After over a year of preparation the London Air Race took off on 28th and 29th July. The course is framed by the Thames Barrier, the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and the Greenwich Peninsula which is dominated by London’s newest entertainment destination, The O2.

The Four Hills Tournament (Vierschanzentournee) is composed of four Ski Jumping World Cup events and has taken place in Germany and Austria each year since 1952. The tournament is third only to the World Cup and the Winter Olympics as the most sought-after title on the ski jumping world circuit. The Four Hills Tournament comprises four individual World Cup events and points gained in the Four Hills Tournament are added to points gained in other World Cup events throughout the season.

At the end of the 1980’s, the Eureka initiative of manufacturers and broadcasters in Europe triggered the development of analogue HDTV equipment and production facilities, key suppliers being Thomson and BTS.

The 2008 UEFA Champions League Final was a football match that took place on Wednesday, 21 May 2008. The match was played at the Luzhniki Stadium, in Moscow, Russia, to determine the winner of the 2007–08 UEFA Champions League. This was the first European Cup final staged in Russia, and hence the easternmost final in the tournament's history. The final was contested by Manchester United and Chelsea, making it an all-English club final for the first time in the history of the competition. The game was won by Manchester United 6–5 on penalties, after a 1–1 draw following extra time.

China Central Television (CCTV), China’s national television service, was named the sole provider of the 2008 Olympicsin Beijing to mainland China. With a network of 18 channels broadcasting different programming, CCTV reaches more than a billion viewers on the Chinese mainland.

Currently there are four different ultra-motion camera systems for live productions available in Europe: The Hi-Motion from ARRI Media, the Superloupe from DVS, the SprintCam from i-movix and the Antelope from LMC. We asked all four companies to answer 14 questions and to explain the advantages of their respective camera system. Finally three companies responded. Please find following their answers. This should help you to rent in the right system for your live production. As the recording and playback device (in addition to on-board RAM recorders) all three systems interface to the LSM XT[2] hard disk recorder from EVS.

Beijing was the third Summer Games for Polecam. Conceived during a windsurfing shoot off Hawaii in 1996, the Polecam go-anywhere transportable camera rig was developed from the combination of a carbon-fibre windsurfing mast and a miniature SD camera. Two Polecam systems were fully up and running by the time of the Sydney Games in 2000, increasing to six at the Athens Games in 2004 and to ten at the Beijing Games.

After the detailed presentation of 88 HD OBVans to the European live production community in our HD OBVan directories in 2007 and 2008, we had a closer look to the infrastructure around the HD OBVans that is necessary to carry out national and international sports and music live productions which are televised to a wider audience. In early May 2009 152 HDTV programs were on air via the various satellite platforms in Europe including 35 dedicated sports broadcasters. In 2009 Eurosport transmits 3.000 hours of live sports and Infront partners with 130 rights holders of 20 top sports resulting in an involvement of the production of about five sports events every day. And we are happy to confirm that every production application that is available in standard definition, now also has become available in high definition, supporting the more than 200 HD OBVans from more than 100 production companies which are delivering high quality sports events to the more than 60 Mio high definition flat screens across Europe.

For the broadcasting of the 12th World Athletic Championships from 15th - 23rd August in Berlin, the German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF established the host broadcast service BERTA (Berlin Radio Television Athletics) to produce the official world feed of the championships in 1080i and to deliver it to broadcast right holders in more than 165 countries. For the installation and the operation of the technical infrastructure BERTA hired the Berlin based production company TopVision for all the events in the Olympic Stadium, while SWR together with Betamobile produced the signals of the walking and marathon disciplines at the Brandenburg Gate.

Host Broadcast Services (HBS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of sports marketing agency Infront Sports & Media, is a dedicated host broadcast organization that was initially created in 1999 with the core mandate of producing the coverage of the 2002 World Cup™. Ten years later, HBS has successfully established itself as one of the two industry leaders in the specialized field of host broadcasting and has been appointed by FIFA to be the host broadcaster for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ in South Africa as well as the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ in Brazil.

Wige Media, based in Köln, Germany, understands that outside broadcast work places particular strains on camera support equipment. On the one hand they have to be light and manoeuvrable enough to be moved into position, which may be some way from vehicle access and possibly high up in a stand.
On the other hand they have to be particularly stable and rigid as they are often used with very long lenses. The slightest trace of instability in a camera mount when used at the extreme end of an 80x or 100x lens will look like a major disruption.

Every four years the world’s greatest athletes get together at the Winter Olympics to accomplish competitive first and break records and the games in Vancouver, Canada in February this year were not different. But the athletes weren’t the only ones doing things better and faster: OBS, the Olympic Broadcast Services, created by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in May 2001, also stepped to the technology podium with a winning effort that included a number of Olympic broadcasting firsts. It was the first time OBS was fully in charge of operations as there was no longer a host broadcaster from the host nation organizing committee and it was the first time the Winter Games were fully HD and in Surround Sound.

NewTek TriCaster™ TCXD300 portable live production systems and 3PLAY™ HD/SD slow motion replay systems provided live venue video and instant replay at the ESPN Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado. Two TriCaster/3PLAY live production teams replaced and expanded the capabilities that were previously provided by a TV truck at an unprecedented cost. NewTek HD portable live production system was then used in Tignes, France for the first edition of the Winter X-games in Europe, bringing the fans closer to the action.

SIS LIVE’s Research and Development facility was given a challenging job in the summer of 2009; five weeks to design, build and install a fully working underwater high definition camera system, for the 13th FINA World Swimming Championships in Rome.

It is increasingly rare to find a major sports event which isn't covered at least in part by 3D stereoscopic cameras. The FIFA World Cup will provide the largest global grandstand for the format but 3D recording and transmission also debuted in 2010 at cricket in India, ice hockey in New York and at the World Championships in Germany, the rugby Six Nations tournament in London & Paris and the State of Origin in Australia, Ryder Cup, Golf Masters and PGA Tour, while events like surfing, darts and boxing have all received 3D trials. After the UEFA Champions League final in Madrid, UEFA is mulling plans to transmit select matches of the Champions League in 3D while nearly all motorsports bodies have also conducted tests. Selected matches of the English Premier League and the French Ligue 1 are covered on Sky 3D UK respectively Orange since April, as well as NFL matches on ESPN 3D. And two of the German Football Cup matches were aired live within 24 hours on Sky 3D Germany in October.