Sports

Sony HD Technology at Washington Nationals New Stadium

The Washington Nationals opened the 2008 baseball season in a brand-new stadium - Nationals Park. It's fully equipped to deliver a high-quality, high-definition baseball experience - both for viewers at home and for ticketholders in the park.

In addition to a full HD control room with Sony HD broadcast cameras, switchers, there are more than 600 Sony displays across the park - in the suites and restaurants, at the concession stands and on every concourse. There's also a Sony Playstation3™ gaming pavilion, where fans can take a break and play their favorite games.

Essentially, the Nationals are turning the "ballpark into a theme park," making what's happening on the field just one part of the price of admission.

The Nationals' control room includes the Sony HDC-1400 studio cameras, an MVS-8000G switcher and an array of Sony professional LCD monitors in screen sizes ranging from nine inches to 52 inches.

The production team is also using Sony's XDCAM™ HD Professional Disc™ System to feed live video and graphics to the scoreboard during games.

"To give us the most flexibility in moving around the stadium to capture images, we decided to go with a wireless set-up using the XDCAM camcorders," said John Guagliano, vice president, marketing and broadcasting for the Washington Nationals.

During each home game, camera operators move around the stadium with the wireless-enabled XDCAM camcorders recording crowd shots and game action. "That gives us high-quality copies of the games that we can go back to - even years later and pull footage from to create highlight reels," Guagliano said.

The video team also uses the XDCAM® camcorders to generate fan excitement and participation. "We do a lot of promotions, but we don't just want to run TV ads during breaks in the game," he said. "So we needed a format that was flexible enough to allow us to shoot broadcast-quality television commercials in case we want to run promos for nights where we have a promotional give-away. We also produce interactive segments in which fans can participate so we do a lot of live camera work. It builds a lot of excitement with the fans and we get them involved. Everyone likes to see themselves on the big screen."

The XDCAM system can also be used for internal uses. "We've been pleased with the results every time," he said. "We were looking for a strong internal video production tool as well as a wireless workhorse during games, and the XDCAM system fit our needs to perfectly."

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