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WWE News
WWE News: WWE details transition to HD, including brand new TV sets and ring entrances Jan 20, 2008 - 1:26:46 AM
Ahead of Monday night's launch into High Definition TV, WWE's website details the changes that will occur with the groundbreaking transition. All three brands - Raw, ECW, and Smackdown - will have new graphics, but use a base "revolutionary" entrance set that was built from scratch.
Each wrestler's intro video package has also been modified for HD. In November, WWE wrestlers did a studio shooting in Florida to produce new footage for the updated videos.
WWE says the transition took five years and cost $20 million to upgrade production, lighting, pyrotechnics, the production truck, microphones, and TV cameras. When WWE did its first HD test-run in late 2006, the company saw the task at hand to protect "the magic" of the show, but also bring WWE's TV production into a new era.
"It showed how unforgiving HD can be, but also how magnificent our programming looked in it," said Duncan Leslie, VP of Technical Events Operations. "What we learned from the technical vantage point was the immensity and enormity of the task in front of us."
WWE's production style also necessitated change. Duncan continued: "We went from doing the show the same way for a number of years, in the same truck, to having to reinvent everything. All the infrastructure had to change. It's sort of like going from black & white to color."
Regarding the HD footage being produced for WWE DVD releases, including PPVs, WWE is noncommittal on whether to use the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray HD format. It's been a topic of much discussion in Hollywood movie studios, with some major studios siding with the Blu-Ray HD format.
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