Advanced Television

Super Bowl to get 6 UHD cameras

November 3, 2014

By Chris Forrester

On February 1 2015 Super Bowl XLIX takes place at Glendale, Arizona, homes of the Arizona Cardinals. According to panellists at the recent SMPTE gathering in Hollywood, television coverage will be improved by the probable presence of up to six 4K/UHD cameras.

However, they’ll not be used for transmission. The game is being covered by NBC, although it was Fox Sports exec Jerry Steinberg who talked about the presence of 4K cameras at the event, and said how frequently 4K cameras were finding their way into sports coverage, where they are used to zoom in and showcase a key play although the transmission remained in ‘ordinary’ HDTV.

But Steinberg stressed that there was little chance that UHD would be making any sort of move to transmission for some time. “We spent millions going to HD and never got an extra dime from advertisers. … It seems today [that 4K] is a monumental task with not a lot of return.”

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, FTA, UHD, Ultra-HD/4K