This year’s production will feature some groundbreaking 8K and augmented-reality tech.
The Super Bowl might revolve around a piece of pigskin, but for those of us watching at home, it’s all about the tech. It starts with making sure your big screen and streaming service of choice are ready to go. Then there’re the big ads for gadgets, and even, uh… sex toys that sync to the action on the field .
But the most high-tech elements of Super Bowl 53 can actually be found behind the scenes of the broadcast operation that projects the whole spectacle onto the retinas of over 100 million people.
As our sister site TechRepublic reports, the brand-new Mercedes-Benz stadium in Atlanta, which is hosting the championship, is embedded with over 4,000 miles of fiber to support a network that includes plenty of internet-of-things sensors throughout the building. The dome also has 90 miles of audio cabling and nearly 2,000 Wi-Fi access points.
On top of all that digital infrastructure, CBS Sports, which will broadcast the biggest event in American television, will also be using 2,000 strands of additional fiber and 330 recording channels. It’s required to support the 115 total cameras and five sets around the stadium that’ll be used to catch all the angles of each play, as well as the halftime show featuring Maroon 5, not to mention the pre- and postgame festivities.
