4K era underway with bigger, broader Raptors and Leafs

The cardinal rule of sports on television is simple: stand out of the way and let the spectacle and speed speak for itself.

The people at the microphone sometimes forget that. The producers never do, and this week, another illustration of that fundamental comes with Rogers and Bell Media firing off the first salvos in what may well come to be known as the 4K battles -- or, less rhetorically, simply the next step on the road to sports broadcasting’s pursuit of the faster, the higher, the crystal-clearer (and all of it via screens growing as if on steroids).

“Sports as a live broadcast, a live transmission, is where you’re really going to see” 4K’s advantages,” said Rogers Media president Rick Brace on Monday.

Last week, Rogers jumped on UK pioneers BT’s 4K broadcast of the Raptors and Orlando Magic, live from London’s O2 Arena -- a North American debut of the new technology that effectively quadruples the amount of picture content, or pixels. TSN delivers its first such show with Wednesday’s Raptors-Celtics game. Saturday night, Rogers has the first NHL game in 4K when the Leafs host the Canadiens.

It’s not quite as dramatic as the leap from analog to HD, but as 4K sets become more affordable and more programming is available (streaming via Netflix and YouTube has been in this format for a while), we are apparently headed into a new era whether we like it or not. At a media gathering Monday at their downtown Toronto HQ, Rogers executives talked about the rationale for their investment in the “low millions” in the new technology, including a mobile production unit that will show all 81 Blue Jays home games and a number of NHL games this year (with more items like this fall’s World Cup of Hockey down the line), a master control centre in their Toronto offices, and hardware like the new-gen 4K-ready boxes that are going in at the rate of a couple hundred a week right now, they said.

What is 4K? For a quick take, go here. Whether there’s an appetite for this kind of thing (whatever happened to 3D TV?), and whether it’s just a bridge to 8K, an EVEN HIGHER-resolution format on the way, are questions for another day further down the road. For now, the biggest chore beyond the expense of buying the set is finding 4K content. Don’t expect to at least initially see marquee international events like the Champions League final, the Euro or even this summer’s Olympics. But Brace’s counterpart with Sportsnet, Scott Moore, figures the U.S. and Europe are mere months behind them in adapting, which should open up the taps some, and perhaps quickly.

“[HIgh definition] was an evolution. This is going to be more of a hockey stick,” predicted Brace.