NBC To Broadcast 5.1 Channels of Sweat

NBC seems to be making all the necessary investments so that come August's opening ceremonies in Beijing, it can provide a high-definition coverage bonanza on audio and video. The broadcaster has already divulged its intentions to fan out around the sporting venues with 1,000 HD cameras and 60 HD mobile units — this should make for a record breaking 756 hours of Olympic high-def footage.

Now, NBC is announcing its plans to upgrade audio as well. The network said Friday it will buy five Calrec Omega Bluefin consoles for mixing high-def, 5.1 surround sound audio for broadcast. Each console has the capacity for 160-channel processing paths packaged as 48 stereo and 64 mono channels, which means NBC can record up to 24 5.1 surround channels.

PTree in action, Crimson in surround!

I just got word from Porcupine Tree's manager, Andy Leff, that the band has the following release dates scheduled for 2008:

March: acoustic album
May: Lightbulb Sun (shown above left) in surround
September: live album
November: Steven Wilson's "sprawling" first solo album

Busy, busy, busy! The customary proviso: Whereas those dates are pretty solid, they're not locked-in 100%.

Meanwhile, as if that weren't news enough, Leff also tells me that he's now handling King Crimson and "working on getting the entire catalog reissued in 5.1," hopefully with mixes done by . . . Steven Wilson! Currently, Leff and Wilson are "waiting on Robert Fripp [who guested on PT's Fear of a Blank Planet and Nil Recurring] to hear Steven's work on some of the older KC stuff before he gives us the green light to proceed."

Just imagine the likes of Larks' Tongues in Aspic (above right), Red, and Discipline in surround. Oh, baby. —Ken Richardson

Weekend Update: Fagen, Gilmour, Zep, Radiohead

Can't find some prominent music releases on MVI, Blu-ray, HD DVD, and CD that we previewed recently? The dates, they keep a-changin':

Floyd, U2, Radiohead in surround. NOT!

It's getting tougher and tougher these days to cheerlead the cause of music in surround sound. No, we at S&V aren't giving up. But, coming so soon after hearing that we're getting the best of Led Zeppelin on stereo CD (again) as opposed to any of the studio albums in 5.1, we can only give a huge sigh at some recent announcements from titans of three different music generations.