The sports industry has been a driver of technology for decades...always seeking and funding new ways to: a. record, b. post-produce and c. distribute coverage of sporting events to the public. Since IAOC is about online communications, we'll focus on the distribution elements of this triangle. It is important however to have a historic overview of the evolution in acquisition and post-production.
The digital revolution in television production began in the early 90s, when Sony and some of the other, less ubiquitous manufacturers servicing the professional industry, came out with Diigtal Beta. DigiBeta was adopted slowly since most network affiliates and independent post-production houses were setup to produce in a very linear, tape-based environment. Most post houses acquired digital decks and some would even have a "digital suite" among their post suites. Sony continued to drive the market by coming out with DV Cam recording decks and mini DV Cam tapes that could be used with existing digital acquisition and post setups.
At the same time, on the editing side of things, companies like Avid, Fast and others began offering computer-based, completely non-linear editing software systems. What this meant was that an editor didn't have to touch any tape at any point throughout the editing process. The taped footage would be digitized into the computer system, edited and then dumped out onto a master tape. Even some of the trucks in the field that were servicing the stadiums and arenas began equipping with completely digital acquisition systems.
Gordon Moore's law was definitely at work in the television and video production business, as the only thing holding up the revolution was hard drive space and size, and processing speeds. Editing systems got faster...got cheaper. Rendering slow-motion and special effects went from being an overnight process with two hard drives grinding away to a "real-time" render.
On a concurrent path was the development of HD. Sony, working with several documentary producers such as Randall Dark, funded the acquisition of HD footage...most of it scenic stuff like Grand Canyon flyovers and other geographic destinations, in order to have demo footage to spark interest in High Definition.
Add to the hard drive and processing speed issues, the issue of video compression. In order to take high resolution, digital video and distribute it over existing network airwaves, cable and satellite, the video had to be smashed down 5-10 times to get it to a data size that could be transmitted over existing delivery methodology.
Fast forward and know that all of these technologies, from the field capture to the editing process to the compression and encoding; have all advanced to the degree that they have today. It is now possible to shoot, edit, and distribute video without using any tape whatsoever.
Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA and the NHL have all signed distribution agreements with Direct TV, Dish, and the cable companies to distribute all games to all viewers on a pay-per-view basis. The PGA, the NCAA and some of the second-tier professional sports leagues now offer streaming audio and videocasts of events over the Internet.
Darrell Ewalt, Executive Producer of Sports for HDNet, owned by Broadcast TV Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban, said, "It used to take years for the technology to catch up with the imagination. Not anymore. Who would have thunk that we could capture high definition wirelessly from a camera out in the field, edit it in real-time in a truck and shoot it up on a bird and out over the Internet at the same time...and still retain the production value of the footage. People compare it to the evolution of black and white TV to color...are you kidding me? How about from cups and strings to the telephone! It's really quite remarkable."