Inside Fox Sports' Upcoming Season of 4K HDR Distribution of Thursday Night Football Fox's Davies: Perfecting (and converting) the 2020 color space has been the critical objective By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Friday, September 20, 2019 - 1:14 pm
Print This Story
Story Highlights
As you've likely heard by now - and as was officially announced by the network on Friday morning - Fox Sports will be distributing this season's Thursday Night Football NFL package in 4K UHD (Ultra High Definition) and HDR.
Beginning with next Thursday's matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field, Fox Sports' production and operations team will produce TNF games in 1080p/High Dynamic Range (HDR) and upconvert the image from there to 4K/HDR.
Fox has been working on trialing these production methods dating back to the preseason and has done as much as they can behind-the-scenes during the first two Thursday Night Football games this season, which were held in Carolina (on Sept. 13) and Jacksonville (on Sept. 19). Fox has actually produced the first two Thursday Night Football games in 2020 color space (the designated color space for ultra-high-definition TV; HD displays conform to Rec. 709), just not distributing that anywhere for the public to see.
Come next week, the full-fledged production will feature high-end cameras from Sony, including the HDC-4300, HDC-5500, and HDC-P50 compact POV system. The truck will also leverage EVS XT4Ks for ingest, playout, and replay. All pieces of technology that Fox is familiar with.
Keeping everything sort of in line with what we normally do was the order of the day, says Mike Davies, SVP, technical and field operations for Fox Sports. The bottom line is, when you do these types of things, you want to make sure that you preserve what's great about your production, first and foremost. That is everything from super motion cameras to the ability to record everything to making sure that you have all of your POVs - like pylons and skycams and wireless cameras - that all those things aren't compromised. Insofar as to what an ultra-high definition show looks like? Hopefully it looks very much the same as what we would do in standard dynamic range.
In the compound will be the lead truck Game Creek Encore, which Fox Sports has plenty of experience working in (the truck has been with Fox at the U.S. Open golf championships since 2015 and has also played a key role at various NFC Championship Games and MLB All-Star Games). With that familiarity with their facilities, Fox Sports' engineering team - including VP, Field Operations & Engineering Kevin Callahan and Technical Producer Matt Battaglia - was able to spend extra time in their Fox Sports Lab experimenting and testing out some new equipment for this project.
Much of that work went into perfecting conversion gear that would change signals from SDR (standard dynamic range) to HDR and vice versa while making sure that everything remained true in terms of color quality in both color spaces. Fox Sports worked closely with THUMBWAR, a creative and technical consulting agency based in Los Angeles, on the color space work with key contributions from vendors like AJA Video Systems and Colorfront, who helped with the conversion scheme. Sony also provided their conversion equipment to pair with their arsenal of cameras working the games.
Those conversions are critical not only to the upconvert from 1080p to 4K, but also in helping balance out the fact that while the game itself is produced in HDR, the pregame and postgame shows taking place onsite with Fox and NFL Network are still being done in SDR.
According to Davies, keeping those worlds as similar and balanced as possible - while letting them shine in their own right - is critical. It's been a great team, and if we measure our success by the lack of engineering issues, then it's been so far, so good.
Thursday Night Football 4K games will be available on select cable distributors and Virtual MVPDs like, including DirecTV, Altice Optimum, Comcast Xfinity, Verizon Fios, TVision, and fuboTV, while also streaming through the Fox Sports and FOX NOW apps on Apple 4K TV and select Roku sticks*.
*Roku devices that support 4K are Roku Premiere, Roku Premiere+, Roku Streaming Stick+, Roku Ultra, and 4K TV models with Roku OS built in.
Fox Sports' 2019 Thursday Night Football schedule begins Sept. 26 with the Philadelphia Eagles at the Green Bay Packers.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
The days are getting longer, the temperatures are rising, and playlists are filling up for the season. With summer around the corner, Spotify's global edito...
29/05/2026
New retro-inspired MPC announced
There are few devices that have gained the status held by Akai Pro's MPC range, and in recent years, the company have s...
29/05/2026
Save up to 30 on acclaimed titles
Following a successful launch at Superbooth 2026, Bjooks have revealed that they will be continuing the Kickstarter campa...
29/05/2026
Binaural monitoring application improved
Genelec have just released an update that brings some powerful new features to their HRTF-based binaural headphone ...
29/05/2026
6 June 2026 at SAE Institute, London, UK
IMSTA FESTA 2026 is almost upon us, with some of the biggest names in pro-audio set to descend upon SAE Institute i...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
Latino Film Institute Fellows Screen Their Short Films at the Egyptian Theatre
The Inclusion Fellowship and Spark Animation Grant uplifts 15 ...
29/05/2026
GLOOKAST LAUNCHES CINNAFILM TACHYON PLUGIN FOR MEDIA PRODUCER AND MEDIA SERVICES
This release first appeared here.
Visit our Tachyon product page or contact...
29/05/2026
May 29 2026, 09:00 (PDT) Dolby and rednote Bring More Immersive Storytelling to...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Youtube exclusive special drops today
Watch now
UKTV today announces another e...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
Inside Fox Sports' Upcoming Season of 4K HDR Distribution of Thursday Night Football Fox's Davies: Perfecting (and converting) the 2020 color space has been the critical objective By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
