Sky are lining up a big day of 3D sporting coverage this Saturday 21st May, with three major finals getting a 3D makeover.

Kicking of the 3D hat-trick is the Championship play-off final between Blackpool and Cardiff City at 2pm.

This is then followed by the Heineken Cup Final between Biarritz and Toulouse at 4pm, and lastly the Champions League Final between Bayern Munich and Inter Milan at 6pm.

Sky have been showing 3D sport in pubs since January, using LG screens and polarised 3D. Sky are looking to roll out a 3D channel to their satellite subscribers before the end of the year.

If you fancy checking out the above games in 3D, head over to http://www.sky.com/3dpubs to find your nearest 3d showing.

FIFA and Sony today revealed their 3D broadcasting plans for this summer's 2010 World Cup Finals in South Africa.

However, English fans have been left out in the cold, with no group stage fixtures for England making the jump to 3D, nor any TV broadcasting schedule announced. Instead we'll have to hope England get through to the knock-out stages to see Rooney and co. in the third dimension. But even then we'll have to hunt out a cinema projecting the game in 3D, as Sky's 3D channel will not be showing the games.

ITV and BBC are the co-rights-holders of the coverage, and so far neither have announced any further plans to broadcast 3D content from the World Cup.

"You might be curious to know why [sic] the selection criteria," said Niclas Ericson, FIFA's director of TV. "It is a very difficult one but the main issue was that we wanted to have a good spread of the matches in terms of matchdays covered.

"We also wanted to make sure that the key games would be in this production schedule such as the opening, the final stage matches and, of course, the final in Soccer City. There were a lot of other reasons such as production reasons and logistics and space.

"Some of you here I'm sure will wonder why...England versus USA is not being used. It's a very hot match on June 12 and [it] is not possible to do it because of the various constraints that we have.

"But we feel you should not despair. England will make it through the final rounds and then we will show that."

Nice try at smoothing things over Ericson, but considering Brazil are getting three 3D group games and Spain, Argentina, Germany, Holland and Nigeria are getting two apiece, it still doesn't seem all that fair.

Perhaps it's a knock on effect of the global rescession, but the latest report by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising has found that TV viewing is at the highest it has been in 18 years.

Viewers watched an average of 3.75 hours of TV a day last year, the highest figure since 1992, according to IPA research.

As one would expect to find, the first and last quarters of the year, with less daylight and fewer people away on holiday, tended to show the highest television viewing figures.

Interestingly, the IPA revealed that only 8.2 % of UK households relied on an analogue signal to catch their favourite shows, showing that the digital switch-over is almost complete.

While ITV and GMTV gathered 19% of the total television audience in the last three months of 2009, likely thanks to the popularity of the X-Factor, BBC1 continued to achieve the highest share of all the terrestrial channels, at 21%. All five analogue channels continue to lose ground however, as multi-channel satellite options grow in prominence.

All the scrum crunching, drop kicking action of the 2010 6 Nations Rugby tournament will be broadcast in high-def, free of charge, thanks to Freesat HD and the BBC HD channel.

This year's 6 Nations rugby tournament will be broadcast on BBC HD from February 6th until the 20th of March, with Ireland and Italy squaring up in the first match.

It's a good year for Freesat HD-owning sports fans. They can also look forward to The World Cup on the BBC HD channel and ITV1 HD, as well as Winter Olympics, Golf Masters, Wimbledon, FA Cup and UEFA Champions league matches.

For more info, check out www.freesat.co.uk.

The Eurosport Group has announced that it's to launch a high definition simulcast Eurosport channel across Europe over the coming few months.

The Roland-Garros French Open, running from 25th May to the 8th June, will be the first sporting event to be broadcast in high definition.

Other major events getting the HD treatment on Eurosport this year will include Euro 2008, Tour de France, the Beijing Olympic Games, and the US Open.

Thanks to Inmarsat's new maritime broadband service, FleetBroadband, this year's Volvo Ocean Race will be shot in high definition.

Viewers will be able to enjoy immersive HD footage of the global yacht race.

"The clarity of HDTV is about as close as you can get to the race action without being on a competing yacht. It's what the international broadcasters want, it's essential for raising the profile of the race and the sponsors globally, and it can only be sent by FleetBroadband," said Knut Frostad, CEO of the Volvo Ocean Race. "By choosing FleetBroadband, we have made this the most connected Volvo Ocean Race in its history."

NBC's executive producer for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, David Neal, has said that his channel will broadcast just one feed, sourced in high definition, and cropped for the standard definition 4:3 format.

He said that it would be a "signature moment" for HDTV, getting HD "out of the niche and fully into the mainstream".

Much as the World Cup 2006 was attributed to an increase in flat-panel HDTV sales, Neal expects that their coverage of the Games will encourage many Americans to upgrade to high definition TV.

(Via TV Predictions)

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Sky One will broadcast coverage of the group stages in the Champions League for the first time – with games also available in high-definition on Sky One HD.

British teams, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Rangers and Celtic have all qualified for the first phase of this season’s competition – with a match featuring a British team being shown on Wednesday nights.

The first game to be aired will be Rangers vs Stuttgart on September 19th.

