The Sport Thread

NEP (used by Sky) and Arena (used by BT Sport) have IP-based routing in their trucks, so work with native 2060p. Other trucks (such as Timeline and Telegenic) split each 4K source into HD quadrants and switch four 1080p HD signals simultaneously. The latter is a bit more reliable, but takes four times as much more cable and router ports.

That said, what comes out the truck might still get split into quadrants (or stitched back together again) for transmission from the OB to the MCR, and there's a variety of bits of the chain where the quadrants might get out of sync with each other. It's still a bit of a learning curve - but you give yourself line-up time to make sure something like the above can get sorted before it makes it on air!

I presume the quadrant is converted to one picture at base rather then at source, my thinking if it was from source, it would have affected the international broadcast.

That really depends on the OB, and whether you want to save money on connectivity by sending the dirty feed in 4K and HD, or just the 4K and downconvert for HD at your MCR.

Given the limited market for the world feed in 4K, it's probably going to be downconverted on site.

I don't think that's the case. ITV Sport Select did their own presentation for the season they were running, but used the same commentary as Premiership Plus on Sky - which was Alan Parry.

If you're counting BT Sport's UHD BPL games from last year, it only adds one to your list: Paul Dempsey.

Alan Parry always had to refer to future games as being "on this channel" as depending on your provider you would be getting a totally different pre-match build-up and channel name.

Some rights news out of European Professional Club Rugby's Pro 12 clubs press launch in Dublin yesterday. Now this was obviously aimed at Irish journalists, so take with a pinch of salt, so here goes:

- EPCR want to ditch the two broadcaster model that they've had over the past two seasons (which to be fair, was imposed on them over their heads and which absolutely no one, besides perhaps Premiership Rugby wanted) and revert back to a single pay TV broadcaster from 2018-19 onwards.

- They are also looking to "treat Ireland separately" and look at some FTA TV coverage (though, in the context of other comments they make, I take this to mean a separate FTA deal in addition to the normal pay-TV deal covering both UK and Ireland).

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/european-cup/european-champions-cup-set-to-return-to-irish-terrestrial-tv-1.2818440

Major issue for sports broadcasters imminient. Daytime advertising of betting services likely to be banned soon.

Never seen this mentioned yet but next week sees the launch of the new Home Nations Snooker Series comprising of the English Open (next week), Irish Open (November), Scottish Open (December) & Welsh Open (February).

Eurosport have rights to all these tournaments (alongside BBC Wales for the Welsh Open) but the afternoon sessions for the English, Irish and Scottish Opens is being covered live for freeview viewers by Quest TV with the usual Eurosport team with highlights of the Evening sessions being broadcast the next morning, the final will also be jointly covered live by Quest and Eurosport for these 3 tournaments from next week.

Who knew that allowing bookies to advertise would lead to an increase in the number of people with gambling problems.

Obviously for channels like Sky Sports they cannot put the odds on the match which I have seen on their sports even the World Grand Prix Darts this week but how will this work for ITV horse racing coverage for example?

Sample odds could still be quoted, as has always been the case, however advertising in breaks and sponsorship would not be permitted.