Despite Glitch, YES Delivers Yankees Baseball in Impressive 3D

A palpable sense of relief went through executives from the YES Network Sunday at the Helen Mills Theater in Manhattan when a glitch that nearly soiled viewers’ first impression of baseball in 3D was resolved in the third inning of the YES/DirecTV telecast of the New York Yankees-Seattle Mariners game. After two innings of unimpressive low-resolution video, double-images in graphics and motion glitches, the picture popped into impressive 3D focus. That prompted a YES spokesman to address the crowd -- including reporters and guests of YES and sponsors Panasonic and DirecTV -- and announce that a previously undisclosed problem with a fiber cable in the 3D truck had been fixed.

The spokesman urged attendees new to 3D who may have wandered away from the subpar presentation without knowing anything was wrong to come back and take another look to see “real 3D.” Just after the announcement, Tracy Dolgin, YES Network CEO, told us: “It looks like it was half-bandwidth at the beginning of the game. … We're televising an experiment.” It was the second of two 3D games the YES Network committed to air last weekend to learn the possibilities and challenges of 3D telecasts. “Remember, with 3D, you're pumping twice the bandwidth. If they were divvying up a 720p signal by left- and right-eye cameras, they'd have half the resolution for each eye,” he said. Dolgin said YES is building a 3D production truck capable of 1080p resolution for each eye, but regular telecasts on a dedicated channel are years away: “We're spending the money to have a truck ready for 1080 x 2 three years from now."

The weekend games were the first time that Major League Baseball has been telecast in 3D. The YES experimental games are the only regular-season 3D games that have been scheduled for this year so far. Dolgin said YES wanted to be on the cutting edge of 3D, and said the company chose the Yankees-Mariners series because it was working in conjunction with Fox Sports to learn about 3D production of live baseball. Both the timing and the West Coast proximity of Seattle to Anaheim made this particular series perfect for the experiment, he said. Major League Baseball and Fox Sports will show the 2010 MLB All-Star Game in 3D Tuesday night on DirecTV’s new n3D channel that’s sponsored by Panasonic. Monday night’s Home Run Derby from Anaheim was also to be telecast in 3D, this time via ESPN 3D.

Dolgin said YES went into the weekend’s 3D telecasts with the goal of finding out what works and doesn’t work for baseball in 3D. “We're learning how many times we can cut the cameras and which camera angles benefit the most. It’s too jarring if you cut cameras too much,” he said, “so we're cutting less than we would in HD.” He was most impressed by shots from the center-field and low-home plate cameras, which he described as “the Oh-my-God shots. We weren’t sure how the center-field camera shots would translate from 300 feet away,” he said, “but they look really good."

YES has been on the forefront of new technologies including HD and streaming video, and Dolgin said it was natural for the company to take a pioneering role in 3D even if the network doesn’t deliver a commercial channel for several years while the technology evolves. “Sports have to work for 3D to work,” he said. “It'll be sports and movies that make it work. I don’t see it being news programs."

Co-sponsor Panasonic provided the TVs for viewing, including 65- and 58-inch plasma 3D TVs. When a representative handed out Panasonic’s active-shutter glasses at the beginning of the event, she told attendees to “stay directly in front of the TV.” We understood why when later we tried to view TVs off-axis as a guest might view a 3D TV in a crowded room at a party. The signal to the glasses cut out and the 3D image was interrupted.

The difference between pre- and post-glitch 3D at the event was significant and pointed out how significant bandwidth, among many other issues, is to the achievement of quality 3D. The depth benefit of 3D was largely lost in the first two innings, along with high-definition resolution. Stairstepping was evident on the outlines of player uniforms, and a ball traveling from third to first at times looked like a dotted line. There was little dimensionality between players and backgrounds and the overall effect was inferior to HD.

When the problem was resolved, the experience took a dramatic step forward. Even though the five camera angles were the same -- and were the same familiar angles as YES HD cameras use -- it was like we were experiencing the perspectives for the first time. With the entire field in focus we had a strong sense of being in Safeco Field, being able to see scores on the outfield scoreboard followed by outfielders and infielders with definite planes between the outfield and our view. The field of vision appeared to broaden. We no longer were guided by a camera’s depth of field to determine what we should focus on. From the centerfield camera, Robinson Cano on second base was as clearly in focus as Jorge Posada at the plate. It was now up to us, not a cameraman or director, to determine who we wanted to zero in on.

There weren’t commercials during mid-inning but there were several mini 3D features. One showing Pike Place Market in Seattle had the presence of a high-quality home video. We felt like we were on vacation, experiencing a 3D video of the produce and fresh fish. The workers in the seafood department at the market played to the cameras. One took a foot-and-a-half-long fish and drove it, with fun effect, toward the camera.

Jeff Cove, vice president of technology and alliances at Panasonic, said the event proved that baseball is the right kind of sport for 3D. Cove said coming in he was curious about how 3D glasses would play a part in the social viewing experience. “People were wearing the glasses and talking to each other,” he said. “Maybe they were a bit inconvenient, but it doesn’t seem to be making a difference. … We hope it spurs more 3D content. We want to see the industry have a lot of content."

Our view of the 3D glasses was consistent with our impression from a Panasonic press event last month (CED June 3 p1). They were too big, and we had to hold the oversized glasses with one hand to keep them from falling off. According to Henry Hauser, vice president of merchandising for display products at Panasonic, the company will introduce glasses in kids’, medium, and large sizes in the fall. The glasses will also undergo a redesign, he said, to eliminate the look of “flip-up” glasses, which has confused consumers. He noted that first-generation glasses, “developed in a vacuum in a lab,” would be succeeded by models designed “with six months of experience under our belts.” Hauser said price points will remain the same, $149, on the second-generation glasses that will also be supplied by RealD. “We're averaging 1-1/2 pairs of glasses per sale as add-ons for a total of 2-1/2 pairs doing out with each TV,” he said. “We don’t see any push back so far regarding customers buying additional glasses.”