US Open Tennis 3D Coverage to Return Bigger than Before

Aug 22, 2011 2 Comments by Jonathan Tustain

The USTA (The national governing body for the sport of tennis in the US) today announced that Panasonic will once again support the CBS 3D broadcast of the US Open Tennis Championships following the success of last year’s 3D coverage.

CBS Sports will offer broadcasters 3D coverage of all the Arthur Ashe Stadium matches on both Labor Day Weekend and Finals Weekend (September 9th – 11th). CBS, Panasonic and USTA will be improving upon the Emmy Award winning 2010 3D US Open Tennis Championships coverage with new, dedicated 3D perspectives using ten cameras and a high speed 3D replay system.

Although it won’t be released until after the tournament, a pre-production model of the new Panasonic 3DP1 3D camcorder, , will be deployed for ground coverage.

As last year, overall coverage will be based around CAMERON | PACE Group (the 3D rig company set up earlier this year by Vince Pace and James Cameron) shadow rigs.

As well as supplying 3D broadcast equipment, Panasonic will be the official sponsor of the event following their official sponsorship of the Roland Garros tennis tournament in France earlier this year. As part of this, viewers without 3D televisions will be able to watch the 3D feed on giant Panasonic Viera Full HD 3D TVs in public viewing areas.

Two separate CBS 3D production trucks will be deployed during the event housing separate teams from the 2D HD broadcast. According to CBS, the 3D cameras have been positioned lower to the court than a traditional 2D camera placement to increase the sense of dimension of the court.

Live 3D Streaming on the Internet

As last year, the US Open tennis Championships 3D feed will be viewable online. Tennis fans will need the latest version of the NVIDIA 3D Vision Player and NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses. However, the online feed will only be available for those subscribers in America.

Elsewhere, CBS Sports’ 3D telecasts of the 2011 US Open will again be available on DirecTV’s channel 103, “n/3D Powered by Panasonic.” This year, Comcast will also carry the 3D broadcast coverage to its subscribers on Xfinity 3D, making CBS Sports coverage of the 2011 US Open available via the nation’s two largest multi-channel video providers.