Intel Unveils New Way To Watch MLB Games

Intel uses multiple specially designed multicams, which use multiple cameras to mimic the depth perception of the human eye. Those videos are stitched together to produce the view of the entire park.
It’s impossible nowadays to imagine watching a Major League Baseball game on TV without the center-field camera.

The camera lets fans truly see and understand the battle between the batter and the pitcher and catcher. It’s the view that is on screen more than any other throughout the game.

And for nearly the first decade of TV broadcasts, it was absent. Newsreel cameramen set up their cameras behind home plate or up one of the two foul lines, and early TV broadcasts followed the same pattern.

Even after broadcasters began putting a camera in center field looking at the plate, they used it very sparingly, almost apologetically, while sticking with a behind-the-plate view for the majority of the game.

It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that broadcasters figured out their broadcasts were more interesting with a center field shot as the default shot.

Virtual reality (VR) broadcasts of baseball right now are about where TV broadcasts were in 1951. There are no rules for broadcasting a game in this new medium, but Intel and Major League Baseball hope they are beginning a much faster learning curve to a new medium for broadcasting.

Recently MLB and Intel announced a three-year deal that allows Intel to broadcast one national game a week on its Intel True VR app. The agreement brings baseball to VR broadcasting in its nascent stages, giving Intel and MLB an opportunity to experiment.

“You’re in the bottom of the first inning in terms of where this is today,” MLB spokesman Matt Gould said. “Where it is today is very different from where it will be in three years.”

Virtual reality currently involves putting on a headset that gives a three-dimensional view of whatever you are watching. Motion sensors in the device ensure that when you turn your head, your view goes with it. You’re not just staring at a screen as much as you’re inserted into a virtual world of sorts.

Watching a VR broadcast of a game feels somewhat like sitting in the stands, but with a tilt of your head you can also view the box score, lineups or other stats.

It’s relatively easy to get a virtual reality headset. Samsung and Google have come out with models selling for roughly $100. Currently, Intel’s baseball VR broadcasts are only available for Samsung cell phone owners with a Gear VR headset, though the company says it may look at additional avenues in the future.

Major U.S. sports hope that eventually this will be an additional revenue stream because it’s an additional broadcast channel that isn’t covered by existing local and national contracts. For now, it’s an experiment—one where, much like television broadcasters in the early 1950s, the rules of a VR broadcasting are being made up as they go.

Like the early years of television broadcasts, the current technology has plenty of limitations.

Broadcasting a game in VR requires multiple fixed cameras that don’t pan or zoom. A high-tech Intel computer system then stitches together the multiple cameras into a cohesive view.

Much like the TV cameras of the early 1950s, that lack of zoom, combined with the limited resolution of the phone’s viewing screen, means the amount of detail is dramatically less than what fans are accustomed to on a modern-day high-definition broadcast.

VR broadcasts right now are clearly inferior to watching a game at home on your TV. But it is different. And of all the sports, the MLB VR broadcasts are the best.

“We’re not trying to take broadcast TV and put it into VR,” said David Aufhauser, product lead for Intel Sports Group. “And we’re not putting a fan behind the dugout per se. We’re trying to create something entirely new and different.

“It’s a new way to experience the content.”

Intel has settled on a main view behind home plate that allows the viewer to see the whole field, much like sitting behind home plate. But the key aspect that makes a baseball VR broadcast much more watchable than a football or basketball broadcast is a clever Intel invention.

The standard over-the-pitcher’s-shoulder, center-field shot is stitched into the view where the giant video display would appear at the stadium. So viewers can see the pitcher-batter battle like normal but also the entire field at the same time. When the ball is put into play, they can watch how the right fielder is going to get the ball in the corner, then with a tilt of the head, switch their view to second base to see how the runner cuts the bag on his way to third.

The technology is improving. Cell phones two to three years from now likely will have significantly improved screens. The cameras used for the broadcasts will also continue to get better.

“We now have three years to continue to evolve it,” Gould said. “You’re not going to learn what works without doing it. You have to do a lot of listening and experimenting.”

Intel and Major League Baseball won’t know for quite awhile whether VR broadcasts will be a step forward like high definition broadcasts or wind up a dead end as 3-D broadcasts have become.

But they now have three years of experimentation to figure it out.