During the past four years the Diamondcam has become a standard feature of Los Angeles Dodgers telecasts by FSN Prime Ticket, giving viewers at home a sense of what it is like to, literally, be on the field thanks to its field-level images captured in front of home plate, first base and the pitcher’s mound. But last week the Diamondcam made the leap to high-definition and 16:9 for FSN Prime Ticket, giving viewers at home a truly life-like on-the-field viewing experience. “”Now you can actually see the particles of dirt and the faces in the crowd behind home plate,” says Tom Feuer, Prime Ticket/FSN West executive producer. “I would rather watch baseball on home in HD than go to the ballpark.”

It was a daunting task, chronicling 40 years of Super Bowl history. But in the end the hard work paid off as NFL Films won a Sports Emmy for the NFL Network series :America’s Game: The Super Bowl Champions. " The team at NFL Films culled through it’s library of roughly 100 million feet of film to tell the stories of each winning team. "We think it’s one of the best things we’ve ever done," says NFL Film’s Executive in Charge of Production Operations, Bil Driber. "And we’ve done some good stuff over the years."

High definition is beginning to trickle down to the high school sports market as Moreau Catholic High School of Hayward, CA, recently created its own broadcast studio based around a Broadcast Pix HD switcher. The new studio allows the school to expand its post production department and create HD productions. “Video and film classes have become the new woodshop,” says Paul McKenna, Moreau Catholic High School film and video arts teacher.

As Yogi Berra might have said, “It’s a global world out there.” If the talent can’t come to the voice-over/interview booth, then bring the booth to the talent. That’s what Amir Soleimani, president and CEO of Voice Over There, figured when he upgraded what had been a $10,000 ISDN-connected voice-over booth in the garage of his Los Angeles-area home into a fully tricked-out voice-over booth on wheels.

Starting May 4, AT&T subscribers will never again have to miss a final shot, last drive or penalty shootout. In partnership with MediaFLO USA, AT&T is launching its new Mobile TV with FLO service, allowing sports fans to watch their favorite teams live and in color right from their mobile phones, wherever they may be.

The Wall Street Journal reports that next week NBC will tell Super Bowl advertisers it will cost them $3 million just to get into the game -- for 30 seconds. While individual slots have sold at that level before, it's never been the starting point for negotiations for the dozens of 30-second ads sold for the game. It represents a price increase of more than 10%, roughly double the usual annual rise.

NASCAR Media Group, which provides production services and content generation for the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, has selected Front Porch Digital’s DIVArchive to manage storage of incoming footage, along with an archive containing more than 50,000 hours of NASCAR film and video, some dating back to NASCAR’s founding in 1948.

Prisma Outside Broadcast (OB), Scandinavia’s largest live production company based in Gotenburg, Sweden, has placed an order valued at over 18 million Euros with Thomson for two new all-digital high-definition (HD) production trucks and an upgrade to HD for an existing production van. All three OB vans are to be equipped with a full complement of Thomson Grass Valley LDK Series cameras and other Thomson HD equipment. The new HD OB vans will be ready in time for the start of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, in August 2008.

Ross Video appointed Marcel Fontaine, as Regional Sales Manager for the Southwest USA. Mr. Fontaine joins the sales team after working for Ross as a Demonstration Artist and Trainer for 6 years. Mr. Fontaine also has 10 years experience working as a professional Technical Director, and has an Emmy for his work on the Sydney Olympics Broadcast. He is currently located in Vancouver, BC, but will be based in Southern California and will report to Kyle Luther, National Sales Manager for USA.

Avid Technology product development continues to move ahead as the company today introduced the next-generation of its high-performance storage disk arrays: Avid VideoRAID ST and Avid VideoRAID SR solutions.

Canada’s second-largest broadcaster, Global Television network, has installed three Calrec Audio Hydra audio networking systems and six Omega consoles with Bluefin High Density Signal Processing (HDSP) is part of a major technology upgrade accompanying construction of central news production centers at Global’s regional facilities in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary.

SAMMA Systems, a provider in media migration, has added two industry veterans to its increasing number of highly-respected executives. Nick Lim has joined as VP, international sales, and Josef Marc will serve as director of partner integration.

Game Creek Video has placed a substantial order for QuStream routing equipment. Already a major user of QuStream equipment, Game Creek Video is adding a Cheetah 384X720 HD with redundant power supply and redundant frame controller.

Univision and The Vidal Partnership will produce a groundbreaking soccer entertainment property, “El Juego Supremo ” (The Ultimate Match) . Scheduled to air in the fall on the Univision Network, it will bring together five soccer legends from Mexico and five from the Americas, including the U.S. These legends will assemble and train a team of rookies. Two legends from each team will serve as the primary coaches, and each coaching team will give 10 talented amateur soccer players the opportunity of a lifetime.

Snell & Wilcox's Kahuna SD/HD multiformat production switcher is now under the control of the OmniBus Columbus broadcast automation and control system. The powerful integration of the two solutions enables broadcasters to automate the delivery of on-air news content from a variety of sources and formats, and facilitates HD news broadcasts without requiring upconversion of SD content.