With a midnight vote, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) approved the Mobile Digital TV Standard on October 16, with “overwhelming support.” The standard provides the technical specs to allow broadcasters to “provide new services to mobile and handheld devices using their digital television (DTV) transmissions,” as described in a statement from the ATSC.

ESPN is feeling a bit more magical today after officially opening its ESPN Innovation Lab at the soon-to-be-named ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex within the Walt Disney World Resort. The Lab is just the first step in ESPN’s integration with the massive sports complex where athletes will be competing at the complex, helping to serve as real-world test subjects for next-generation broadcast technology enhancements like 3D, virtual graphics, and more.

In keeping with the theme of this year’s broadcast trade shows, 3D was the topic of conversation at the HD World Expo this week in New York City. JVC’s 3D monitors were front and center on the show floor and Thursday’s panel on Advances in HD Sports Broadcast & Distribution focused heavily on the present – and future – of 3D sports production.

Effective October 31, Tim Thorsteinson is stepping down as president of Harris Broadcast Communications. He leaves the post after four years on the job “to pursue other interests,” the company said through a representative.

Cycling is one of the hardest sports to capture on camera, and do it well – the athletes fly by at high speeds and cover more than 100 miles in a single event. Mountain biking has those same broadcast challenges, plus the added difficulty of bumpy trails, inclement weather, and high altitudes. The Leadville Trail 100 is just such a race and in August 2009, Citizen Pictures took up the challenge of committing the 103-mile epic to film – including all 14,000 vertical feet of climbing and multiple fits of severe weather. The result debuts in theaters next Thursday as Race Across the Sky, a one-night event celebrating not just competitors Lance Armstrong and Dave Wiens, but the sport of mountain biking and some supreme cinematography.

Broadcast-sports audio in surround hit a marker this year. It was 15 years ago that Fox Sports did the first national live surround broadcast for the 1994 NFL season. That milestone was noted during the Sports Video Group’s Surround Live Seven event at Manhattan Center — concurrent with a surprisingly robust AES Show at the Javits Center — in which several proponents discussed ways to standardize the surround experience without limiting it creatively.

Sportel Monaco, the international sports convention for television and new media, wrapped up on Thursday, October 15, in the Mediterranean principality after four days of conferences, awards and product launches. Highlights of this year’s event included publication of a report on the current state of online sports betting, presentation of the Golden Podium Awards, and the introduction of the latest version of Deltacast’s virtual graphics system.

Attendees of SVG's League Technology Summit, held December 14 and 15 at the New York Hilton, are eligible for a special discount hotel rate of $249 per night. To take advantage of this special offer call 1-800-HILTONS (445-8667) and ask for the “Sports Video” group rate. Book early as once our hotel block is full the rate climbs to $349 per night! Click through for more information on LTS 2009.

The developer working to bring the NFL back to the Los Angeles area with a sleek, new 75,000-seat stadium has a 600-acre site to build the proposed venue and is close to having the legal go-ahead to break ground. Now all that’s needed is a team. Majestic Realty Co. plans to build the $800 million stadium in the city of Industry – about 15 miles east of Los Angeles – and its casting a wide net in its search. Majestic named seven teams it believes are ready for a new home.

TBS’s coverage of the MLB League Division Series (LDS) led the network to its most-viewed week in the 33-year history of the network. For the 2009 LDS, TBS garnered double-digit increases in ratings, total viewers and households.

The Sports Video Group is pleased to welcome our newest sponsor, Diversified Systems. Diversified Systems is a systems integrator, set apart by the company’s ability to work with complex projects that incorporate diverse technologies such as broadcast control rooms, AV for stadium viewing, high-level audio, IT integration for media and digital signage, IPTV implementation, and structural wiring.

Come Oct. 27 and fans watching the season opener between the Cavaliers and Boston Celtics might wonder why Cleveland forward LeBron James wasn’t called for traveling. They will have a recourse, USA Today reports. On the NBA’s just launched video rulebook at nba.com/videorulebook/, video clips and written explanations of what constitutes a violation are available for download.

