We knew the World Cup was going to be filmed in 3D by Sony for eager footie fans around the world, but now we’ve got the exact details on how things are going down in the UK. The bad news: we won’t be getting any guaranteed England World Cup games in 3D. The good news: you will be able to watch matches in 3D live at cinemas up and down the country, so there’s no need to fork out for a new fangled telly just yet.
Sony’s big announcement that it’d be broadcasting the World Cup in South Africa in 3D back in December raised more questions than it answered, particularly just where we’d be watching them exactly with next to no 3D TVs on the market yet. At a press conference today in London though, the company revealed just that in much more detail.
Sony and football world body Fifa will be shooting 25 World Cup matches in a completely separate 3D stream, including the opening match, three of the quarter finals, both semis and the final itself. Three countries will be able to watch these matches in 3D in the home with the right equipment thanks to licensing agreements with big TV networks like ESPN, but tragically, that doesn’t include the UK (Just South Korea, Spain and the US) since the BBC and ITV have broadcasting rights, and no current 3D plans.
That means you won’t be able to watch the World Cup in 3D at any of the Sky 3D pubs nationwide, but it’s not all bad news. Fifa and Sony have also sorted a deal with a Swiss company, Aruna Media, to screen 3D matches live to cinemas across the globe, including “up to 50 cinemas and five entertainment venues” in the UK, according to Niclas Ericson, director of Fifa TV.
World Cup cashback: Elgato refunds TV tuners if England win!
Discussions are still ongoing about locations, though Sony is today testing 3D broadcast screenings at the Apollo Cinema in London’s West End, but eight matches will be shown in this way. Unfortunately, none of the 25 planned 3D games are England group games, so we won’t get to see the crunch England USA match in three full dimensions. Ericson joked to the audience of journalists that UK fans “shouldn’t despair…[as] England will make it to the final round,” but we do wonder why multinational Sony chose to host its press conference in the UK since this isn’t a guarantee.
Still, if you’re all about the festival of football regardless of team, it could be worth hunting out one of the screens for Sony 3D World Cup matches. Sony also detailed just how the broadcasts will work at the tournament and it sounds like everythign has been thought of. Two fully kitted out 3D broadcast vans will flit between stadiums in Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, and each 3D match will use 14 cameras in seven different positions.
Four will be at ground level, while three will be elevated. It’s not as many as the planned 32 cameras used for 2D broadcasts at each match, but Sony Professional’s head of marketing for Europe, David Bush said that space constraints and the slower cutting pace of 3D necessary to avoid nausea meant it shouldn’t be a problem – and we have to agree. We’re much more interested to see how Sony and Fifa handle 3D graphics for match statistics and team sheets for World Cup games, but neither gave us any details on this front.
We did however get the chance to watch some more 3D footage on Sony 3D Bravia LX900 model, including clips from the 2009 Confederations Cup, and it’s looking better than ever. The picture is sharp with superb depth and smoothness: in fact, our major gripe was with Sony’s heavy glasses, which need batteries replacing every 100 hours or so. We’ll take watching the World Cup in 3D in a cinema over that right now, so stay tuned, and we’ll bring you the details on the venues as soon as they’re announced.
Out TBC | £TBC | Sony
