Sony’s live production solutions bring viewers across the world the Centre Court experience.

Sony has announced plans to expand the 3D production and broadcast coverage for Wimbledon 2012 as part of its long-term partnership with the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC). Five days comprehensive coverage and broadcast will commence on Wednesday July 4th and take in the men’s quarter-finals and the ladies and men’s semi-finals and finals matches. Five broadcasters, BBC, Canal+ (Spain), ESPN, Nova (Greece) and Sky Italia have confirmed plans to broadcast the live 3D feed to viewers across the globe, whilst the Men’s Final on Sunday July 8th will also be beamed to cinemas globally, through cinema distribution partner Supervision Media.

Wimbledon is one of a number of major summer sporting events benefitting from Sony’s sports production technology and services, which were also at the heart of the recent 3D production of the UEFA Champions League Final in Munich.

Following Sony’s award-winning 2011 3D Wimbledon production, this year sees further innovation with the 3D production moving to a fully tapeless operation, based around the company’s ground-breaking HDCAM SR Master technology. Within the Outside Broadcast (OB) unit all ISO camera recordings will be recorded straight to SR memory cards, ensuring all content is captured at the highest possible quality. For the first time at a major sporting event, the Wimbledon production crew will use the SR-R1 HDCAM SR recorders combined with PMW-TD300 camcorders to record interviews and onsite content, whilst capturing the action in high picture quality. The SR-R1 is a compact memory drive unit, which supports dual-stream recording and is ideal for high quality 3D stereoscopic image capture.

Further to this, in preparation for Wimbledon, Sony has agreed to launch the new BBC Sport app on its Sony Entertainment Network platform, on connected Bravia TVs and PlayStation 3 (PS3) in time for the opening match. Consumers with the BBC Sport app will have access to more interactive content and extra coverage of each match.

David Bush, Director of Marketing for Sony Europe, said: “We’re excited to be working again with the AELTC and raising the 3D experience even higher. New technological advances have allowed us to produce Wimbledon on an even greater scale this year. TV viewer and cinema audiences were amazed last year at what great 3D can bring to the tennis experience and we believe that with new and more camera positions, this year’s 3D experience is going to bring viewers even closer to the sensation of being on centre court. Following ground-breaking recent contributions to major events including the UEFA Champions League Final and the Indian Premier League cricket, it’s exciting to once again be turning our focus towards the world’s most iconic tennis tournament.”

Mick Desmond, Commercial Director of the All England Lawn Tennis Club said: “We were delighted with our 3D partnership with Sony last year and we look forward to working with them again. Sony is uniquely placed to capture the finals of The Championships in Live 3D, bringing the exhilaration of Wimbledon to the world. We are proud to be at the forefront of this huge technological movement and firmly believe that with Sony we will deliver the most immersive viewing experience of Wimbledon to date.”

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