Several major productions will be moving to 1080p in coming months
By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor, SVG
ESPN is officially charting its path to a 1080p future, beginning with Sunday Night Baseball. The network, which has been producing Monday Night Football in 1080p since 2013, transitioned its marquee MLB series to 1080p with the Dodgers and Red Sox matchup at Fenway Park on July 14. With SNB upgraded, ESPN plans to make the changeover for its boxing and Little League World Series coverage next month, and more properties are on the way.
“We have mapped out a strategy to upgrade several of our shows from 720p to 1080p over the coming months, starting with Sunday Night Baseball,” says Chris Calcinari, SVP, remote production operations, ESPN and ABC Sports. “We will then be rolling out more of our major shows to 1080p over the next six months or so. We now have equipment in the field that can support 1080p, and [the transition] has very little impact on production workflows, while offering a major uptick in quality and resolution. So we’re strategically heading in that direction.”
“Our [first 1080p SNB telecast on July 13] was flawless, and I think that was because this is a long-term strategy and not a one-off,” says Calcinari. “Over the past few months, we asked every one of our operations teams by sport category to spend the necessary time planning with all of our vendors and with our production counterparts to internally make sure our features were 1080p — making sure our animations and insert graphics are 1080p and going through all of the little details to make sure that we’re prepared for this. That made it much easier to roll out.
Although the transition to 1080p is far less complex than it was half a decade ago, several major technical challenges remain. For example, ESPN’s SNB production will require an extra load-in day to deploy the additional fiber connectivity required. In addition, ESPN and NEP had to account for the additional bandwidth required to maintain the same channel count in the replay room and for backhaul of the 1080p signal.
“I would say the three areas that you really need to focus on for 1080p are your cabling, your [replay-]channel density in the tape room, and transmission,” says Calcinari. “You also have to work with all your specialty providers — SMT [virtual graphics], specialty cameras, and things of that nature — so your truck has to carry enough upconverters and downconverters to be able to deal with those sources as required.”
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