rec.autos.simulators

: I too noticed that right off. The colors seem to be very vibrant but
: the frame rate looks to be less than 24 fps. It almost has a digitized
: look to it. I would love to find out what is going on...
:

That sounds like the MPEG encoded digital cable channels I get (like TNN,
WPIX, WTBS and others).  The picture is sharp, colour good but the "frame
rate" is low (sometimes).  Digital PPV and premium movie channels run with
less compression and don't show this effect.

Perhaps the WRC footage is now digitally edited (maybe digitally shot too)
but they're overcompressing.  Just a thought.

Dale.

OR it could be something entirely different, like the PAL standards could
have changed (the European Broadcast format) and there could some tweak with
the translation to NTSC (US standard) that has caused it to slow do a bit.

-Ed

Tom

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   It is most noticable when they track has lots of cracks, the dark tar
used for patching seems to jump by rather than flow smoothly.
dave henrie

It's a problem with MPEG2 compression; so yes you are (sort of) right.  The
problem doesn't come from the cameras or from anything that Speedvision has
control over.  The problem is for live events from across the pond, there is
often many satellite links that need to be made.  Most satellite carriers
compress the hell out of everything to make more 'effective' bandwidth
available at a time.  At each uplink and downlink there may be compression
and uncompression.  Normally this isn't a big issue for MPEG encoding but
for some scenes where you transfer from a complex colour pattern to a more
solid colour (ie going from trees to sky or grass to pavement) there can be
tiling or problems with temp***resolution as its known in the biz.  When
this happens from something that you normally see on TV ...ie commercials or
a golf game, you hardly notice it.  But once you get many uplinks involved
the temp***resolution problems compound exponentially.  But the worst part
is that these induced errors are know up to the discretion of each decoder
in the downlinks to try and resolve.  This means these errors can manifest
themselves in many different ways; this being one of them.

If anyone has an HDTV Satellite receiver you'll know what I mean about the
temp***resolution.  Right now all the carriers are too damn cheap to give
HD signals the bandwidth they need to show it's true potential, so now you
just get a picture that is marginally better than an SD signal.  But if you
are one of the fortunate few (in the US) who can receive HD signals from a
local transmitter (i.e. no satellite) then this isn't a problem for you.

As for the original poster's question...  Yes there is a difference when you
look at the signals for this years World Challenge.  You have to remember
that over in Europe they are on a different system than we are here in North
America.  Their power is only 50Hz in steady of the 60Hz we have here.  To
make a long story short...they also have to have a different TV system than
we do because of this.  Theirs is called PAL and ours is NTSC.  The two are
not directly interchangeable.  You can however buy converters.  Most places
buy good quality converters (which can be quite expensive for the broadcast
market) but there are many old and poor quality ones out there too.
Depending on who is supplying what signal to Speedvision (ie who is
converting it) it can lead to poor picture quality and an apparent speed
change in the picture.

Hope this helps.  Sorry if I'm not too coherent but it's pretty late here.

Regards,
Mike