This might actually be GQ worthy, but since I don’t know what I don’t know, I’ll start it here, at least.
Right now, I’m watching a baseball game on ESPN that is being broadcast from Puerto Rico. The focus on most of the camera views is very fuzzy relative to what I’m used to, and I watch a LOT of baseball. Fox was broadcasting a game from the same location last night, and it had the same issue. I assume both networks are actually sharing the same set of cameras.
I know nothing about TV cameras, but I assume some are just better than others. Is it possible in this case that this broadcast is using cameras that are not designed to be focused on a point so far away (such as from center field to home plate)? Is there some other difference in camera quality that could be causing this issue? Or something else altogether (something about broadcasting from Puerto Rico)?
Could someone with knowledge of TV cameras possibly explain in layman’s terms how much difference there is between (I’m pulling numbers out of my ass) a $1,000 TV camera and a $10,000 TV camera?
WAG #1: Maybe their good equipment was demolished in that monster hurricane last year.
WAG #2: No HDTV cameras yet?
WAG #3: Satellite transmission problem?
With Apple boasting about how cinematic quality films can be made on an iPhone, it’s hard to believe that they can’t get HD cameras into Puerto Rico.
Trailer for “Tangerine” from 2015 Sundance Film Festival, shot on iPhone (NSFW):
WAG #4: The cameras were fine, but there were bandwidth problems somewhere along the transmission chain and the compensation was to reduce the video resolution.
That actually happens with my Roku. Sometimes when the wifi channel the Roku is on gets crowded, I can see the picture quality actually get better and worse, as if it’s changing from hi-def to standard def and back.
Just FYI, a modern studio camera can run $100,000 and way, way up. A substantial part of that is just the lens. As with most professional-level equipment, it can do a lot more than we’re capable of telling.
Most of the island doesn’t have power at all right now (Puerto Rico Is Once Again Hit by an Islandwide Blackout) - my guess is that they’ve had to scramble to get something working to broadcast the game and it is probably going out at a lower resolution than the HDTV signal you’re used to.
This one resonates with me for some reason.
Yeah, I should have been clearer that that’s part of why I mentioned the same issue existed with the broadcast the night before. The quality was the same before the blackout happened.
The next time you notice the issue pull up the channel information (however it is accessed/presented on your TV) and look at the resolution of the signal. It may be in 720p and you are used to 1080p. Lower resolution could result in fuzziness, but lower bandwidth (of a higher-resolution image) would result in macroblocks and other artifacts, not fuzziness.
I wonder if their uplink is something other than satellite. Satellite feeds usually pixelate when they break up.
It’s most likely a garbage in, garbage out scenario.
Normally one company will have a contract to provide broadcasts for the year, and they’ll set up their equipment that will then feed the signal to whichever company is going to broadcast that event.
They’ll update equipment as required, but it’s a massive expense and a PITA especially if their wiring needs to be upgraded. So in all likelihood, the cameras in your Puerto Rico stadium are much older than what is being used in a major league ballpark.
The shift to HD is recent, and there have been multiple iterations of HD since then that make trying to keep up with the latest and greatest pointlessly expensive.
I was working in NYC when my morning show made the switch to HD in 2005 or so. The station I work at now in Montreal switched to HD almost a decade later.
The humidity in PR is a constant 638% and they keep forgetting to wipe off the lens. 
I am quite intimately familiar with broadcast cameras, lenses in the entire world of live television. Please regard the photograph below. This is the camera I’m sitting next to while composing this post!!
I just viewed a few minutes of the broadcast. Everything is slightly soft not just the live camera shots. I am guessing that the output from the truck to the world was 720 and we are all viewing at 1080p if not 2K or 4K.
I know some people who shoot for ESPN and I could try to get a more definitive answer but my guess is that most of the gear if not all of the gear was destroyed during the hurricane and this truck was sent in along with all of the cameras and other equipment.
There’s also no way of knowing if this was a satellite uplink to Bristol
Connecticut( ESPN Master Control ) or traveled over undersea fiber. If I was pressed into betting, I’d bet on an uplink.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180419/9e560df45ea1ad04ec95c6d16f3f3c95.jpg
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^ Is that you in the lower right-hand corner catching some "Z"s?