Woodbine Entertainment Group (WEG) has announced another phase in its goal of offering the highest quality racetrack experience to horseplayers and passionate fans of the sport.
Beginning Wednesday, June 25, the Woodbine Thoroughbred simulcast feed will be produced in High Definition (HD) in a new production control room located on the fourth floor of the Woodbine grandstand.
Customers on site at Woodbine will be able to view the races in HD (1080p; 16:9 aspect ratio).
“The fans will love watching the races on the hundreds of HD TV’s we have around the facility,” said Doug Flaherty, WEG’s Senior Director of Broadcasting. “The sport is shot so beautifully in ‘high-def’, and it will also provide sharper graphics and odds displays for bettors.”
The production facility is the first of its kind for horse racing in Canada.
TVG, the premier horse racing TV channel in the United States, will get Woodbine’s 1080p HD signal. Other locations, initially, will continue to receive a standard definition (SD) feed. Customers can view the production in SD (4:3 ratio) on older televisions, or converted back to 16:9 ratio on newer, wide screen TV’s.
“This is an excellent step in our goal of presenting the best in broadcast quality for horse racing,” said Flaherty. “As technology advances across the horse racing industry, WEG’s HD signal will be much more widely distributed.”
All of WEG’s network programming, including the Queen’s Plate on July 6 on TSN, will be in HD.