Fox Sports executives announced on Tuesday that Super Bowl LIV on Feb. 2, 2020 will be broadcast in ultra-high definition (UHD) and shot at 1080p high-dynamic range (HDR).
Speaking at the Sports Video Group Summit on Tuesday in New York, Fox Sports executives Michael Davies and Kevin Callahan revealed the plan to produce all of Super Bowl Sunday’s live content from Miami in the 1080p HDR format, including the on-location studio set and halftime show.
“Sometimes UHD is used interchangeably with 4K, but there are a lot of good reasons that 4K winds up being not only technically more difficult-slash-impossible to do a show of this size but also there are some real reasons why sports in general look better in 1080p versus being shot natively in 4K,” said Davies, the SVP of field and technical operations.
At 60 frames per second, 4K suffers from “pixel offset,” he added. “The more frames you get, the more times the refresh happens so that if you’re panning from left to right the pixels will not blur quite as much. At 60 frames [per second], with 4K you’ll get more motion blur in action scenes.”