Fore! Comcast To Offer Masters in 3D

Great news for the 37 U.S. golf fans who have run out and purchased 3D televisions. Comcast announced today that the cable service will be offering two hours a day of live 3D coverage on a dedicated channel during the Masters Golf Tournament April 7-11. In a blog post, Comcast Senior Vice President Derek Harrar said that Sony and IBM will be providing technology assists for “the industry’s first live multi-camera next-gen 3D production.”

My suspicion is that the 99.99% of you whose lack of 3D displays will force you to watch the tournament in plain old 3D probably won’t miss all that much. Even more than other sports, golf relies on a lot of very long shots–of the photographic variety–and  the 3D effect is limited when using long telephoto lenses (for the technically minded, think parallax angles). Nonetheless it should be an interesting experiment and a way for broadcasters to ease into live 3D event coverage: The relatively slow pace of golf and the ability to use fixed camera positions on the Augusta National course make the 3D production of the tournament a lot less complicated than a live 3D broadcast of, say, an NFL football game