Sport in 3D: what looks best on your 3D TV

"The UK is at the cutting edge of 3D and it would be a crime if the Olympic Games wasn't in 3D, but the decision isn't in our gift." For now the BBC's 3D ambitions appear to be limited to experiments (it recently used 3D cameras to film the distinctly un-sporty Strictly Come Dancing) and possibly video on demand content on the BBC iPlayer rather than a linear channel, though the Wimbledon finals will be broadcast in 3D.

Sky Sports may have the most experienced 3D team around, but it's not the only broadcaster involved in 3D. Virgin Media, which has until now had only limited video on demand content in 3D, recently announced its intention to show the French Open tennis in 3D via a new Eurosport 3D service on channel 523.

Eurosport filmed last year's event in 3D, too, with Panasonic providing 3D monitors, cameras and mixers, and that continues in 2011.

"Tennis is an interesting one," says Steve Lucas, consumer AV & imaging product specialist at Panasonic. "Because you can get the cameras relatively close to the players, generally they tend to shoot from the baseline end. At Roland Garros last year there were some great 3D shots from the baseline ends.

"Golf also works well by introducing a sense of gradient in the course," he continues. "At the final putting shot at the Open in Augusta you could see the undulations of the hole, something that's impossible to pick out in conventional 2D - it just looks like a flat shot to the hole."

ESPN

In the USA and Australia the driver behind 3D sport is Disney-owned ESPN, which already has Premier League broadcast rights so could challenge Sky's early dominance in the UK 3D broadcast market.

It's ESPN 3D channel, which is available to 65 million in the US and started broadcasting 24 hours a day during February, has in its 3D CV some 25 matches at the World Cup, NBA Playoffs and Finals, college basketball, the X Games and the Masters.

Just like Sky, it's just headed north of a centenary of 3D live 'telecasts'.

Virtually all of them are fed live on an ESPN 3D channel on the FoxTel network in Australia, too. "We didn't have rights to in show The Masters in the US, but everything else - all 104 events so far - have been fed live," says Sean Riley, senior coordinating producer at ESPN.

With a groundswell of live 3D sports events and creeping experience in film crews and production teams, could we start to see other third party 3D channels - such as those from Eurosport and ESPN - appear on the Sky EPG?

The answer is typical of both Sky's enthusiasm for 3D, and the general 'suck it and see' approach of everyone working in these embryonic days of 3D broadcasting. "Would we support other channel brands who want to launch in 3D on Sky?

Absolutely," says Cass. "We're committed to growing the market and keeping the UK at the forefront of 3D."

Whether 3D breaks into a sprint at London 2012, however, remains to be seen.

Jamie Carter

Jamie is a freelance tech, travel and space journalist based in the UK. He’s been writing regularly for Techradar since it was launched in 2008 and also writes regularly for Forbes, The Telegraph, the South China Morning Post, Sky & Telescope and the Sky At Night magazine as well as other Future titles T3, Digital Camera World, All About Space and Space.com. He also edits two of his own websites, TravGear.com and WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com that reflect his obsession with travel gear and solar eclipse travel. He is the author of A Stargazing Program For Beginners (Springer, 2015),