The BBC is now facing a dilemma over whether or not to screen any event from the 2012 Olympics in 3D, admitted the corporation’s head of high definition and 3D.
Fresh from its successful 3D broadcast of the Wimbledon tennis championships, the company now faces a decision on how to give 3D coverage of the Olympics.
Danielle Nagler, head of BBC HD and 3d, said that the content that would be available is still unclear, and the BBC will have to look at its value to British audiences. BBC is not the host broadcaster of the 2012 Olympics, the role was taken by the Olympic Broadcasting Services.
“In 2D we get feeds from absolutely everything going on around the Olympics and we can configure that into whatever the UK audience is interested in. Whatever the final 3D offer that emerges it will clearly be more limited and we have to consider where we could accommodate that in terms of our broadcast offer and the appear that will have,” said Nagler.
The Wimbledon championships 3D screening was broadcasted on the BBC HD channel, while the high definition transmission was made on the BBC One HD.
“We’re lucky that we can accommodate these broadcasters, because BBC One is showing it in HD, so we’re not taking it away from the audience. The risk for 2012 is that we will have 28 streams in HD available to the UK audience, so that’s quite a lot of HD. Even assuming some of that at anyone time is not of interest to UK audiences we are assuming BBC One HD and BBC HD will be busy with HD content. We’re mindful that 8.5 million people have HD… that’s a lot more people that even with spectacular growth by next summer 3D will have.”
Meanwhile, BBC Olympic 2012 Director Roger Mosey insisted that they have agreed that some Olympic events should be captured in 3D.
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