Demos at 2017 French Open Tennis…

08 Jun – Demos at 2017 French Open Tennis…

The French Open is a major tennis event, but also an opportunity for new technologies to shine. Many new Ultra HD technologies were demonstrated there before introduction to the market, and this year, France Télévisions is showing a number of VR demonstrations.

Bernard Fontaine, Directeur Innovation Technologiques, Direction du Numérique de France Télévisions, wrote a blog entitled “Roland-Garros, terrain de jeu privilégié des technos numériques” (“Roland Garros, a privileged playground for digital technologies”). VR is discussed under item 5; for those who don’t speak French natively: The France Télévision innovation teams are already thinking of 2018 and beyond, and are testing the newest VR 360 technologies from American company Harmonic, partnering with the Dutch company Tiledmedia. Their technology encodes the video in “tiles”, which significantly enhances the quality of VR 360 streaming. Visitors are able to watch, on an Oculus Rift, rallies filmed at the French Open by Digital Immersion.

Indeed we hope to move this beyond a technology demo for 2018.