NBA on TNT Embraces Remote Graphics Ops for New Season; Polecam Set To Capture Ring Ceremony

TVG is tapped for scorebug; Brand Brigade handles virtual graphics

NBA on TNT tips off the regular season from Denver, home of the world champion Denver Nuggets on Tuesday, Oct. 24, and, once again, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports (WBD) is going all-out, taking the Inside the NBA studio show on the road, weaving in some musical performances, and sticking around until the wee hours for the end of the the night’s second game, which will be played in San Francisco.

“We’re bringing the road show back,” says Chris Brown, VP, technical operations, WBD. “It’s gonna be fun to have it back out again and start the season off in the right way.”

NBA on TNT tips off the 2023-24 season with a doubleheader on Tuesday, Oct 24 followed by a doubleheader on Thursday.

Like last year’s tipoff in San Francisco, this year’s will feature an alternative venue, Tivoli Square, where the studio show and a concert will be located. One advantage over last year’s game on the West Coast is that, this year, the Inside the NBA broadcast team will be able to be on-air longer.

“Denver is a little bit closer time-zone–wise to the West Coast,” notes Brown, “so we’re creating an event that will keep the fans at Tivoli Square, and we can do a true postgame show following the late Golden State game.”

The studio show will have a dedicated production truck, NEP Supershooter 2, at Tivoli Square, and Supershooter 8 will do the game from Ball Arena. Supershooter 2 will handle the Golden State game in San Francisco.

“The studio show is going to be a true standalone,” says Brown. “That works out in the long run since the game production is going to be knocked down and out of there almost three hours before the late game ends. That will be fun as it’s always interesting when they’re standalone.”

WBD Sports will also bring out some additional production toys for Opening Night in Denver, including a Falcon 360 polecam for use during the ring ceremony and a Sony HDC-4800 coupled with a Sony playback server for 8X super-slo-mo playback.

For game coverage, around 20 Sony cameras will be used for all regular-season games, including two robos on each backboard: one mounted above the rim, the other behind the glass. The behind-the-glass robos will have 6X slo-mo capability.

In regular-season operations, the biggest change is that the graphics operations will be based in Atlanta, controlling the graphics devices in the production trucks remotely. Also new this year, TV Graphics (TVG) will take over scorebug duty, and Brand Brigade will handle all virtual-graphics operations.

According to Brown, the move to Brand Brigade brings optical tracking and AI learning to WBD’s NBA coverage, and both the TVG and Brand Brigade operations teams will be working remotely from Atlanta (along with the Ross Video insert-graphics team). That follows the path the NHL graphics team took in working remotely for the new NHL season a couple of weeks ago.

“The virtual graphics will be done at our integration room, downstream from the production truck,” says Brown. “One advantage is, there will be no delay and they will be controlling the machines on the truck.”

The move to remote operations required the graphics team to be trained to work on both NHL and NBA games. That makes the graphics team more versatile and gives it the ability to work more events during the week.

On the audio side, WBD is looking at using a new IFB and Q5X mics on the referee and on the coaches. “We’re continuing to evolve,” says Brown, “using an inner-ear IFB as Q5X has a new one we’re going to look at.”

Once again, 1080i will be the production format of choice, but one difference in deliverables to viewers is that the games will be available in 1080p via the Max streaming app.

“Max manages that conversion to 1080p,” he says, adding, “There is a goal to eventually have all the productions originating in progressive so that there is a more seamless handoff and one less step in the process.”