When NBC broadcasts a pair of Cowboys games on Sunday Night Football this season, fans at the game and watching from home will enjoy a new wrinkle.
Via the Associated Press, NBC will install a system that permits 360-degree rotating angles of all action in the red zone and through the back of each end zone.
“You can now move all the way around the play without changing the camera angle,” Sunday Night Football producer Fred Gaudelli told the Television Critics Association over the weekend. Gaudelli, pictured to the left of NBC Sports Group Chairman Mark Lazarus (yes, I know how to suck up), compared it to the camera views available in video games.
The FreeD system, short for free-dimensional video, will be used on Sunday, September 8 when the Cowboys host the Giants. It also will be used for the Redskins-Cowboys game on October 13, and for the October 5 Arizona State-Notre Dame game to be played at AT&T Stadium.
The system also will be used for in-stadium replays during all of the team’s 2013 home games.
Because installation takes a full month, NBC selected a venue that would be used multiple times this season. Given the manner in which the NFC East has played out the last two years, there’s a chance that yet another Cowboys home game will end up on NBC, via flex scheduling.