College basketball in HD Sunday Feb 10th

CBS is broadcasting college basketball Sunday at 1:00 et in glorious 1080i HD. It's a first test of their one truck concept for sports broadcasts - meaning that those watching on a standard television will watch the game in a letterboxed format - black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. The game is national, so if you get CBS-HD where you live, you'll see it in HD!

I noticed something strange about the analog broadcast of this game. I have a standard NTSC analog television, receiving CBS from an off-the-air antenna. During this game, it was like my TV had trouble locking onto the signal. Every time I would change channels to the game, there was a second or two of noise and interference before it came in clearly. My TV has never exhibited this behavior before (or since). My question is, what was different about the analog broadcast of this game that would cause this behavior?

That's really strange...nothing about the analog broadcast should have caused behavior like that. What was different was that the analog signal that you received was a downconversion of the HD signal that I received directly - from the same cameras and the same production truck. That was the first time it had ever been attempted. That's why you saw the game in letterbox format.

I know of nothing that would have caused what you're describing, though.