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By Ian Hunter, PWTorch Trivia Specialist

Two years of preparation, six months of planning, two months of construction, weeks of training, weeks of advertising, not to mention the millions spent, all for the WWE to present to the audience the glory and majesty of HD television broadcasts on their flagship shows. With almost every major sport in the world being broadcast in some shape or form in an HD aspect, WWE decided it was time to get their act in gear and show the audience that they're worth the same kind of attention and beauty on television sets. But after almost a month of broadcasts, it's only glorified how poorly WWE shows are produced and run in every area across the board.

Duncan Leslie and Matt Grossman both gave interviews for WWE.com the week of the changeover, briefly documenting the process from which the idea came to mind to its final conception on live broadcast. Which even though it's very short and undescriptive, it's a decent read into the planning and reasoning why it took WWE so long to put the plan into motion. And while I'm sure fans appreciate the effort made by the crew and management to put together such a massive task that not even world-wide concerts dare tempt, the overall result has exposed a lot of the flaws and dare I say, "half-assed planning" that goes into the day-to-day of what we know of the WWE.

The following are some notes that I've taken from watching everything from the past three weeks and the many things that WWE needs to work on if they expect fans to buy into the whole idea of this being a live show in your living room.

First and foremost, let's start with the one thing everyone made a big deal about. The new set. I'll say it right now, yes, it's impressive. The glory of what LCD lighting (when used properly) is showcased whenever you see certain entrances. Kane and Undertaker's are the obvious, but may I direct your attention to JBL's which has a stock ticker running along the bottom, and Shawn Michaels who has an audience of screaming fans behind him. When used properly, that bottom row background board is a grand backdrop. However, people who it seems to be misused on are Triple H, C.M. Punk, Jeff Hardy, Jericho, Orton, Batista, Finley, too many to count. I dare say, that backdrop alone shows off who matters and who doesn't. If the graphics department isn't pushed enough to make that part of the set sparkle for a certain wrestler, it shows and makes them look bad upon walking out. To add more emphasis to this point, the set now has a large LCD cylinder next to the set, and another half one above the Titantron for the show logo. If you watch for what's put into those, you can clearly see where certain people got more effort than others and you can almost see who's higher on the food chain by how crisp a graphic you have in those (if you have one at all, some stars got nothing… Tommy Dreamer).

And while we're on the subject, it may just be the HD, but the Titantron looks to have shrunk. Which saddens me but at the same time shows what the staff decided was more important now. Years ago when the video wall was finally done away with and they brought in the giant screen, it gave fans a much better picture to view the match on and later became a great reveal during interviews of who was coming down to the ring. Now it feels like a throwaway commodity that only serves the arena audience any use. Fans don't normally notice it, but 90 percent of all Titantron videos don't last more than thirty seconds before they go into a repeat. Whether this is due to lack of effort on the company to make a full length video or just them trying to keep things simple is really unknown. But fans see maybe fifteen seconds of Titan video at best. The rest of the night it's just a giant screen for the audience to watch matches on (and for the WWE to schlock merchandise at the fans over during commercial breaks). Now it's smaller with a bunch of mood lights on both sides that from what I can see serve no great purpose other than to add more color. I dare say, the Titantron has moved to the second most pointless thing now on the new set (next to the giant WWE logo).

But the set becomes a whole new problem when you look at the camera work being done with the new HD cameras. It almost becomes an eyesore when things are poorly filmed. Now, I've had issues with the way WWE has been filmed for years. If anything it's the defining point in WWE that makes the term "sports entertainment" a contradiction. Sporting events are filmed to show you every angle of every area of, well... everything. There's a reason why most of the time you watch the NFL or NBA, there's a picture perfect shot of what took place either live or on replay. They need to show everyone from the home audience to the officials what's going on. But the WWE can't do that because of the work they do. Without getting into an entire explanation and debate of real/fake hits and misses in wrestling, a lot of what they do requires cameras to be at a certain angle to appear real. Kennedy kicking someone in the face from one angle looks like he completely missed from another. Because of this a good number of shots are missed because they can't reveal how certain things are done. This problem makes itself ten times bigger with HD because HD catches it all. A missed hit can clearly be seen no matter what angle it's at. I have a simple 40 inch monitor and can clearly see it, I can only imagine the horror people who own giant plasma screens must be suffering through when they see how far away from the mat people's heads are when Triple H hits the pedigree.

On top of that, filming in the old style is no good anymore. According to the HD article, the entire camera crew went to HD boot camp to learn how to film with the new equipment. I think they need to head back for more training. A short time ago Letterman went to HD, and during the process they switched out the cameras but continued to film in Standard Definition while still showing what their picture looked like in High Definition later. It made the camera men aware of what they were filming and how it was being filmed and made for better television down the line. Sure they still had a couple screw ups when they first started, but no where near what the crew of WWE has had during these weeks.

Long panning shots from the top rows don't work, ramp way shots are horrible, audience shots look blurry at times, and the in-ring shot shows too much than needed. Plus, awkward shots are frequent. Why are they doing a ramp way shot of Jericho and C.M. Punk from the ring steps, knowing full well the audience is obscuring the shot? Why are they doing panning shots of the ring when the focus should be on the faces? Plus, a lot of space in and outside of the ring and not a lot to fill it with, so of course it's exposed. A long while ago I heard Paul Heyman say that ECW couldn't compete with the look of WWF and WCW, so they hid the negatives and focused on the positives. I think the camera crew needs to take a page out of Heyman's book and do the same to what they shoot.

Overall, yeah, the jump to HD was going to happen one of these days and it is impressive, but we as fans expected the WWE to be a little more on the ball than this. I appreciate the most recent Raw with 15-20 minute matches. But if it's filmed poorly, it looks poor, and people won't want to watch it. A pile of trash filmed in HD still looks like a pile of trash, just smellier looking. And as pointed out by Caldwell weeks ago, it doesn't help that we can see surgery scars and blade cuts on people who are supposed to be the best athletes on television.

The crew of the WWE needs to get their act together quickly, and NWA and TNA need to take notice as well. The problems WWE is having will be nothing compared to what they'll experience when they move to HD. Picture one camera being able to show you the entire Impact Zone in one shot, giving away how incredibly small the area is, and what a waste of space the six sided ring has become in that building. High Definition can be beautiful and unforgiving at the same time, and pro wrestling is quickly discovering that the latter tends to come up more often than not in their line of work. It can be fixed and people can learn to do it better, how soon they're willing to do so is another question.

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