Live From US Open 2022: ESPN's Host, Domestic Broadcasts Go 1080p, Arthur Ashe Feed Upped to UHD

Live From US Open 2022: ESPN's Host, Domestic Broadcasts Go 1080p, Arthur Ashe Feed Upped to UHD ESPN, USTA, and Gravity Media take onsite production into next era By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor

Friday, September 2, 2022 - 3:05 pm

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The USTA's transformation of the Billie Jean King Tennis Center production compound and capabilities for the US Open took another step forward this year as coverage on Arthur Ashe made the leap to UHD and 1080p is the new standard on all courts. The result is a world feed that can better meet the needs of global rights holders as well as a domestic ESPN feed that while ultimately delivered in 720p begins its journey with a higher quality signal. And it's been a joint effort between the USTA, ESPN (which produces the host and domestic feeds), and Gravity Media and NEP.

One of ESPN's 40+ cameras inside Arther Ashe Stadium at the US Open (Photo: Gravity Media)

As far back as 2015 we planned to go 1080p, says Sam Olsen, senior remote operations specialist, ESPN. We designed the system and had agreements in place so that we could flip the switch at any moment. However, doing it all in one go across all 16 courts was quite a challenge. Since the system was built to handle it, though, it was more about configuring the cameras and the detailed planning required for the EVS system to [ensure] we had enough channels available.

In addition to implementing 1080p on the show courts and UHD at Ashe, ESPN has upgraded its ACES automated court-production systems to 1080p for outer-court coverage. And, of course, the network has rolled out even more specialty cameras, than ever before, across the grounds to bring the viewer at home closer to the event.

Getting to this point has been a multi-year effort but it also was a major consideration for the move to IP and the design of the ESPN and Gravity Media technical facility back in 2019. As a result, all the primary equipment - switcher, routing infrastructure, monitoring, cameras - was 1080p-ready prior to this year. With that in mind, ESPN also upgraded several EVS XT3 ChannelMax replay servers to XT-VIA servers to maintain the channel density required for the growing number of super-slo-mo cameras and other needs.

ESPN's Joa O'Connor and Larry Wilson on hand at the host-broadcast facility near Arthur Ashe Stadium

As far back as 2015, says Sam Olsen, senior remote operations specialist, ESPN, we planned to go 1080p. We designed the system and had agreements in place so that we could flip the switch at any moment. However, doing it all in one go across all 16 courts was quite a challenge. Since the system was built to handle it, though, it was more about configuring the cameras and the detailed planning required for the EVS system to [ensure] we had enough channels available.

With that in mind, ESPN upgraded several EVS XT3 ChannelMax replay servers to XT-VIA servers to maintain the channel density required for the growing number of super-slo-mo cameras and other needs.

Inside the ESPN's US Open domestic-broadcast production-control room

We planned for everything to be able to move to 1080p at some point, so we've been ready for this since the beginning, says Larry Wilson, associate director, remote production operations, ESPN.

ESPN's IP-based host-broadcast facility is built around a Cisco Nexus 9508 core switcher, with two Nexus 9236C units serving as leaf switches in the TOC and a Lawo VSM IP control system. Gravity installed Grass Valley IQUCP25 gateways at the IP core to provide bridges to the rest of the facility. The Grass Valley Kahuna production switchers (with Maverick panels) and Grass Valley MV-821 multiviewers assigned to the seven production-control rooms at the facility are all IP-native as well.

That core, says Hamish Harris, director, special projects, Gravity Media, made all the technology leaps possible, including the move to UHD on Arthur Ashe Stadium.

There was quite a bit of reorganization of the IP core needed, making sure that the bandwidth calculations were done correctly and that we had spread the load across the cards properly, he says of the move to 1080p and UHD. Much of the cabling throughout the facility also had to be upgraded to accommodate 1080p, and the primary signal-distribution hub was moved from the end of ESPN's admin building to a more central location.

Gravity Media's John Williams (left) and Hamish Harris inside the equipment room at ESPN's US Open host-broadcast center

Much of the cabling throughout the facility also had to be upgraded to accommodate 1080p, and the primary signal-distribution hub was moved from the end of ESPN's admin building to a more central location.

With the shift to 1080p from 1080i, Olsen explains, we had to change the cabling and the length of that cabling. We decided to move the distribution point within the admin building for monitoring and connectivity from the far end to the center of the building. That gave us the opportunity to move a lot of the network cabling into the middle of the admin building as well, so it was all contained in the same space.

Center Court in UHD: Ashe Takes the 4K Plunge With record-breaking primetime ratings thus far, thanks to this being Serena Williams's final US Open, ESPN is pulling out all the stops for its coverage from Arthur Ashe Stadium. However, even before Williams's announcement last month, ESPN, Gravity Media, and the USTA were already in the process of upgrading Ashe's broadcast facilities to 4K UHD (UHD is available in the host feed but not ESPN's domestic feeds).

ESPN's host feed from Arthur Ashe Stadium is being produced in 4K UHD for the first time.

We were doing this [UHD upgrade] at the same time we were moving everything to 1080p, says Olsen. It wa

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