2010 Winter Olympics
by Michael Hay on February 15, 2010
If you are watching the Winter Olympics going on now in Vancouver BC, odds are you are seeing some or all of it because of Hitachi. This is due to the fact that Hitachi Kokusai’s SK-HD1000 HD video cameras are being used by the Canadaian Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, the official Canadian broadcaster of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. There are a total of 39 of the Hitachi Kokusai cameras being deployed at the event and after they are done with the Olympics and Paralympics games the cameras will be deployed to stations that need an upgraded camera, and again the cameras will bring you the 2012 Summer games in London. The official press announcement for the usage of the cameras can be found here.
As to the future of display technologies from Hitachi I recently had the chance to view the Hitachi Super Resolution technology in action at one of our research labs here in Japan. All I can say is wow, it was truly an experience to see regular SD footage up-converted to HD resolution in realtime. The audience was nearly stupefied into silence at this process and wanted to take it home right at the meeting. Several CES-2009 related press releases including reference to one on Super Resolution technology from Hitachi can be found here and there is a pretty cool video over at Engadget that I suggest you take a peak out. From the public information over at Engadget the technology is expected to hit the shelves this year.
So when you are seeing the Olympics don’t forget that much of it is brought to you through Hitachi’s HD cameras, and hopefully in the near future you will be enjoying SD quality content within an HD experience again thanks to Hitachi.
