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The Super Bowl in HD!

There are many reports that say the Super Bowl drives sales of HDTVs. This year its estimated that more than 2.4 million HDTVs will be sold just so their owners can watch Super Bowl XLII in HD. So like last year, we thought we would cover the Super Bowl from the perspective of an owner of an HDTV. The game will take place on Sunday February 3rd in Glendale Arizona.

Setting up the six production trucks will take two weeks which is half the time it took for last year's game. Fox will be using a new high-resolution camera system called the Fox Jumper. The camera works with the Sportvision virtual graphics application to enhance the viewing experience. SportVision graphics are used in all major sporting events and are used to identify cars and their drivers in Fox's NASCAR coverage.

Two of the six production trucks will be used for the Pre-Game coverage. The main truck is 53 feet long (16.1 Meters) and will house the HD Production Center. Which includes a 128x128 HD broadband router, an analog video router; a mono audio router, and 12 Sony HDC SONY HDC 1500 1080/60P cameras. Four trucks will be used to cover the game itself. One of the game trucks will be similarly equipped as the pre-game truck but will carry 18 SONY HDC1500 cameras and four Sony HDCS 3300 super slow-mo cameras.

The remaining trucks will be configured as follows:

A 53-foot Production control truck with a control room that houses 122 Samsung 21-inch flat-screen monitors.

Another 53-foot truck that transports the field equipment and four Final Cut Pro editing systems plus the Sportvision first and 10 virtual graphics system.

The last truck performs all of the transmission, encoding/decoding, audio mixing, and sound effects.

As you can see Super Bowl 2008 will be one of the most technologically advanced in history! Fox will be spending millions of dollars to bring you the Super Bowl. But don't shed a tear for them, at 2.7 million dollars for a 30 second spot, Fox will probably break even after the coin toss. Last year we counted how many commercials were shot in HD, this year it will be easier to count how many are still in SD. Why would anyone spend that kind of money and air a SD commercial? Enjoy the game!