Full 4K live sports productions resemble more of a high school science fair project these days but that didn’t keep the exciting promise of the technology from being the topic of conversation throughout the day as over 200 professionals gathered to network and discuss the future of sports video technology at SVG’s FutureSPORT.

4K and Ultra HD took center stage at the Sports Video Group’s second-annual FutureSPORT Summit Wednesday. There was discussion about the future of the second-screen experience (expect fans to demand more video, deeper stats, and more analysis), creating better HD (make sure your lighting is as great as it can be, improve those contrast levels, and never skimp on buying a quality camera/lens combo), and cloud-based workflows (invest in pipes capable of plenty of data, expect content creators at home to tap into all assets in the production truck, and design today’s trucks with IP in mind).

When it comes to creating better HD images, the often overlooked craft of lighting, continued commitment to quality lenses and cameras in an age of cellphone video, and a willingness to embrace video formats that require higher bitrates are just a few of the important considerations laid out during a session at SVG’s FutureSPORT event on Wednesday.

Churchill Downs, the historic home of the Kentucky Derby, stands a whopping 150-acres. The cozy confines of Pimlico Racetrack, site of this weekend’s second jewel of the Triple Crown the 138th running of the Preakness Stakes (Saturday, NBC), is no where near the size and scope. And NBC Sports coordinating producer Rob Hyland is perfectly fine with that.

ESPN added yet another feather to its growing Grand Slam tennis cap on Thursday, inking an 11-year deal with the USTA to televise the entire US Open tournament beginning in 2015. After 46 years on CBS Sports, the Men’s and Women’s Semis and Final matches will move to cable on ESPN, which now owns the complete rights to the three of the four Grand Slam tournaments – the US Open, Wimbledon, and the Australian Open – as well as a large chunk of the French Open.

For the first time since this year’s Daytona 500, Fox Sports and SPEED bring CAMCAT back to the track, as the 85-mph, high-tech camera suspended above the race track by a pair of gigantic cranes positioned outside of Charlotte Motor Speedway adds a strong element to SPEED’s signature coverage of the 29th NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race on Saturday, May 18 (7:00 PM ET).

Added value for both performers and fans is one of the many advantages that digital audio has brought to live music. Taking this side of digital audio to the next stage is Live Band Audio, whose recently-purchased DiGiCo SD8 is key to delivering live recordings to audiences much more quickly.

Viacom networks MTV, VH1 and CMT are teaming up with Hangout Music Festival, a three-day concert series in Gulf Shores, AL, for multi-platform news coverage that will air across the three flagship networks as well as MTV2, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, VH1 Classic, CMT Pure and Palladia. NEP’s Trio Video, Corplex, and Screenworks are on site along with producers Blink TV/UK supplying trucks, crews and technical support/design to the MTV family of networks for the live coverage.

The FutureSPORT event held Wednesday in New York City was highlighted by many lively discussions but it was the official passing of the torch from former SVG Chairman Steve Hellmuth to new SVG Chairman Tom Sahara that provided the highlight. Sahara, who is also Turner Sports, Vice President of Operations & Technology, has been closely involved with SVG since its early days and has led by example both within the organization and with those he works with on a daily basis.

The Sports Video Group is pleased to announce that Alliance Productions, Alpha Video, and PACSAT have renewed their mobile/integrator sponsorships. Alliance Productions is a strategic collaboration of the largest group of mobile production companies covering North America. Alpha Video is a leading digital video systems dealer, integrator and provider of visual communications solutions. PACSAT is a full-service video and audio production, post production and satellite transmissions company.

Many of the National Hockey League’s biggest stars have traded in their employer’s jersey to wear their nation’s colors at the IIHF World Championships in Sweden. The event is airing in 170 countries worldwide and at the center of it in Helsinki and Stockholm is Mediatec Group, one of Europe’s largest live event television production companies.

