Working in conjunction with the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE), Gerber put together a "Task Force" consisting of:  Rick Edwards, (Tower America) VP and SBE National Chair for Frequency Coordination; Karl Voss, Arizona broadcast engineer (KPNX-TV), SBE’s Phoenix area regional frequency coordinator, “the organization’s” Frequency Archiver and “keeper of the sacred database;” Dave Franza, NFL Film’s Director of Information Technology and Harvey Shuhart, President of Control Dynamics Corporation, the company who makes coach-to-quarterback communications systems for all of the NFL teams. 

Edwards said:  “The Super Bowl is one of the three most important events requiring frequency coordination.  The other two are the Olympics and the National Political Conventions.”  He continued; “It’s usually not the networks, it’s guys who try to slip something in without coordination…  usually locals.  At the Super Bowl, we check all RF frequencies before they go into the stadium. We use direction finders to locate problems and then assist the perpetrator to find alternate solutions that will not interfere with other RF operations.”  Edwards indicated that it doesn’t hurt, when you find the culprits, to have an FCC representative with you, which is, many time the case.   

Both Gerber and Edwards told us that they received about 2000 requests for wireless frequency coordination for this year’s Super Bowl events.  Prior coordination by all RF users is essential for the creation of an RF clean environment.  Gary Nadler and Ed Schwartz of ABC, for example, coordinated every frequency they used with the committee well in advance of the game itself.  Edwards added:  “Frequency coordination is extremely important and critical.  The Georgia Dome is located adjacent to the CNN headquarters in Atlanta.  To do frequency coordination, it is necessary to have a good knowledge of RF.  It is not only necessary to make sure you are not on someone else’s frequency, but to ensure that there are no inter-modulation and by-product issues as well.” 

You really can’t put together an event of this size without planning.  Gary Reed, Assistant Chief engineer at NFL Films, described the layout at this year’s Super Bows as being three compounds outside and adjacent to the Super Bowl/Georgia Dome: International, Domestic (non-live coverage) and Network live coverage. In addition to this there were eighteen different production booths within the Georgia Dome, all feeding different audiences around the world. 

Reed said that of the three compounds, the International compound is where NFL films was located and feed the world Super Bowl XXXIV in whatever format each destination needed.  NHK, a Japanese television network, had their own NTSC truck in the International compound as well.  NFL films provided NHK with feeds for their live broadcast in addition to their own preparatory cameras.  NHK also did the game in HD, and we’ll get to that shortly.  

The domestic compound is where everyone who was not involved in the “live game” coverage was located.  It was in this compound where the “stand-ups” were done for the “non-live” coverage teams and the sports reporters for independents, NBC, CBS, FOX and the other sports outlets held court.  Also competing for space in the domestic compound were “The George Michael’s Sports Machine” show and QVC Shopping network, who did interstitial bits while hawking their wares.   

The third compound is where the “live network” coverage of Super Bowl XXXIV took place.  If asked, “who has extensive experience at successfully televising football games in HD?” ABC-TV certainly would be a correct answer and it was here, in this third compound, that ABC-HD and their NTSC counterparts were located.  With thirty years of televising the now legendary Monday Night Football (MNF) games, ABC-TV capped off their first season of doing football in digital 720P high definition, with Super Bowl XXXIV.  There is no question that ABC certainly brought a considerable amount of experience, talent and ability to the table and airwaves for their season’s grand-finale; and what a finale it was. 

To preserve the integrity of the old fashioned 4x3 NTSC format and be able to offer digital television viewers all the advantages of the superior HDTV 16x9 format, without compromise, ABC actually did two football games, electronically, side-by-side, simultaneously for each of the seventeen games, including Super Bowl XXXIV.  At each venue there were two television remote production trucks, one digital High Definition, the other digital component 525. 

Because of the multiplicity of venues involved in covering sports events in general and the ever-changing requirements of each, it isn’t practical to have, in place, any permanent infrastructure, so the infrastructure equipment is rented on a “game-by-game” or “event-by-event” bases, according to the exigencies of each. 

