ProVision Communications
The Wireless Video Company
Handing Motor Rally Spectators a Better View
01 March 2006
Spectators at major events such as motor rallies often miss seeing much of the action, since they can only watch a small part of the course at a time: now wireless technology is coming to their rescue. ProVision Communications is playing an important role in a high profile project - known as VISUALISE - which will put wireless multimedia into the hands of spectators at the World Rally Championship in the UK this December. The system will allow spectators with PDA's to watch video coming live from cameras mounted in the rally cars as they race around the course.
Getting a high quality video signal live from rally cars moving at speed over hilly terrain is a very challenging problem; getting that video back out to spectators scattered around the course is equally difficult. Viewers are very unforgiving if the video quality is poor or intermittent. ProVision Communications is particularly well placed to solve these problems because of its special expertise in moving video signals reliably over wireless links under demanding conditions.
Motor rallying is only the first of many large scale public events expected to benefit from this project. Other examples include athletics (Olympics), rock festivals (Glastonbury), golf competitions (Open) and other motor sports events such as Formula 1. Typically such events demand and deploy a huge infrastructure of cameras, production and transmission equipment with many fixed and portable cameras. Most of this content is never made available to local spectators except through a single feed of edited output to portable TVs or large screen displays. The VISUALISE project aims to provide an enhanced experience for spectators through local area access to a rich range of media via a handheld device; as well as selection of live video, spectators will also be able to access archive material and statistics.
Partners in the VISUALISE project, which is supported by the DTI Technology Programme, are Provision Communications, Turner Broadcasting, BT, Node, 3C Research, Inmarsat, U4EA Technologies, Util4, and the University of Bristol.
Professor David Bull, Director of video technology at ProVision Communications, said "This is a remarkable project, involving some very significant players such as Turner Broadcasting who share a vision about the sort of multi-media experience that spectators at major events will increasingly take for granted. Just imagine being able to choose which views you want to see, live on your PDA, whenever you visit a race track or golf course."