★★★★★ 0/5

No HD for Grand Finals, so how did ONE and GEM rate?

What kind of numbers did the MotoGP and Funny Girl pull on their HD channels while the rest of us watched Grand Finals in SD?

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Last week sports fans were fuming with neither the AFL Grand Final nor the NRL Grand Final being shown in HD during their live broadcasts.

TEN said it had a contractual commitment to show the MotoGP from Japan, a qualifying round no less, which was staged at the same time.

Nine said it wanted to offer its viewers “the most variety of options.”

So how did they stack up numbers wise?

While the AFL Grand Final was on TEN with 2.6m viewers, the MotoGP on ONE had just 32,000 viewers.

While the NRL Grand Final was on Nine with 2.02m viewers, Funny Girl on GEM had just 45,000 viewers (and it wasn’t even filmed in HD in 1968),

ONE did replay the AFL Grand Final later when it was watched by 71,000 people.

This weekend’s Bathurst 1000 will be broadcast on both Seven and in HD on 7mate.

41 Responses

  1. Even though some old shows and films weren’t filmed in HD. If it is remastered, usually they will take it from the original 35mm film which is a higher resolution than SD anyway, just like Friends in HD. However, the HD bandwidth on Australian free-to-air TV is obviously underutilised.

  2. Sham on most media commentators / reviewers as they have failed to promote HD & let the networks off the hook. They should look at USA/UK/NZ HD versions of the shows shown here .It is amazing how good US HD looks ,fullHD .

  4. Well Ten lied. They have delayed qualifying of Moto GP in the past so they could have delayed it this time. They are greedy and Lachie is just out to ruin One because it was becoming too much of a competitor to Fox Sports. If One HD had remained all sport and Murdoch wasnt running Ten, they would have retained AFL rights and also gained NRL right in the future. One HD would have become much more popular than Fox. So murdoch made a play for shares and then cut out the competition.

  6. Well ok, I’m happy to be corrected on Funny Girl in 70mm:

    Laboratory
    Technicolor

    Film negative format (mm/video inches)
    35 mm

    Cinematographic process
    Panavision (anamorphic)

    Printed film format
    70 mm (blow-up)
    35 mm

    Aspect ratio
    2.20 : 1 (70 mm prints)
    2.35 : 1

    Thanks to learned buffs, IMDb and apologies to Babs.

  7. These “HD” channels seem to be a total waste of spectrum. ABC24 for news, GEM for ancient movies. “The Cracksman” (1963) on GEM looked as if it was an 8mm print. Colours all washed out, dirty negative and dirty print. “The Dove” wasn’t much better. Unwatchable. 7mate is often no better with old b&w films and 4:3 stuff. The MotoGP could have gone to 11 from 3-4:30pm replacing the tenth rerun of the old sitcoms.

  8. They couldn’t care less though as it meant everyone was watching in crappy SD together so they main channel looks better than if it was split over two.

    Pathetic by both networks. Quality sports coverage on FTA is a thing of the past unfortunately.

  9. Love how GEM is now starting to run daytime infomercials on weekends, what a waste of spectrum, not to mention the dodgy late night psychic phone-in scam rubbish they are running as well. No shame at Nine, money sluts that they are.

  11. So more that twice the audiance watched the AFL later in HD than watched the MotoGP, well that says it all. It would have been interesting to see how many would switch from TEN to ONE to watch it in HD live?

    But how would that affect the ratings? Maybe that’s the reason they didn’t wan those number split to crow about the total numbers on the 2 days?

    Has Nine re-run the NRL GF in HD yet?

    Also David I think you’d find Funny Girl being on film can be transfered to HD quality, assuming they have and Nine/GEM had that version.

    Either way there was no reason not to show the NRL GF in HD live. And the bikes on ONE could have been delayed as they did for the F1 qualifying many times during this last season on Saturday nights, to play AFL matches.

    Last thing we have an interesting clash next Sunday with the Japan F1 race over lapping the end of the Bathurst 1000.

  12. your reference to Funny Girl not being filmed in HD.. actually old fashioned film is already higher in resolution that full hd. any feature film can be remastered into HD for television/bluray. But i think i get the point you were trying to make. cheers

  16. >>.Funny Girl on GEM had just 45,000 viewers (and it wasn’t even filmed in HD in 1968),..

    Hang on a tick there. It was filmed on film, like cinema film wasn’t it? Surely that could easily be converted to HD (1080i or 720p)? I’ve just purchased the “spaghetti western trilogy” – all made before 1968 on film and now in full HD 1080p on Blu-ray….

  17. Funny Girl was shot on 35mm film, and has been restored. So why wouldn’t Gem have screened a HD version.

    Of course the NRL should have been on Gem.

  19. I can see TEN having a reason to not play it twice on ONE because of contract/other sport shows, but honestly channel nine shouldn’t be excused for this.

    I don’t care for football, but it’s such a shame that people who do cannot watch it in HD because Nine wants to play a 1968 movie. And nobody watched it!

    Also TEN still shouldn’t be excused entirely. Why can they not play the MotoGP at a later time! It’s the grand final!

    Such a shame.

  21. “While the AFL Grand Final was on TEN with 2.6m viewers, the MotoGP on ONE had just 32,000 viewers.”

    There’s the answer.

    Thank goodness 10 has lost the AFL rights. Its pre-match coverage on Saturday morning and early afternoon was appalling, with a myriad of cross promotions of upcoming programmes.

  23. About the movie – what do you mean it wasn’t filmed in HD? Wasn’t it done on film and therefore filmed HD? I have been collecting Blu Ray versions of classics and they are definately in HD.

  24. If ONE and GEM had shown the games in HD would they have been able to add the totals of the SD and HD channels to claim their combined rating?

    According to GEM EPG Funny Girl was HD, though it’s hard to tell the difference on FTA TV.

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