Panasonic introduces Ultra Widescreen

Panasonic Ultra Widescreen

Is 16:9 not wide enough for you? Does 2.35:1 seem a bit on the narrow side? If it does, Panasonic has the answer for you, with their 64:9 real-time sports analysis system

Sometimes widescreen just isn't wide enough. Especially if you're trying to encapsulate a whole sports field in a single shot.

But why would you want to do this? Conventional TV coverage is highly evolved and is in some ways even preferable to watching the game live: you don't get close-ups and slow-motion when you're looking at the action through your own eyes.

But even the big football clubs can't afford to have sixteen or twenty cameras plus operators at all their training sessions.

Four Cameras

Panasonic's system works by rigging four Pan, Tilt and Zoom (PTZ) cameras together in a cube, and using specially written software to stitch the output from the cameras into a single, extremely wide moving picture.

Another piece of software co-ordinates the movement of all four cameras so that they work together to create the moving panorama.

We saw this in action at the recent IBC in Amsterdam, and can report that it works exactly as described. Even though the output from each individual camera is only 720p, the resulting compound image is of course four times that horizontally. In practise it is perfectly sharp and ideal for the job of analysing the game.

Designed to be simple to set up, and easy to use, we can see this being a popular choice for high-end sports teams.