Last September, Dome Productions learned that it would need to figure out a way to facilitate UHD production of all Toronto Blue Jays games: Rogers Cable was preparing to launch a UHD service for subscribers. At the time, the timetable seemed aggressive but doable with the first home game on April 8, seven months away.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Opening Day: Rogers Sportsnet decided that it wanted to take UHD on-air earlier with coverage of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and then-competitor TSN decided to broadcast the Toronto Raptors in UHD on Jan. 21.
Our yearly plan changed dramatically, says Mike Johnson, director of engineering, Dome Productions, and, by the time we got to Opening Day, we had already done 40 UHD events.
On April 8, those 40 UHD events paid off for Dome Productions and Rogers Sportsnet as the Toronto Blue Jays began their 2016 home campaign. And a new era in sports production began: Dome Productions was able to use a single production unit, Trillium, to do one UHD production that ultimately was served out to both HD and UHD viewers.
The UHD Sportsnet feed is produced out of Trillium's B unit, which is tethered to the A unit, which produces the HD feed.
Our target was to produce the games in 4K and then downconvert to HD, says Johnson. We wanted the production to be as true as it could be to the original HD production.
Dome Productions hit that target, thanks to a lot of teamwork and planning by its engineering and production teams as well as outside vendors.
Am I surprised we got here? says Mary Ellen Carlyle, SVP/GM, Dome Productions. No. We were nervous in January, but we had the opportunity to get 40 games under our belt, learn a lot, and took it in. And the suppliers have been great and really engaged with us.
The overhauled Trillium features a Grass Valley Kayenne switcher and Trinix router and Sony HDC4300 HD/4K cameras. It maintains its original HD core in the A unit and is tethered to the B unit for UHD productions. The B unit houses a large UHD baseband router, as well as the Grass Valley K-Frame infrastructure for the Kayenne switcher and the replay-system infrastructure.
We are basically adding a UHD core layer to an existing truck, Johnson explains. We can control the router and service the replay channels to feed to the stations in the A unit, so the heavy lifting of 4K all takes place in the B unit. In terms of connecting it to the A unit, we just have to tie into the operator-station links. There are multiviewer video displays and audio monitoring, and that will all link through fiber interconnects to the B unit and will control the devices.
An important factor in the entire endeavor is the number of cameras used for Blue Jays games. Our requirement for hockey is upwards of 25 camera sources, but baseball is not like that: there are only 10 or 11 cameras, says Johnson. And we can do the instant-replay operations with only six people.
Six of the Sony HDC4300 cameras are being used in 4K mode and are manned; a seventh is in use as a 4K robotic POV. There are also four HD cameras that are upconverted: two Sony HDC4300 units operating in high-frame-rate mode and two Q-ball cameras in the dugouts. The HD cameras are currently in 1080i, but the goal is to eventually make them 1080p, a move that will improve upconversion quality.
According to Johnson, the technical directors required a lot of training, having to learn to make do with fewer key layering capabilities and fewer mix effects. The Grass Valley production switcher was arranged so that a portion of the panel and switcher not used for the HD show was dedicated to the UHD production.
The result was like having two separate switchers that were linked together by GPI, says Johnson. So the TD could expand on the layering capability and meet the challenge of creating multiple boxes.
In terms of playback, one 12-channel EVS server handles the two high-frame-rate cameras; five EVS machines are in 4K mode. Two of these are operating with one input and two outputs, and the other three are two inputs and one output. Getting to that point required the engineering and production team to work closely together to figure out a workflow.
Then they had to bring in the operators, says Carlyle. If they didn't do that prep work to figure out a workflow, the project would not have come off as well we it did. The group was great as everyone got together and worked around the issues.
Johnson notes that getting to that point required convincing a few naysayers and helping them adapt to a different workflow. Even when we were doing the basketball games, he points out, the EVS operators were clipping and moving clips from one EVS to another at the volume of traffic there would be for an MLB game.
The work is still not completed: the team is now figuring out how high dynamic range (HDR) fits in. For now, though, Dome and Rogers Sportsnet have staked their claim with respect to UHD production.
If we get to UHD, we become the leaders. If we don't, then we're the followers, says Carlyle. It doesn't matter how many are watching today. It's about how many will be watching tomorrow.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Last September, Dome Productions learned that it would need to figure out a way to facilitate UHD production of all Toronto Blue Jays games: Rogers Cable was preparing to launch a UHD service for subscribers. At the time, the timetable seemed aggressive but doable with the first home game on April 8, seven months away.