Bexel, a well know rental house out of Burbank, CA provided a large amount of Telecast Fiber Optic equipment so NFL Films could interconnect the compounds to the field, compound to compound, and so on. The mix of gear from Bexel included a Viper-800 (8 Channel Video Card Frame), a Viper Mussel Audio/Video System (4 Video, 8 Audio with dual channel intercom and data), a DiamondBack (8 video Channel Multiplexer), an Adder-162 (32 Ch. Audio frame with dual channel intercom and data), and the Adder-161 (16 Ch. Unidirectional Audio Frame).

Bexel also provided NFL films with Sony ENG (DVW-700WS) packages, which included a full compliment of accessories.  Bexel also supported NFL films in other areas ranging from graphics to editing.

Reed said:  “The total camera count and organizational representation was truly impressive,” adding that, from memory, he counted a total of 48 cameras for ABC (this was both NTSC and HD), and NFL Films “world feed” had 5 cameras.  These 53 cameras were pool, feeding all compounds and other authorized recipients.  In addition to these 53 cameras, there were proprietary cameras: NHK (Japan), as mentioned above, had 3 cameras; Televisa (Mexico and South America) had 3; SatOne (Germany) had 2 or 3 cameras; B Sky B (England, direct-to-home satellite) had 3 cameras and there were 6 ENG crews, of which 3 were exclusively for Disney.  

Here in the US, and the wonderful world of HDTV, more than 25 ABC television network affiliates, including O&O’s, from KITV-DT, Channel 40 in Honolulu, Hawaii, the nation’s first commercially licensed DTV station, to WCVB-DT, Channel 20 in Boston, Mass, broadcast Super Bowl XXXIV in both HDTV and the older analog-NTSC on their sister channels. There are even more DT stations in the ABC network coming on line as each stations completes the construction and testing of their new digital transmission facilities.

Although, finishing off the season with Super Bowl XXXIV, in Atlanta, Georgia (January 30th, 2000), it must also be noted that this was the first season of regularly scheduled HDTV broadcast of sporting events (seventeen games in all) in the United States.

The HD part of these football games were made possible through a unique collaboration between “broadcaster,” ABC-TV, and “equipment manufacturer,” Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Company (PBTSC) of Los Angeles, CA

Proud of their accomplishments, Warren Allgyer, President of PBTSC said: "Super Bowl XXXIV and the entire Monday Night Football season stand as a testament to the real-world performance that the Panasonic HDTV production truck and equipment can deliver."  Allgyer continued, "Game conditions, which included six inches of snow in Denver to heat that surpassed 120 degrees on field in Phoenix, attested to the ruggedness of Panasonic's HDTV equipment.  Our partnership with ABC was pioneering and proved memorable, challenging, and highly successful."

All seventeen HD football games, including the Super Bowl, were produced using the year-old, 58-foot Panasonic/ABC-HDTV studio production truck, which was designed and engineered by Panasonic’s systems integrator, Synergistic Technologies, Inc. (STI), of Canonsburg, PA.  STI had Jim Haughton, Kevin Clifford or Marty Pingre on hand at each game to keep things in proper repair and to lend occasional technical support.

Heading up the engineering team for ABC-TV in the HD truck, as technical manager, was ABC New York’s Kathleen Skinski, a veteran of Monday Night Football HD fame.

Calling the shots for ABC-TV’s HD game was veteran director, Norman Samet, also a veteran of Monday HD Night Football fame, who was assisted by Associate Director, Valerie Fischler, with input from Production Manager, Beth Guilaini-Gatto.

