel like I was there. I’m also watching a lot of the streaming commentary-less events on the Web, and I’m really struck about how little I miss the commentary. Although I think some of the people at NBC are just realizing that their 3D coverage doesn’t have any commentary, as by the time 3D gymnastics started to be aired they started to superimpose the audio from regular announcers on the 3D footage. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

The 3D, again, was stunning, adding a whole new dimension (no pun intended…okay pun intended) to the telecast. With swimming, being able to see all the lanes in perspective gave a much, much better feeling of being in the action and a much more precise view of how each swimmer was doing. Here’s a picture of the men on the starting blocks–notice how much difference seeing the perspective makes (again, use the “cross-eyed” method of viewing).

Similarly, the men’s gymnastics really came alive. It seems that they have fewer cameras than the 2D telecast, but they’re placed very strategically so you can see gymnasts from the best angles. On floor exercises, you can see them running right at you.

It’s funny, taking these screenshots is making me flash back to the 2004 Athens game, when NBC broadcast a special OTA channel of its HD footage, and I was frantically recording and taking screenshots of the amazing HD picture Time will tell if eight years from now 3D will be relatively ubiquitous to the point where I’ll look back and think all these screenshots I’m taking are silly

I wish I could stay home and watch all the 3D footage, but of course I’ve got my day job tomorrow. So I set the Tivo for 13 hours, which should just about fill it up each night. I’ll check in from time to time over the next few weeks.

Right now I’m watching the London 2012 Opening Ceremonies on FIOS Channel 1003 (if you have Comcast, AT&T, Cablevision, etc. you’ll find it on different channels).

It took me a while to get it to work right. I had component cables going from my Tivo to my PS3 Display, but the Display annoyingly wouldn’t allow me to switch into 3D mode–the 3D option was completely greyed out on the Display. After a bit of fiddling, I realized that I needed to connect my Tivo via HDMI.

Now on Friday night, I’d watched the NBC coverage “live” (actually, no one in the US could watch it live because NBC blocked access to everything except its tape delayed coverage). I watched about 10 minutes of it before I had to shut the sound off. I have nothing against Matt Lauer or Mededith Viera, but I found their constant need to provide non-stop commentary to be utterly annoying to the point of my wanting to throw something at the TV. It was impossible to enjoy the beautiful music and the wonderful sounds of the Opening Ceremonies because they felt a need to constantly explain to the viewers what was going on. The worst of many bad moments of the night, when Matt Lauer saw a scene of British nurses and children recreating classic English storybook scenes and decided to interject “while the healthcare debate is going on in the US, Britain is proud of its universal healthcare and wanted to proudly display it to the world”. Uh, thanks Matt.

The one bright spot of the evening was Bob Costas, from whom we heard painfully little compared to the always-on Viera and Lauer.  It was touching to hear his “audible” where he called for a moment of silence for the 40th anniversary of the 1972 Munich massacre, an event for some strange reason the Olympic committee decided to put on the back burner.

Overall, I give London’s Opening Ceremonies an “A” and NBC’s Friday night prime-time coverage a solid “F”. I hate to break the news to NBC, but the reason the Today Show’s ratings are plummeting was not because of Ann Curry. It’s because no one wants to wake up in the morning and hear the painful and endless drivel the likes of which we heard Friday night.

Okay, this is a blog to talk about 3D coverage, so I’ll talk about NBC’s coverage of the same event on the NBC 3D Olympics channel.

The coverage stated at 5 AM sharp. After a montage of videos of Olympic athletes, we cut to Bob Costas, who gave a brief, one-minute introduction to the Olympic coverage. Then, the Opening Ceremonies began.

I braced myself for the annoying commentary. But it never came. Instead, I heard the beautiful voices of children singing. I heard the rich sounds of the orchestra. And I could see the most stunningly beautiful images that have ever come out of my Playstation 3D display, in glorious and deep 3D.

