The NFL, the leading professional sports league in North America, has been and is very active in adopting new technologies. To take the simplest example: over the past 100 years, head protection has evolved from the simplest of leather hats to composite helmets with shock-absorbing liners. The following is a conversation about some of the technological advances related to television broadcasting, since it was mainly the major post-World War II television networks that funded the NFL.
1. Slow-motion replay
This technology is child's play now, but 50 years ago, cameras were still on videotape, and it was difficult to rewind and replay a game, let alone in slow motion.
CBS first installed the then-primitive replay technology on its college football broadcasts in 1963, with equipment that weighed 1,300 pounds. In this West Point Black Knights vs. Naval Academy Warrant Officers game, the network replayed a touchdown, and the commentator had to specifically explain to viewers, "It wasn't a touchdown twice! Instead, it was replayed!"
(This touchdown by Raleigh Stitzeway was the first shot to be replayed on live American football television.)
Replay technology immediately made its way from college football to the NFL and spawned features such as freeze-frames and slow motion. American football's motion and pace switches particularly quickly, and it took replay technology to make the best of the sport available on television.
Also, live-streaming technology led directly to another unexpected technological advancement. Since 1986, the NFL has used video replay to assist referees in confirming key calls, which later gave rise to a system of head coaches challenging calls. Video replay-assisted reconsideration has now spread to high-level leagues in tennis, hockey, baseball, basketball, and many other sports.
2. Sky Camera
There are two most common perspectives for NFL broadcasts, one is a side of the field shot over, with the two teams meeting left and right, similar to soccer. This kind of shot is shot with the field side of the audience on the camera, more old-school: the other is often in the back of the quarterback's head to shoot through, similar to the perspective of the game: this is a kind of technology called "sky camera (SkyCam)" out of the shot. It is simply a rotating camera that is pulled by two rails at the four corners of the field to take high-speed and accurate overhead shots. Sky cameras were first installed in 1984 by CBS. The technology has been adopted by sports such as basketball, hockey, and racing.
3. Augmented Reality
There are a lot of viewers who are just starting to watch football and ask the question, "How do you get the blue and yellow lines on the field during NFL broadcasts? Does this exist in reality?"
(CBS's live broadcast of the 2016/17 NFL AFC Championship game featured virtual lines on the TV screen.)
The core concept of American football is the "gears and yards" system, which is one of the more difficult parts for new fans to understand, and it would be great if the current gears and yards could be seamlessly ported to the field.
The original version of the technology to draw virtual lines on the field was available in 1978, but with the CBS of the day feeling the technology was not cost-effective, the timing was not right. By 1998, ESPN actualized the technology, and then later several major wireless stations followed suit and it became standard. This technology is actually not difficult to say, is the three-dimensional modeling of each stadium, before the start of the game and then the position of each camera to calculate the game in real time computing to produce a virtual line.
Augmented technology has now become more powerful, and can be made into more special effects, such as game interface-like visual effects (the name on Rodgers' head and the yellow circle at his feet will follow him): another example is used to show Matt Ryan's pass hits at different distances at this year's Super Bowl: augmented reality technology has likewise proliferated, and in the last decade, the strike zone in baseball, the racing class in record-breaking lines, and scenes like showing offsides in soccer have all used similar technology.
4. Pseudo-holographic imaging
This year's Super Bowl featured an Intel commercial starring Tom Brady:
The commercial talked about replay technology that could be paused at any time and rotated at any time without any dead angle, which meant that the effect achieved was similar to that of the fabled holograms. Major broadcasters are already using the technology. FOX, the current Super Bowl broadcaster, for example, has it.
This technology is not really holographic, just a lot of camera positions, and then use the algorithm to complete the lens did not shoot the part of the formation of a holographic feeling, but also because of this, this technology can only be used in the recording and broadcasting.