Home viewers in North America, Asia and elsewhere will not be the only consumers able to watch the World Cup this summer in HD. All the soccer stadiums in Germany (where all the matches will be played) will be equipped with HD monitors as well, according to published reports.
T-Systems, one of the participating companies, said in a statement that each of the dozen stadium sites also will be heavily equipped with broadband and multimedia technology beyond HD--designed for thousands of media who are expected to cover the planet's most widely televised sporting event. Each site is expected to house a 100 MB LAN (local area network) for online communications and searches, various Instant Messenger schemes, and e-mail.
T-Systems also plans to situate up to 20 HD cameras in each of the 12 stadiums for camera angle options that used to be reserved purely for analog coverage. (Gone forever, apparently, are the days when HD sports "coverage" often implied a couple of wide-angle HD cameras designed to merely supplement the main analog feed.)