Miranda’s Telecast Cobra 2DT fiber optic camera interfaces will be deployed at Dynamo Stadium, the home of FC Anzhi in Makhachkala, the capital city of the Republic of Dagestan, Russia. The dozen Cobra 2DT’s will greatly extend the range of a series of Sony HSC-300 HD/SD cameras currently being installed throughout the stadium. The Cobra 2DT enables fibre cable to be used between digital triax camera chains and their respective camera control units.

On May 15, more than five news crews reported live on the UEFA Championship in Amsterdam using Mobile Viewpoint technology. Broadcasters using the technology included the BBC and Portugal’s RTP and SIC. With their Mobile Viewpoint LTE and WMT units these news crews were able to report live on events related to the Chelsea – Benfica UEFA final in the Amsterdam Arena, the Netherlands. Each deployed a flexible alternative (3G/4G) to satellite uplink to transmit live video in broadcast quality.

Digital Rapids is now shipping version 3.8 of the Digital Rapids Stream software for the company’s StreamZ, StreamZHD, and Flux ingest, encoding, and streaming solutions. Advances in the new version include H.264, MPEG-2, and DVCPro encoding enhancements including 4K Ultra HD H.264 encoding support; expanded support for automated multiscreen advertising insertion workflows; and new predefined project files for transforming content for Netflix delivery.

Miranda Technologies, a Belden Brand, a global provider of integrated solutions for production, playout, and delivery systems for television broadcasters and multi-system operators, has announced that it will showcase its Kaleido-MX and Kaleido-Modular-X multiviewers series at Broadcast Asia 2013.

Wohler Technologies will showcase its wide array of audio and video monitoring solutions on the Sistemas Digitales booth (A-13) at Telemundo – Expo Cine Video Television Show 2013, June 4-7 in Mexico City. Booth exhibits will feature the modular AMP1 and AMP2 audio-monitoring systems, the latest HDM Series dual split-screen HD LCD monitor, RMQ multidisplay solutions, and RM Series low-cost HD monitors from Wohler’s industry-leading product portfolio.

From a broadcaster’s point of view, New Year’s Day 2013 was undoubtedly celebrated Jan. 25. That is when the International Telecommunications Union announced the first-stage approval of the new video codec H.265, also known as HEVC, for high-efficiency video codec. While some broadcast-grade HEVC encoders were disclosed during 2012, the first end-user decoders were showcased at CES 2013, about 10 days before the ITU announcement.

TiVo, the company that sparked the rise of time-shifted TV, now wants to give users a personalized cheat-sheet of what to tune in to right now — eventually incorporating suggestions from friends and critics’ picks. TiVo plans to release the updated iPad app Thursday morning. “What to Watch Now” groups programs in six categories: Popular TV, updated every 30 minutes; sports, ranked by “excitement level” ratings from Thuuz about live games; movies; kids; favorite channels; and My Shows, which lists DVR recordings.

As part of a corporate strategy to streamline its multichannel publishing workflow, The McClatchy Company, the third-largest newspaper publisher in the United States with leading digital operations in each of its markets, will move the websites of all of its daily newspapers to a common Escenic Content Engine platform. Escenic Content Engine is part of the Vizrt Online Suite and will replace a number of homegrown online content management systems and become an integrated part of the CCI NewsGate-based editorial publishing platform at McClatchy.

The Riedel iOS App — Artist Input Monitor — is now available at the iTunes Store. The Artist Input Monitor is the first application of a new series of utility apps for the iOS platform from Riedel Communications, one of the leading providers of real real-time networks for video, audio and communications.

PGA.com – the official website of The PGA of America, which is managed by Turner Sports –has launched the PGA Digital Golf Academy, a new online subscription product offering high-quality instructional videos featuring PGA Professionals that is designed to help golfers improve their game.

Turner Broadcasting said it soon will be live streaming TNT and TBS via new apps for tablets and smartphones. Live streaming will extend to the networks' sports lineups: TNT's coverage of the NBA, including the regular season, playoffs and All-Star Weekend; TBS's regular-season and playoff coverage of Major League Baseball; and both networks' coverage of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship.