After less than a year on the air, the MLB Network is upgrading its operation with the addition of a Calrec Alpha audio console to support all of its studio programming, including the technically demanding signature show, MLB Tonight.

Avid has announced a new version of Avid iNEWS Instinct, an audio/video/script desktop editing solution that enables journalists to accelerate news production by increasing speed, control, and creativity of the creation of voiceovers and voice over sound on tape (VOSOTs).

Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium has selected Harris Corporation to deliver an HD broadcast solution for the Consortium’s suite of assets during its coverage of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Harris Corporation is showcasing its latest digital technology solutions at HD World 2009 being held October 14–15 in the Javits Convention Center. These Harris solutions enable customers to improve efficiency, create new revenue streams and reduce the costs of operations — all while easily and affordably transitioning from SD to HD and all the way to 1080p broadcasting.

Fast Forward Video has released a firmware upgrade and codec for its line of broadcast-quality digital video recorders (DVRs) that enables direct importing of JPEG2000.mov files into popular nonlinear editing (NLE) systems such as Final Cut Pro. With the upgrade, FFV becomes the first company to harness JPEG2000 technology for use in editing systems without requiring time-consuming and quality-compromised transcoding or rendering.

Miranda Technologies has announced that Richard Brice has been appointed to the new role of Senior Vice-President, US Sales, based in New York. Richard will manage Miranda’s sales team across the US, and will report to Strath Goodship, Miranda’s Chief Executive Officer. Prior to this new position, Richard was Miranda’s European Managing Director, and also President of the Asian division at an earlier stage.

Through an agreement with ANC Sports Enterprises, Phizzle will be providing real-time mobile device texting to ribbon boards and video screens at Quicken Loans Arena, home of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

ViewCast Corporation has expanded its business relationship with Rahul Commerce, a leading distributor of multimedia technology in India.

Horse racing fans are now able to reach new horizons and receive boundless access to HRTV’s live racing competition and original programming. HRTV and NeuLion have announced the debut of a new service dedicated to the sport and lifestyle of horse racing.

The Professional Disc Golf Association, in cooperation with its media partners Todocast.tv and EPlanet Media, presented live Internet broadcasting from the 2009 United States Disc Golf Championship at Winthrop University in South Carolina Oct. 7-10. The production, which ran approximately six hours on each of the four days, was the first for the sport and was viewed by fans in 46 nations.

Major League Baseball International (MLBI) has entered into new agreements with three additional broadcast partners in China, bringing total regional coverage of the 2009 World Series to five networks reaching more than 250 million potential viewers across Beijing, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Fox Sports en Español has announced its lineup of exclusive Spanish-language broadcasts for the 2009 Major League Baseball post-season, including the American League Championship Series, where the Los Angeles Angels will take on the New York Yankees starting Friday, October 16 at 7:30pm ET and the World Series starting on Wednesday, October 28 at 7:30pm ET.

Cisco Systems is well-known for its jaw-dropping research-and-development budget, and its propensity for acquiring, funding or working with start-up companies. So dozens of start-up CEOs that attended this week’s Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase perked up when a top Cisco executive gave advice about the way a small company should approach the networking giant, which has offices all over the world, many different divisions and more than 60,000 employees.

Eventually, TV coverage might include baseball replays showing what the play would have looked like from another planet. Or, what a fly buzzing over home plate might have seen just before it was beaned. We're getting there.

The calendar says we are well on our way to winter, but for many technology companies, orders are starting to bloom like flowers after a spring rain.

It was one small bus trip for a broadcaster, one potentially giant leap for broadcasting-kind. That was the message Friday as broadcasters celebrated mobile DTV on what they said was a historic day for the future of the medium.

Sixers fans in the Philadelphia area could watch live games on the Internet this basketball season for the first time, as long as they pay an extra fee that runs about $20 a month. Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia might announce the details of the new service by the start of the season Oct. 28. Some negotiations were still taking place, sources said.