The Panasonic/ABC remote production truck is crammed with feature after feature and includes some television systems “firsts.”  Topping the list is the first all-wide screen 16x9 monitor wall that uses flat panel plasma and LCD displays. Up until now, HDTV trucks have done most production monitoring on less costly 4x3 NTSC monitors. Two Panasonic’s PT-42P1 42 Gas Plasma 480p 852x480 displays serve as the monitor wall’s centerpiece. A third Panasonic 42” plasma display is utilized in the announcers’ booth.  The remainder of the monitors consisted of 10 Panasonic BT-S915DA 9" Color Monitors, that were switchable between 4x3 and 16x9 aspect ratios, and 34 SGI 1600SW 17" HD LCD Displays that were set to 1600x1024 Resolution.

The acquisition backbone and original compliment of the Panasonic/ABC HDTV production truck consists of four AQ-7200P 720P full-featured studio cameras and three AQ-720P hand-held cameras.  This is the same equipment that was used to shoot the HD version of not just Super Bowl XXXIV, but all seventeen-season games, as well. These are 720P cameras that generate 60 progressive frames/second to produce high definition images free from interlace artifacts.  The pictures from the cameras were carried by Mohawk/CDT fiber-optic camera cable that ran the several thousands of feet to the HD truck.

The normal compliment of lenses for the truck cover most all situations. The studio cameras were equipped with Fujinon HA66x9.5 BESN and HA66x13.5 BESN, high definition lenses.  The handhelds were outfitted with both Canon HA20X7.5BEVM HH HD and HJ9X5.5B Wide Angle lens for handheld cameras. 

In addition to this normal compliment of cameras, ABC added two Philips LDK 9000-720P cameras for Super Bowl XXXIV.  One had a Canon HD 40X lens and the other had an Angeniux HD 18X lens, rounding out the camera inventory to a total of nine cameras used on the HD version of the Super Bowl.  Eight of these cameras were in the Georgia Dome and one was used as a “beauty shot” from the Coca Cola Building, whose feed was beamed to the compound by a Lucient Laser Link.

Keeping all nine live cameras matched and responsible for the top quality HD pictures was Senior Video, out of ABC-Hollywood, Chuck Pharris, who was assisted by HD regular, Carl Gothman.

“Cutting” the HD version of Super Bowl XXXIV, was Technical Director, Michael Karman out of ABC-New York.  Karman sat at a Snell & Wilcox HD1024 Production Switcher, that has twenty-four inputs, 1½ M/E banks, two DVE channels, four still stores, one effects “deck” with two keyers, and a program/preset deck that has one keyer.  All twenty-four inputs to the HD 1024 are programmable.  In Addition to the Snell & Wilcox 1024 switcher already in the truck, Snell &Wilcox provided a 1010 switcher, which has 8 inputs, to act as a sub-switcher to carry the additional tape resources just for Super Bowl XXXIV.

In addition to all this, also feeding the Snell & Wilcox HD1024 switcher, were feeds from ABC-1, the NTSC remote truck.  Samet said: “We got both a Dirty (with Mattes) and a Clean feed (no Mattes) that were both upconverted by a Leitch Juno.  We also had an output from ABC-1’s Sony Router so that we could take any of their facilities direct: for instance the show opening from their (NTSC) tape machine.  These were, of course upconverted by a Leitch Juno also.”

Graphics and character generators are always an intricate part of any sports event.  Running the two Chyron Duets were Suzie Fisher and Lois Rycx, aided by Darre Chiappetta, production assistant.  The clock and “score bug” were upconverted by two Leitch Juno HDU-3800s.  One Juno was used for Video and the other for key.  The Leitch Juno HDU-3800s were set up with two presets for position Left and Right so the bug would fly in and fly off the wider HD screen; otherwise the clock & score flew in and flew out relative to the 4x3 screen instead of the 16x9 HD screen!

Instant replay and archiving are major parts of any sports event.  Riding herd on VTRs and servers’ storage devices were Ray Soroka out of ABC-New York, along with Lee Nowell and Allen Pierce.  