TDG Research reported last week that the penetration of TV sets that connect to the Internet doubled over the past year in U.S. households with broadband access, to 25%. But before popping the champagne corks, consider a few more numbers. TDG also found that 69% of Smart TVs are connected to the Internet. Now that might seem odd; why would 30% of the people buy these TVs choose not to use the feature that makes their TVs a few hundred dollars more expensive than the products that can’t go online?

DIRECTV Sports Networks and the Mountain West Conference have entered into a multi-year agreement, making DIRECTV Sports, and its Root Sports-branded regional sports network, the regional TV home of Mountain West football and men’s basketball. Root Sports Rocky Mountain will annually produce and televise approximately 10 football games featuring Mountain West teams, and a minimum of 25 MW intra-conference and non-conference men’s basketball games, beginning with the 2013-2014 season.

XOS Digital, a provider of content management solutions and digital coaching technology for collegiate and professional sports organizations, announced 85% of the teams in the SEC, Big 12, Pac-12, Big Ten, and ACC now use XOS ThunderCloud Recruit. The announcement was made today by Chris McCleary, CEO, XOS Digital.

Telestream, a provider of video transcoding and workflow automation solutions, announced the expansion of its sales management team to address significant worldwide growth for its enterprise-class video products. Mark Wronski was named Vice President of Sales for the Americas and George Boath was named Vice President of International Sales for Telestream’s enterprise products, which are comprised of multiformat video ingest, transcoding and file-based workflow automation products.

TSE Services has announced the hiring of Kirk Goodman as the new Sales Executive. Goodman has an 18-year professional sports portfolio. Most recently, as a leading sponsorship sales professional for Major League Soccer’s Houston Dynamo, Goodman was a part of the BBVA Compass Stadium grand opening in Downtown Houston in May, 2012.

The bundling of pay television programming -- in which cable and satellite providers give consumers more channels than they may want at an ever-increasing price -- shows fraying. Increasingly, more viewers want to pay for only the content they choose, a pattern of greater customization seen in all types of media use. It's estimated that more than half of viewers' monthly cable TV costs are due to sports programming. Cable prices increased 3.3% over the past year and have steadily gone up through the years.

Universal Sports Network has elevated Scott Brown to president with responsibilities for overall leadership of the Olympic and endurance sports network. Brown, who joined Universal Sports as senior vice president and general manager in August 2011, will have oversight of all aspects of the network’s operations, while retaining responsibility for its legal matters from the company’s corporate headquarters in Woodland Hills, CA.

ESPN is the champion of the sports TV business and it’s not about to let new competitors or the government pull an upset. After an upfront presentation Tuesday morning in Times Square that showed off new programming to attract fans and create new opportunities for advertisers that left the audience hungering for Cheez-Its, ESPN president John Skipper held for on the state of the industry.

ESPN President John Skipper said Tuesday he isn’t too worried about proposed legislation from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would allow consumers to pick what channels they want instead of buying a big package of networks. “We don’t think the bill has any momentum,” Skipper said to reporters after ESPN made a presentation to advertisers in New York City. His view that McCain’s legislation is a long shot is shared by many television industry insiders. ESPN is a unit of Walt Disney Co.

Now that Aereo experienced victories in the form of beating back a preliminary injunction and affirming the ruling at an appeals court, the digital upstart is looking to score the ultimate ruling. On Tuesday, in a New York federal court, Aereo filed for summary judgment in the case that examines the legality of its service of providing consumers with the ability to access over-the-air TV programming on digital devices.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves says he’s not losing sleep over Aereo. But DirecTV could bring some restless nights with the amount of money it could ultimately deny broadcasters. The satellite operator’s CFO Patrick Doyle said this week DirecTV has a fully legal way to avoid paying carriage costs for local stations. Broadcasters – including the Big Four networks -- are banking on those retransmission consent payments to provide a robust dual-revenue stream.

After four and a half years running the FCC, Julius Genachowski is stepping down on Friday. He’s had an eventful time: dealing with net neutrality, spectrum auctions, mergers, and David Ortiz’s exhortative expletive on national TV. As Genachowski prepares to leave, he agreed to chat with The New Yorker about his legacy and what he hopes to see the FCC do next.