Pro-Bel Teams Up with Fox Sports for the NFL’s London Debut

Pro-Bel contributed to the success of Fox Sport’s coverage of the first regular-season NFL game to be played outside North America.

Fox Sports required HD standards conversion to be able to convert the Miami Dolphins-New York Giants game Wembley Stadium in London Oct. 28. Fox produced the game in 720p with graphics, HD slow motion replays and 5.1 surround sound. Fox relied on Pro-Bel’s Cifer HD motion-compensated standards converter to frame convert the 720p50 program produced at Wembley to 720p59.94 for distribution to Fox affiliates stateside.

Fox Sports used three Cifers, one in London and two at the Fox Network operations center in Los Angeles. This allowed signal conversion from 720p50 to 720p59.94 to be carried out in either London or the United States, and provided Fox with multiple levels of redundancy.

Cifer was developed in conjunction with Digital Vision and incorporates a proprietary motion-estimation technique.