When FSN Southwest, the Dallas Mavericks, Pace 3D and the NBA worked together earlier this week for a digital cinema viewing of Tuesday’s game in 3D HD they did more than prove the technology is suitable for a regular season game: they also proved that 3D HD can be delivered via satellite using MPEG4 encoders and decoders. “I still don’t know if MPEG4 is contribution-level technology but it is definitely distribution level,” says Mike Rokosa, NBA VP of engineering.

While the biggest change internally at ESPN News HD will be the move to tapeless workflows (for more info see ESPN News HD Goes Tapeless story) the biggest change for viewers will be the “sideline”: a sidepanel to the left of the 4:3 image that will offer a wealth of statistics and graphics information. Chris Pelcynski, ESPN creative director, says ESPN graphics artists began focusing on new approaches to ESPN News graphics design about a year ago. “We came up with a few designs and decided that the sideline approach was the best,” he says.

This Sunday morning ESPN flips the switch on ESPN News HD, integrating what had been a Digital Betacam tape-based network into the massive ESPN Digital Center architecture that is based around Quantel editing systems and servers. “They will adapt the same proven workflow we use for ESPN and ESPN2,” says Mitch Rymanowski, ESPN VP of technology and engineering.

While New York Mets and Yankees fans await state-of-the-art stadiums, Washington Nationals fans just have to wait until Sunday. Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN will give MLB fans the first glimpse of Nationals Park, including its new 4,500 square-foot Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision HD scoreboard that is 101-feet wide and 47-feet high and a new scoreboard control room based on Sony gear. “There is just no comparison between our scoreboard and the one in RFK,” says Dave Lundin Washington Nationals scoreboard producer.

Arizona Diamondbacks and Kansas City Royals fans spring fever will be complemented this season by Daktronics HD scoreboards in their ballparks. Chase Field, home to MLB's Diamondbacks, is decorated with the widest LED screen in all of Major League Baseball. The Kansas City Royals HD video board is part of a larger project to renovate Kauffman Stadium. By 2010 Kauffman stadium will have a brand new entrance pavilion as well as a Royals Hall of Fame area.

Regional Fox Sports Networks (FSN) across the country will be offering viewers more chances to catch their favorite MLB team in HD. For starters Mobile TV Group is building new 48-foot HD production units to meet demand for lower-cost productions (especially for visiting-team networks). FSN is also deploying more Inertia Unlimited X-mo super slow-mo cameras this season to let more fans than ever see the seams of a fastball with stunning clarity.

Fox Sports this year will broadcast all of its MLB on Fox telecasts in HD and Peteris Saltans, an audio mixer for FOX Sports MLB, will follow the trend, watching has the number of inputs on his mixer steadily rise from 48 a few years ago to the 56 he now has on his Calrec Alpha and Sigma consoles. “And they’re usually completely filled,” says Saltans, who has been mixing MLB for FOX since 1996. “The amount of sound sources has consistently been getting bigger.”

New Middletown, Ohio-based Sure Shot transmission has launched the Natalie Michele, a 40-foot High Definition production/Ku truck with expando. The truck is a near-twin to Sure Shot’s first HD truck, the 40-foot Abbey Elizabeth, launched two years ago. The company’s third 40-foot, the Kelsey Marie, is an SD truck with transmission capabilities. According to Dennis Kunce, Sure Shot president, the new truck takes on territory largely overlooked in the initial mania for 53-foot mega HD trucks.

Busy sports desks and sports network newsrooms will have a new option for editing with the introduction of Aurora Craft at NAB. It’s the newest editing platform from Thomson Grass Valley and Ed Casaccia, Thomson Grass Valley director of product management and marketing, says the software gives a one-two punch for demanding sports applications.

The BBC has secured another significant sports broadcasting contract, extending its relationship with the All England Club for coverage of Wimbledon tennis for a further five years. This year's programmes will be available in HD and, for the first time, on Internet view again and mobile platforms.

Broadcast preparations are underway for the Euro 2008 football championships, which begin on June 7, with Swiss public broadcaster SRG SSR idée suisse planning to distribute football coverage in high definition for the first time, with what it describes as "lightly compressed" HD using its established standard definition transmission network.

SVG would like to welcome back Canon as they have renewed their Platinum sponsorship. MRC Broadcast and Alliance Productions have also renewed their sposnosrships with SVG.

Catch 47, a regional 24/7 sports broadcaster owned by Bright House Cable Network, has installed Chyron’s Channel Box HD/SD-switchable channel branding and automated promo system.

FSN Midwest’s regular-season coverage of St. Louis Cardinals baseball starts opening day, March 31, with the live High Definition (HD) telecast of the Cardinals season opener against the Colorado Rockies and more than 10 hours of live and taped baseball programming.

The Financial Times reports that the International Olympic Committee has asked China to promise not to delay transmissions of the Beijing games, after France raised concerns about Chinese television’s censoring of Tibet protests at the torch-lighting ceremony in Greece this week. French TV executives have asked the European Broadcasting Union to extract guarantees from Beijing that transmissions will be live and uninterrupted even if protests take place.

ESPN has acquired HoopGurlz.com a girls' high school basketball website. HoopGurlz.com is solely dedicated to the coverage of high-school girls' basketball and women's college-basketball prospects. The site provides an independent voice for girls' basketball and an objective, journalistic approach to the coverage of the sport. Glenn Nelson, award-winning basketball columnist and founder, will continue to manage the content and editorial voice of HoopGurlz. Chris Hansen, the National Director of Scouting for Women's Basketball at HoopGurlz.com, will continue to write for the site.

The Associated Press reports that some fans who got up early to watch the Red Sox season opener against Oakland ended up seeing nothing at all because of problems at DirecTV. Technical difficulties at DirecTV blanked out NESN, the cable network that carries the Red Sox, and ESPN2.

Burke Magnus has been promoted to ESPN senior vice president, college sports programming. Chuck Gerber, who has served numerous capacities with ESPN since 1993, most recently executive vice president, college sports programming, will retire from the company effective April 11. Magnus previously served as vice president and general manager, ESPNU.

WAPA-TV in San Juan PR used MRC and Link technology to make television history by providing, for the first time, complete live race coverage of the 10th Annual World's Best 10K Road Race. Production partner HyDra Comm and RGB Broadcast used MRC and Link communications equipment exclusively to deliver flawless coverage from start to finish. Until this year race coverage was limited to 50% of the course at best.

Genesis Networks fiber infrastructure has been chosen by Telefónica Sistemas Audiovisuales Madrid (TSA Madrid) to transmit a package of programming via the SKY Italia satellite platform to TSA viewers in Europe.

Digital Rapids has been selected to provide media encoding, transcoding and streaming systems to NBC for the network's Internet coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing, China, August 8-24.