ABC Superbowl Ads are in HD - why not more HD ads?

Question

There seems to be alot of HD editors in this forum, so what better than to discuss my impressions of the flagship HD broadcast of the year.
I've been watching the Superbowl broadcast on ABC in HD via Comcast on a Plasma Display. The game footage looks spectacular although I don't know which flavor HD is being used for the broadcast.
My guess is 1080i 24mbit although it very well could be 720 60P. 42" Plasma displays max out at 720 lines resolution, so I can't see the difference between the two. The cameras are probably Sony Cinealta's or Varicams. Anyone familiar with the workflow behind the Superbowl production? Please chime in here if you know anything. It looks better than most HD programming which I would attribute to a higher than usual data rate.
This is one of the first HD broadcasts I've seen where the ads aren't SD. OK, a few have been SD, but most are full-blown widescreen HD. When a company pays $3M for a single air time, I suppose the production expenses of HD are very minor. My impression is that the SD ads in comparison to the HD ones just make the company not advertising in HD look cheap. Since I make ads for a living, I don't want my clients to look cheap.
This is a very broad topic, but I have several questions that have been nagging me:
When an ad agency traffic's the ads to the station, do they traffic an SD and an HD version simultaneously? Has anyone here produced and actually trafficed an HD commercial to a station? If so, which HD and tape formats are the most supported by stations? What considerations lead the ad agency to justify HD traffic?
If you ask me, it seems that ads that run in HD make a positive impression on the consumer (assuming they can view HD) which improves the product's appeal. Advertisers want this, so I've been surprised there are so few HD commericals. Clearly, the HD adopted consumer will skew to higher income and demographic, which is also a very desirable differentiation that ad agencies should consider. It just makes sense that we should see better adoption of HD commercials than we've seen lately.
I work at an ad agency and we shoot our spots in HD (usually a rented Varicam) but always output to SD Beta when sending ads to the stations. It would be nice to start pushing HD content to the stations but when I ask our station reps, the answer from the station is always "no". This is frustrating since the spots are often scheduled to air during HD programming.
Any thoughts on this?

Answer 1

My guess is 1080i 24mbit although it very well could
be 720 60P. 42" Plasma displays max out at 720 lines
resolution, so I can't see the difference between the
two. The cameras are probably Sony Cinealta's or
Varicams.
varicams or cinealtas may have been used for eng packages but not for the game. this is mobile tv production with at the very least 3 prodution trucks for the abc show but i suspect abc had more, considering the overly-hyped, overly-producted nature of this "show." for the world series, the chicago compound had10 or so trucks for three shows.
the cameras, depending upon the production truck, would have been sony or ikegami or thomson high def triax controlled cameras and i believe abc sports, as well as fox sports, likes their shows in 720p.
Anyone familiar with the workflow behind
the Superbowl production? Please chime in here if
you know anything. It looks better than most HD
programming which I would attribute to a higher than
usual data rate.
i wouldn't attribute anything to the data rate of the cameras. the high def signal leaves the truck but then is immediately stomped on at transmission and then to create more revenue for your provider, it's stomped on and crushed even more to allow more channels and more ads so what you're seeing at home on your plasma is a small fraction of what i see straight out of the camera ccu.
the quality that your seeing is directly indicative of the senior video operator's skills, the skills of his team and the lighting of the arena. the video guy had days to tweak in his cameras, good video ops behind him that could and would follow his color imagery and perhaps fairly even lighting in the arena.
of course this is conjecture on my part as i didn't watch the broadcast but i've worked enough sporting events that i know the score. just saturday i worked a basketball game with thomson ldk6000 high def cameras, five to be exact. the espn producer beat a bush back to my area to slap my back on how good the imagery was. funny that, the arena is one of the worst i've been in where one end is dark and green and the other end is bright and red and the audience is blue. i don't know a video guy that would paint each camera for each section as there's not enough time.
sometimes the quality of the work your seeing is the result of good operators rather than state of the art equipment and if you've been in production trucks than you know what i mean.