It turns out that NBC decided to air Panasonic’s raw footage untouched. From their point of view, they probably knew that very few people would be tuning in, so it wasn’t worth their time to get on-air “talent” to provide running commentary. For me, this was the most brilliant decision the boneheads at NBC made yet. Because even though it was 24 hours later, I thoroughly and immensely enjoyed this coverage from start to finish.

NBC did find ways to ruin even this experience. Every 10 minutes, and in some cases during pivotal moments in the action, NBC abruptly cut to commercials right in the middle of the action, making us miss key moments. For example, during the point in the festivities when the ironworkers forged the beautiful Olympic rings, we jump from the scene where the red-hot rings are being lifted to the ceiling, cut to commercial, and come back to see that the rings are lit up, presumably as part of an impressive pyrotechnics display that happened when we were enduring the 50th airing of Matthew Perry’s new show on NBC this fall (which I will boldly predict will not last the season). Still, what they did show was stunning (use the “cross-eyed” method to view these and other 3D images).

The one saving grace was that most of the commercials themselves were for movies and Blu-Rays in 3D from the Avengers to Finding Nemo in 3D, but of course NBC put in 2D commercials for its own shows.

Another very annoying thing is that it seems every three minutes they’d superimpose an animation of The Lorax with silly sound effects, sometimes during the most dramatic or emotional moments.

You’d think that they’d get a college intern to putting commercials in the right places, and to make sure that their annoying animations didn’t interfere with the show. But the message from NBC was clear. We don’t care about 3D viewers, and we’re going to milk as much as we can out of them. Thanks NBC.

Still, that couldn’t put a damper on the excellent quality of Panasonic’s 3D. Colors were vibrant, the camera angles really maximized the quality of the 3D and made you really feel “part of the action” in a way that traditional 2D never could. Watching the Parade of Nations (again, thankfully without constant commentary) was a really fun experience. Here’s a still of the US team entering the stadium:

Scenes like the fireworks displays over the stadium were truly jaw-dropping (unfortunately, the one thing NBC decided to do was to cut into the fireworks to splice in a montage of scenes from past Olympics, ruining perhaps the single most impressive 3D images of the evening).

The Opening Ceremonies went from 5:00 AM to about 10:00 AM, at which point NBC started looping the coverage again through the day. Tough to tell if they’ll be doing that for the other Olympic action, or if they will be providing commentary for the sporting events. But I have to say, the great anticipation I had for the Opening Ceremonies (as you can see from all my posts leading up to it) was well warranted. Even though I know it was out of laziness and an utter lack of concern for its 3D viewers that NBC decided to not invest any production costs into its 3D coverage, for me that turned out to be a positive. I grade their 3D coverage of the Opening Ceremonies an A+ for the way it let me experience the Opening Ceremonies in an unprecedented way. It just makes me wish there were a mute button that should shut up some of their on-air “talent” on their regular 2D coverage.

If you have a 3D display and FIOS, tune to 1003 and check it out for yourself over the next few days. If you don’t have FIOS, sign up here with referral code IWANTFIOS to get it now with a nice gift card to boot! And if want to experience beautiful 3D for yourself at the cheapest price possible, Best Buy has the PlayStation 3D Display Bundle for only $199–that’s $400 less than suckers like me paid for it!

I have to say I’m really excited about watching the Olympics in 3D on FIOS channel 1003. I got my PS3 display too late to enjoy the US Open tennis, so this will be the first time I’ll watch broadcast signal on the PS3 Display.

If you haven’t done it yet, make sure you have an HDMI cable going from your cable box or Tivo to the PS3 monitor. Then, change the settings to “side by side”. Charge up your glasses, and enjoy the festivities.

I noticed a few days ago that the satellite feed changed from a test pattern to a graphic of the Olympics Logo, in 3D no less. I’m looking forward to the next 16 days.

Charge up those 3D glasses! The NBC 3D Channel has released its 3D broadcast schedule. While Verizon and Cablevision have been strangely quiet about it, the announcement was officially made that AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, Time Warner, and Verizon FIOS will be carrying the Olympics in 3D.