Sky Sports will air the other two matches on Wednesday, with Sky digital viewers able to access all eight games via the red button interactive service. Coverage of further matches will depend on how successful the British teams are at reaching the knockout rounds.

Via
Digital Spy

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Thomson has announced that, as part of its partnership with French TV network TFI, it will be supplying most of the equipment being used for the 2007 Rugby World Cup, beginning next weekend and running until 20th October.

Thomson's equipment will be used for image production, including capturing and producing high definition images, and for broadcasting high definition via satellite TV, ADSL, and via Paris's HD DTT experiment.

Patrick Montliaud, Vice-President of Integration and Network Solutions, within Thomson’s Systems division, said, "We are proud to have accompanied TF1 over the last several years and to have together met the technical challenge posed by the broadcasting of the Rugby World Cup. The Thomson solutions chosen by TF1 will meet the standards of reliability and quality of viewers who will be getting their World Cup images through very diverse media.”

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The National Football League is witching to high definition technology this season for use by game officials to review plays on the field.

Dean Blandino, NFL's director of instant replay said that many TV viewers were getting a better view of the game than the referee. "That could've bit us in the rear if we continued that," he quipped.

All but three stadiums have now had high definition equipment installed, which will hopefully mean that armchair referees no longer have an advantage over the official referee.

(Via GlobeAndMail.com)

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When it comes to high-definition, even Iceland hasn't (ahem) been left out in the cold. Icelandic media company, 365 midlar, is planning to launch the first HD broadcasts in the country in September.

The first programmes to be broadcast are likely to be the ever-popular English Premiership football matches.

Telecommunications company, Siminn, is also planning HD broadcasts on two channels through its ADSL network next autumn, but neither the main public broadcast network, RUV, or the private broadcast network, Skjarinn, has any immediate plans for HD.

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While the game might not have been a classic, last Sunday's Leinster Football final in Dublin was a momentous occasion in the history of Ireland's HDTV evolution – the game was the first Irish terrestrial broadcast to be shown in high-definition.

HDTV is available via satellite in Ireland but this game marked the first time an HDTV broadcast was transmitted from a digital terrestrial network in Ireland. And, from today, a selection of HDTV programming will be available on a trial using the digital terrestrial TV network in preparation for the eventual analogue to digital switchover.

BSkyB has increased its number of high-definition TV subscribers from 48,000 to 292,000 while Sky's average revenue per customer has increased £12 to £412 a year.

The company exceeded analyst's expectations for the last quarter by attracting 90,000 new customers to its range of subscription TV. Sky currently claims 8.6 million customers and says it is now 'well on track' to hit its target of 10 million customers by the year 2010.

According to Autosport News, Formula One motorsport may be broadcast in high definition from later this season, despite some reservations from Bernie Ecclestone.

There are plans in place to upgrade the television cameras and production facilities that provide the feed for the worldwide audience.

This year's Tour de France, running from 7th-29th July, will be shot in high definition by France Télévisions. It will have its own dedicated channel, broadcast via cable, satellite, DSL, and (potentially) digital terrestrial.

Whether we'll get any of it in the UK will depend on whether Sky are able to cover any of it. In the past, Channel 4 have covered it, so we probably won't get to see the glorious French landscape in HD.

From April 5-8, BBC Sport will be showing live coverage from Augusta, Georgia, as the US Masters golf tournament celebrates its 71st year. A number of broadcasts will also be in HD, complementing the BBC1 and BBC2 transmissions.

Golf fanatic Gary Lineker has joined the Beeb’s presenting team, while commentators include Peter Alliss, Ken Brown, Wayne Grady and Sam Torrance. The opening round starts at 9pm, UK time, on Thursday April 5.

Only three players broke 70 in the opening round in 2006, including former champion Vijay Singh, who led the field after a five-under-par round of 67.

Orad, who provide virtual studios and on-air graphics, will be showing off their new 3DReplay system at NAB 2007.

3DReplay is a soccer analysis system that converts key events from video into a 3D graphic model which can then be viewed from different angles and played back in a variety of ways.

We've already seen the use of computer-generated imagery and animation used in post-match analysis, and this system could offer even more realistic scenes from which to analyse games.

Arqiva, who have done a three-year deal with Sky Sports to handle the outside broadcast requirements at key sporting events, have been boasting about their performance at the recent 2007 Carling Cup final between Chelsea and Arsenal.

Though other football matches have already been broadcast in high definition, this was the first UK football final to get the high-def treatment since Sky launched the service in May of last year.

Sunday February 4 sees the most-watched live sporting event of the year take place at the Dolphin Stadium in Miami. The NFL’s Super Bowl XLI is also being screened live in the UK by Sky Sports in HD for the first time (as well as with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound).

The Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears are contending for the big prize. It’s the first time the Bears have been in the Super Bowl since winning Super Bowl XX in 1986, while the Colts are making their first appearance since they beat Dallas in Super Bowl V, when the game was held in in Baltimore.

TVPredictions picks up on the news that next weekend's Super Bowl will be shot using 47 different high definition TV cameras.

It's all out high definition, with CBS deciding not to use their "CBS Eye Vision" feature partly because it's not available in HD.