The ABC/Panasonic Hi-Def remote production truck has six Panasonic AJ-HD2700 HD-D5 Multi-format VTRs, but is wired to accommodate a total of 10 VTRs.  Director Samet told us that ABC added an addition D-5 machine to record, do slow-motion replays, as well as playback of other pre-recorded elements.

These VTRs were kept busy throughout the entire game and after.  They were used for instant replays, editing and the integration of moving graphics. More VTR would have been necessary were it not for the four Pluto Hyperspace HDTV disk recorders that were interfaced with Panasonic AJ-HDP510 -720P HDTV processors.  This interface allowed the truck’s HD Digital disk recorders to record their 720P signal.

In addition to this cadre of VTRs, rounding out the short and long-term storage devices was a pair of Panasonic DVCPRO Progressive decks (480P) that were used for bumper clips shot by a DVCPRO Progressive camcorder and upconverted to 720P by a Panasonic AJ-UFC1800 Universal Format Converter.  The Panasonic UFC-1800 Universal Format Converters make possible the ability to cross-convert between all recognized US-ATSC standard digital video formats and the truck is equipped with three.

Remember I said that NHK also did the game in HD?  Two additional VTRs were also located in the HD truck for the exclusively purpose of recording the Super Bowl in 1080i for air in Japan.  NHK’s NTSC audio was fed to these 1080i HD machines to round out that package.  

The American HD audio feed was every bit as good as the pristine 720P pictures.  John Thomas Satterfield sat at the two Panasonic Ramsa WR-DA7V digital audio mixers that were linked together in the truck’s audio suite.  The pair of WR-D7Vs had some 64 inputs and could produce 5.1-channels of surround sound.  The WR-DA7V is capable of both analog and AES inputs and outputs.

With multiple channels of audio, keeping track and ensuring that everything is in proper phase is a very critical job.  Not only was stereo important, don’t forget that they did the Super Bowl in 5.1.  Satterfield used a unique device know as a Holophone microphone.  As it was explained, it is designed to pick up five channels of audio to enhance the 5.1 channel audio experience.

Keeping track of the proper stereo polarities, was the Tektronix 764 serial/digital audio monitor, which gave Satterfield, not only level indications, but displayed the proper phasing as well.

The Leader LV 5836B was used for the all-encompassing 5.1 channels of audio.  The LV 5836B provides a polar display of the five channels and a bar graph of the low frequency effects channel and works in conjunction with the Leader LV 5152DA, which will be describer later on.

So the crew could hear what was going on, the ABC/Panasonic HD truck is equipped with Genelec’s 1030/1031/1092 self-powered audio monitors.

The entire crew was able to communicate via an RTS ADAM Intercom system. 

The intercom system was configured so that full communications between the Director, Cameras, VTR, Audio, TD, Video Operators, the Production Assistant, Graphics Operator, the AD in the NTSC truck and the AD in the HDTV control room in New York was possible, while at the same time being able to listen only to the producer, director, production assistant and graphics operators in the 525 NTSC truck.  The 525 NTSC truck directed the Announcers.  

Although Panasonic supplied the lion’s share of the equipment, there were other equipment manufacturer whose gear was indispensable and played a key roll in bring the Super Bowl to the viewers. To “pipe” the large bandwidth HD pictures effortlessly around the truck, it is outfitted with an Nvision-ADC, Envoy 6128 (64 in by 128 out) routing switcher, which is a super wideband device.  The Envoy is unique in that it is capable of carrying uncompressed 1.5 Gigabits of video information in large configurations.  According to Nvision, the unit in the ABC/Panasonic truck is expandable to 128x128. 

Routing was also accomplished with the use of Grass Valley Group’s flagship routing system, the SMS-7000 in a 64x64 configuration, which includes serial-digital interface, analog audio and stereo audio.  Also under the category of routers is a purely digital product by Grass Valley Group, their 7500-NB, narrow band router, which is a 256x256 Synchronous AES-digital audio device, that fits into a compact 12 rack unit space. 

