Wired for the future.

STAPLES CENTER BUILT TO ACCOMMODATE LATEST IN BROADCAST TECHNOLOGY

Can't make it to Staples Center for the Lakers-Jazz game? No problem - it'll be almost as exciting on your high-definition TV. Out of town for your favorite band's show? Just watch it on your laptop.

Thanks to the futuristic equipment now being installed in the $375 million downtown arena, set to open next month, fans will have more options than ever.

Fiber-optic cable is being installed throughout the arena - which will also include two control rooms, one of them dedicated to transmitting high-definition images - so that viewers will be able to catch games, concerts, awards shows and other events from Staples Center on their HDTVs and over the Internet.

While it's not yet known how all of the technology will be used by individual broadcasters and event promoters, the goal is to install the most leading-edge systems so that as HDTVs and Internet broadcasts become more common, Staples Center will be prepared.

"Eventually the entire industry is going to switch over to high-definition TV," said Tim Leiweke, president of both Staples Center and the L.A. Kings hockey team, one of the arena's tenants. "And when they do, we will be cutting edge, and we'll be the first people out there with this feed."

Among the most advanced components of the new arena is the digital, high-definition television control room. Being built at a cost of $14 million, it will be operated by Slingshot, a company bought earlier this year by Philip Anschutz, the Denver billionaire who co-owns Staples Center and the Kings.

While transmission trucks outfitted for high-definition broadcasts are increasing in number, there are only a handful of permanent control rooms made for HDTV broadcasts. Typically, a broadcaster that wants to transmit a game or other event as a high-definition broadcast must bring in its own truck and lay down cables throughout the venue - a time-consuming, expensive proposition.

But at Staples Center, the control room replaces the truck. And fiber-optic cables will be permanently installed throughout the arena. Staples Center will have 79 "media panels" - places where cameras can be plugged in - most of them with fiber-optic jacks. Locker rooms also are being outfitted.

"If NBC comes in to do a Laker game, and NBC wants to do the Laker game in high-def, NBC has two options" - using a broadcast truck or the control room, said Michael Roth, spokesman for Staples Center. "(Slingshot) will market themselves to any entity coming into the building. If anybody is going to broadcast out of the building, they will automatically have the option of a business arrangement with Slingshot."

High-definition, digital broadcasts look crisper, having a higher resolution than standard analog broadcasts. They require different cameras and crews than standard broadcasts, and can only be picked up by HDTV sets. So until HDTVs are in widespread use, broadcasters will have to keep sending out their normal broadcast signals for those with analog TVs.

"As you can probably guess, the technology of both sending HDTV signals and receiving them is still in its infant stages," said Ed Markey, vice president of sports press at NBC. "We would anticipate that if the marketplace were to dictate it, we would look for a quick rollout of digital television in general. But this particular technology is still in its infant stages."

Markey said NBC's "Tonight Show" has done high-definition broadcasts, but that the only HDTV sports broadcasts he knows of have been the closed-circuit variety - such as the ones shown in a restaurant in Madison square Garden of a game in progress within the arena.

Leiweke said similar closed-circuit HDTV broadcasts may be done at Staples Center (the arena's center-hung scoreboard, for example, will be HDTV-compatible), but not until high-definition broadcasts are transmitted.

"Then we'll have the ability to pick that feed up and use it on the scoreboard as well," he said.

Aside from the scoreboard, Leiweke said, Staples Center has "some high-definition TV screens" in its inventory, but they will not be used right away. As for the more than 1,000 televisions in the luxury suites and other parts of the arena, they will not be high-definition-compatible.

Jeff Proctor, executive producer for Fox Sports West and Fox Sports West 2, said that Fox, like NBC, doesn't know when its stations will start broadcasting HDTV signals. But Staples Center's capabilities may help spur Fox to start transmitting such broadcasts soon.

"Our intention is to do it as soon as possible." he said. "And with the room at Staples Center being set up, that probably means it will happen in the next year."

Of course, there may be reluctance to send out high-definition broadcasts unless significantly more consumers actually buy HDTVs. With the sets costing thousands of dollars - compared to just hundreds or less for a standard TV - few consumers have made the jump.

Rick Burton, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon's College of Business, said getting consumers to invest in a new technology typically takes a "killer app" - an application exciting enough to motivate consumers to embrace that technology.

Sports, he said, has often served as just such a killer app.

"You look for the programming or the form of entertainment that is going to cause people to buy a new technology - or a new television," he said. "And sports has got a pretty proven history of making people go out and buy a radio, or buy a television, because they want to see the game."

Burton said baseball games and prize-fights helped sell some of the first radios, and football and baseball games helped sell televisions. Sports could do the same thing again - for HDTVs.

The fiber-optic cables and digital control room at Staples Center will not be useful for just television broadcasts. They also can be used for transmitting games and other events over the Internet.

Experts say Internet broadcasts also are likely to become more common in the years ahead, as broadband technologies - those that involve high-speed transmissions of large amounts of data over cable lines - become widespread.

Sports may, again, serve as a killer app to drive people to embrace the technology, Burton said. "Two things appear to be particularly attractive right now with everything online," he said. "One is pornography, and the other is sports."

Leiweke confirmed that Internet applications are a primary reason the digital studio is being built.

"I think that (Internet cybercasts of Staples Center events) is coming in the near future," he said, noting the growing popularity of high-speed cable modems. "I think that's one of the things we're counting on with this studio - is creating all kinds of programming for the Internet, as well."