It’s estimated that well over three billion people will watch the 2018 FIFA World Cup Championship on TV this year, with one billion predicted for the final match alone. FOX Sports, the sole English language broadcaster, wants to get this job done right-but also on budget.
The camera viewfinder is an essential tool to compose a shot and, in many cases, to focus. Early film cameras used a separate viewfinder, but the invention of the reflex mirror shutter by ARRI in 1937 allowed the operator a parallax-free view through the taking lens. Television cameras developed along a different route, with an electronic viewfinder (EVF) displaying the video output of the camera. Those early EVFs were monochrome CRTs.
A battle is brewing among some equipment providers focused on, you guessed it, more pixels. And, if history is any predictor, the broadcast and production industries may in fact soon be faced with managing images composed of approximately 33 million pixels. But do viewers really need 8K capture and display?
In 2017, global broadcast transmission services provider VIDI installed multiple Apantac Mi-16 Multiviewers to support live football (soccer) coverage in Germany. Those multiviewers now provide all the visual monitoring of the video transmission between on-site venues and the production center. The transmissions are also remotely monitored from the VIDI control center in Darmstadt (near Frankfurt), Germany.
Marshall Electronics has released a new quad-viewer and switcher that allows users to view up to four 3G HD-SDI video signals in resolutions up to 1920x1080p, and then easily switch between the inputs to select a single view for output.
At the 2018 NAB Show, MuxLab introduced a new triple display rack mount which combines three displays in a double rack space.