28 stadiums in 22 days “ and not to watch football games! The goal was to help transition the NFL to HD instant replay. That said, Scott Nardelli, Bexel Director of Broadcast Fiber Solutions (Bexel BFS), isn’t complaining. The stadiums may have been empty and quiet but for the task at hand those were the perfect conditions. “We had a lot to do in three months, from getting the material suppliers together, meeting deadlines and all with zero tolerance for error,” he says.

From August 1 to August 23 Nardelli criss-crossed the nation on a straightforward mission: transition the stadiums from an SD infrastructure that relied on coaxial cable to transmit signals from the production trucks to the replay booth and onto the field to fiber capable of handling uncompressed HD signals. In HD the pictures will have more detail but the real advantage will be the ability to see the full 16:9 widescreen image instead of 4:3 SD. In one year the NFL referees will go from one of the worst viewing experiences, standard definition, to one few outside of a production vehicle ever see: uncompressed HD.