Teledyne DALSA, a subsidiary of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated, announced that the company is partnering with Replay Technologiesto provide its latest generation cameras and framegrabbers for deployment of Replay’s breakthrough freeD sports replay system at AT&T Stadium (formerly Cowboys Stadium) in Arlington, TX.
The freeDreplay system will be featured during NBC Sunday Night Football’s broadcast of the first Dallas Cowboys NFL home game versus the New York Giants on September 8th.
An advancement in digital broadcast technology, freeD (free dimensional video)made its premiere in major league sports this April on YES Network’s Yankees home games – known as YESVIEW. freeD, developed by technology company Replay Technologies, recordsreality not as regular two dimensional video, but as a true three dimensional scene. This enables the production team, and in the near future the actual viewers, to freely roam around a captured scene where no physical camera exists.
Replay’s freeDsystem utilizes powerful cameras and sophisticated algorithms to create three dimensional photo-realistic real-time scenes, comprised of three dimensional pixels that faithfully represent the fine details of the scene.This information is stored as a freeDdatabase that can produce (render) any desired viewing angle from the detailed information. The freeDsystem was first used in 2012 at the Players Championship PGA golf event and then at the London 2012 Olympic Games gymnastics competition. The system is currently deployed at Yankee Stadium in New York and is a regular feature of Yankees home games broadcasted by the YES Network with an average of 30 second rendering time.
The freeDsystem at AT&T Stadium in Arlington will incorporate 24 Teledyne DALSA Falcon2 CMOS cameras. 12 cameras will be positioned around each end’s red zone – the area of the field between the 20-yard line and the goal line – to provide highly detailed freeD replays during the Cowboys/Giants NFL gameto be broadcast on NBC Sunday Night Football. The Falcon2 camera’s 12 megapixel“4K” resolution significantlyincreases the image quality of the freeDsystem, allowing it to capture more of the actionwith the ability to ‘go in closer’ while retaining HD quality.The Falcon2 camera was selected for this system to deliver the speed and resolution required for this application.Teledyne DALSA Xcelera framegrabbers, which are optimized for the Falcon2 cameras, are being installed in the control room at AT&T Stadium to capture the camera data and to interface with the freeDsystem.
“Sunday Night Football is pleased to partner with the Dallas Cowboys on Replay Technologies freeDsystem. Being able to seamlessly move from side to side and around an entire play without switching shots will entertain and inform the fans in Cowboys stadium and the National TV audience on NBC,” commented Fred Gaudelli, Producer of NBC Sunday Night Football. “Fans will think they’re playing a video game or watching a Sci-Fi movie, but they’ll actually be viewing real NFL football as never presented before.”
“We are pleased to be partnering with Teledyne DALSA as we deploy our freeDsystem at AT&T Stadium and extend our reach into other professional sporting venues,” said Oren Haimovitch-Yogev, co-founder and CEO of Replay Technologies Inc. “We believe that our freeDsystem, powered by Teledyne DALSA’s 4K cameras and framegrabbers, will provide viewers of NBC Sunday Night Football and the Cowboys fanswith never before seen views of action on the field.”
“The freeD system has the potential to revolutionize how professional sporting events are enjoyed on television and other media,” commented Patrick Myles, Vice President, Business Development and Communications, Teledyne DALSA. “We are proud to partner with Replay and provide them with our cameras and framegrabbers for AT&T Stadium and as their freeDsystem is adopted at venues across North America. Together, we are enabling new user experiences and levels of interactivityfor the viewer with the highest possible image quality.”
To see the freeD replay system in action, visit Replay’s home page http://www.replay-technologies.com/. To learn how it works visit http://www.replay-technologies.com/technology.html.