fort worth, tx
--Texas Ranger fans got a taste of HDTV on March 31 when, after months of intense preparation, NBC affiliate KXAS-TV became the first commercial television station in the U.S. to broadcast a baseball game live in the 1080-line (interlaced) high definition format. KXAS-TV is owned by LIN Television Corp.
The Opening Day event was an effort to get the public excited about HDTV, explained Douglas Adams, president and general manager of KXAS, and according to those involved it drew quite a response.
"The public loved what they saw because sporting events lend themselves so well to high definition TV and make it really impressive," exclaimed George Csahanin, chief engineer.
According to Csahanin, people watching the Sony widescreen monitors installed throughout the Ballpark at Arlington were surprised by the realism and clarity HDTV offers.
"People were watching the game inside the ballpark. When they went out for a refreshment, they could stop and watch it on the monitor. When they went back out, the reality of it was that [HDTV] looked very much like what you would see when you walked out to the field. It was that good," he said.
Pre-Game
Since high definition broadcasts are such a new venture for commercial stations, the production crew was not sure what to expect. Fortunately, they were able to avoid any major disasters with exhaustive groundwork preceding the event.
"These types of productions are the first of there kind, so it was a little nerve-wracking trying to work out the kinks, but once we got going, it went very smoothly," said Producer Kristin Cox of HD Vision of Dallas.
HD Vision, one of the first companies to offer fully-equipped HD production trucks, provided six HDC-500 Sony HD cameras. Earlier in the preparation, Csahanin had been concerned with the lack of long lenses with proper zoom ratio for HD. But Canon Broadcast came through and outfitted five cameras with 40:1 Canon lenses. HD Vision also supplied several VTRs including Sony's HDW-500 and HDD-1000, and Panasonic's HD-D-5.
Though limited to seven outputs, a Sony HDST-1000 production switcher handled the high definition production, and kept the technical director on his toes, routing sources to particular outputs.
Months before the production, KXAS station engineers began work on the transmission plant. By January, the antenna system, by Dielectric Communications of Raymond, ME, was constructed. Just days before the broadcast, Comark of Southwick, MA, delivered a solid-state transmitter, and the engineering team made last minute adjustments. As one of the few companies to offer HD codecs, KXAS turned to Global Broadcasting of Dallas for encoders and decoders.
"Everything went pretty well, considering we were doing a remote project that huge. We were trying to make a transmitter work that was delivered last week, get that on the air, and at the same time we were developing a production complex of five trucks," said KXAS' Csahanin.
The crew also ran into problems with the stadium's existing cable infrastructure. Its triax cable foundation could not support HDTV, so HD Vision had to rewire the stadium with compatible fiber, which took about three days.
"The stadium is huge," Cox emphasized. "The whole thing is wired with triax so we had to run fiber-optic cable. We had to come in three days early with the crew to actually tie the cables to the big support beams and run all of our cable to the camera positions. It was wild."
HD Out To The Crowd
After months of nail biting and hours of labor, KXAS made sure there were plenty of eyes watching. The station set up demonstrations of 11 Sony monitors stationed throughout The Ballpark at Arlington. Five monitors were located in general public areas--behind home plate, third base, and first base, and in a small park located beyond center field. An additional six monitors were set up for private viewing in luxury boxes.
"I got to spend some time during the game wandering around. I just stood back and watched people as they saw HDTV for the first time, and they were going nuts. They loved it," Cox recalled.
The station also arranged a private viewing at an advertising agency, and at a sports bar. Meanwhile, demonstrations at two area Circuit City stores enticed swarms of curious spectators, Cox reported, who watched with amazement on prototype 64-inch Zenith and 56-inch Panasonic consumer DTV sets.. "Crowds were packed in like sheep to see it," she said.
In addition to KXAS' coverage, MSTV's model HDTV station in Washington, D.C. broadcast the game to a closed meeting on Capitol Hill. To accomplish this, MCI provided a fiber-optic switched ATM link from Dallas to Washington, D.C. (a new service MCI announced at NAB).
According to Cox, the event was a success, informing people of HDTV and generating public excitement for this new technology. "Everybody who questioned me was very positive," she added. "They asked, 'When can I get this? I had so much fun watching. Tell me about it.'"
By the way, the Rangers lost to the Chicago White Sox 9-2. |