While it’s unclear whether some cable providers will be charging extra for the privilege, it’s virtually certain, if the past is any indication, that coverage will be completely free for users of Verizon FIOS. The test pattern you’re seeing on 1003 is the same pattern that preceded free coverage of the US Open Tennis Tournament. Come Saturday morning, that test pattern should be replaced on Saturday morning by full and free 3D telecasts of the Olympics.

If you’ve got a Playstation 3D display, make sure you have an HDMI cable going from your cable box or TiVo. On Saturday, you should see two images next to each other. Turn 3D mode on and switch to “Side By Side” format. Then, put on your glasses and enjoy the 3D. If you don’t have FIOS yet, sign up here with referral code IWANTFIOS to get it now with a free gift card no less! :)

All of the competition will be on next-day delay (meaning you can watch the Opening Ceremony Friday night and then Saturday at 5 AM watch the rebroadcast in 3D). They claim that there will be a full 12 hours of coverage each day, for a total of about 242 hours over the 16 days. For some reason, they seem to have divided their listings into two portions of the day: one from about 5 AM to 9 AM, and the other from about 9 AM to 6 PM. Hard to tell if it’ll be all original coverage throughout the day, or if they’ll loop the broadcasts, but we’ll see.

Here’s the schedule that’s been released for the first few days. I’ll keep updating this as they do:

Saturday 7/28/2012

• 5:00 AM – 5:00 PM - Opening Ceremony – London, the first city to host the Olympics thee times, welcomes the world and Queen Elizabeth II officially opens the games.

Sunday 7/29/2012

• 4:00 AM – 6:15 PM – Gymnastics: men’s team competition; Swimming: qualifying and finals.

Monday 7/30/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:30 PM – Gymnastics: women’s team competition; Swimming: finals; Diving: women’s synchronized springboard finals

Tuesday 7/31/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:45 PM - Gymnastics: men’s team final; Swimming: finals; Diving: men’s synchronized platform final; Canoeing: whitewater qualifying

Wednesday 8/1/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:15 PM – Gymnastics: women’s team final; Swimming: finals; Diving: women’s synchronized platform final; Canoeing: whitewater final.

Thursday 8/2/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:15 PM – Gymnastics: men’s all-around final; Swimming: finals; Diving: men’s synchronized springboard final; Canoeing: whitewater final.

Friday 8/3/2012

• 5:00 AM – 6:30 PM – Gymnastics: women’s all-around final; Swimming: finals; Canoeing: whitewater final.

Saturday 8/4/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:45 PM – Swimming: finals; Track and Field: finals; Gymnastics: trampoline men’s finals.

Sunday 8/5/2012

• 4:00 AM – 6:00 PM – Swimming: finals; Track and Field: finals; Diving: women’s springboard semifinal; Gymnastics: Trampoline women’s final.

Monday 8/6/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:30 PM – Gymnastics: individual event final; Track and Field: finals; Diving: women’s springboard final;Synchronized Swimming: duet qualifying.

Tuesday 8/7/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:30 PM – Gymnastics: individual event finals; Track and Field: finals; Diving: men’s springboard qualifying;Synchronized Swimming: duet qualifying.

Wednesday 8/8/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:30 PM – Gymnastics: individual event finals; Track and Field: finals; Diving: men’s springboard final;Synchronized Swimming: duet qualifying.

Thursday 8/9/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:45 PM – Track and Field: finals; Basketball: men’s quarterfinals.

Friday 8/10/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:30 PM - Track and Field: finals; Diving: women’s platform semifinal

Saturday 8/11/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:45 PM - Track and Field: finals; Diving: women’s platform final, men’s platform qualifying; Synchronized Swimming: team final; Basketball: women’s semifinal.

Sunday 8/12/2012

• 5:00 AM – 7:45 PM – Track and Field: finals; Diving: men’s platform final; Basketball: Men’s semifinals.

Monday 8/13/2012

•  5:00 AM – 7:30 PM – Closing Ceremony; Basketball: men’s gold and bronze, women’s gold and bronze.