Digital television wouldn’t be digital were it not for the encoders/decoders.  Tiernan Communications of San Diego, CA was well represented when it comes to the truck’s encoders/decoders. Tiernan’s THE1 encoder was used in its hi-def configuration.  Complimenting the THE1 was Tiernan’s TDR6H, a modular receiver/decoder that was also pressed into service. 

Rounding out the hardware in the ABC/Panasonic HD truck was the always-necessary test, monitoring and sync generating equipment.  Keeping things in time was a pair of identical, ever-popular, Tektronix TG-2000 generators, with automatic changeover, equipped with an HDVG1 high definition module, which is a high accuracy, multi-format test signal generator that provides 3 each 1.485 Gbts serial/digital video outputs in 1080i/60, 59.94, 1080p/25 and 24 Hz rates and 720P formats in 60 and 59.95 field rates.  In addition to these outputs analog outputs for NTSC, color black and tri-level sync are also available. 

Keeping track of the SMPTE 292 signals were Leader LV 5152DAs, a multi-format HD waveform/vector/picture/audio X/Y monitor.  The Leader LV 5152DA has automatic setup recognition and will display any of 14 ATSC video formats.  It works in conjunction with the 5.1 channel audio LV 5836B monitor, mentioned earlier.

The SMPTE 259 signals were monitored on Tektronix WFM-601M scopes permitting the technical types to monitor right down to the bit level.   The WFM-601 also has an arrowhead presentation that gives equivalent NTSC/PAL gamut limits, which lets the engineers know which colors will be “legal” in subsequent composite formats. 

The final hurdle in getting Super Bowl XXXIV onto the network was to get the HD pictures and sound from the Georgia Dome to the New York HD release center where it was distributed to the affiliates of ABC’s DT network.  The ultimate responsibility for this feat rested with Richard Wolf, VP of Telecommunications at ABC.  Wolf said: “We are relied on the VYVZ-Williams services “Venue- Net,” a 45 Mbts infrastructure at the Georgia Dome for continued DS3 conductivity into ABC-New York.  ABC utilizes a Tiernan encoder 720P, Tiernan encode/decode hardware and Tiernan protocol conversion equipment that interfaces with the DS3 network.”  And that’s how they did it!

Super Bowl Sunday is really several shows in one.  There’s the pre-game show, the game itself, the halftime extravaganza, the post-game wrap-up and, although not actually a part of the gridiron action itself, the way everyone gets paid, the commercials.

Samet said:  “We (the HDTV truck) did nothing for the pre-game show due to all the clips that they used.  It would have been impossible to duplicate them in HDTV.”  With regard to the Super Bowl’s halftime and post game shows, that’s a different story. Samet said:  “...nothing different in equipment.  What we had is what we used.  We covered the halftime show with our own HD cameras, where possible: same with the post game show.”

With regard to the commercials, the HDTV Control room, in New York, down converted the HD commercials and fed them to the NTSC master control for insertion.  Samet said:  “NTSC spots were upconverted and mixed with the HD Spots,” but he could not recall how many HDTV Panasonic commercials aired.  Commercial Integration was all done in New York at the ABC HD Release Center.

In recapping the crewing for Super Bowl XXXIV in high-def, Director, Norm Samet and Technical Director, Michael Karman, said that for a normal game they pick up, locally, additional members to fill in on camera, do tape, assist with audio, and act as utility people.  “We have 3 core camerapersons we bring with us, Barry Drago, Bobby Dunn and John Alford.  We hire 3 other camerapersons regionally,” said Samet.  Rounding out the “regulars” on the crew from the Monday Night Football and Super Bowl HD crew, were utility and cable Mavens were Charlie Brown and Patrick Hoffman.

Concluding my interview with the director, Norm Samet, he would not let me go with out say: “Considerable assistance was given by 2 members of Panasonic, Bill Sturcke and Jay Ballard kept the camera systems and all their components running.  They win an MVP vote from all of us.  They worked tirelessly with professionalism and unbelievable knowledge and adaptation.”