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  Those of us who are not US citizens were probably glued to our television sets and computer screens on Sunday 4th July rather than enjoying a few Independence Day beers and a barbeque. Joyously, it was a day of three great sporting finals - the Wimbledon Tennis Championship Men's Final, the conclusion of the UEFA European Football Championships (EURO 2004), and, of particular appeal to Sport and Technology's Editor - the climax of the PDC Darts Las Vegas Desert Classic (well done Phil 'The Power' Taylor). Throw in the Natwest Cricket Series match between New Zealand and England (result aside), the French Formula One Grand Prix and the start of cycling's Tour de France, it is a wonder that any of us sports fans without tickets to these events even left the house to do so much as buy the Sunday newspapers/wash the car/visit Granny. Or of course buy a car/visit the Sunday newspapers/wash Granny.
One organisation responsible for bringing coverage of many of these sports events on 4th July to homes around the world was BT Broadcast Services (BTBS), the broadcast and media solutions arm of British Telecom. At the time of writing, its crews were packing up their kit, ready to leave Portugal and the grass courts of SW19 in London respectively and travel home for a much-deserved cup of tea and the registering of second-hand towels and football/tennis balls on eBay.
BTBS was hired by ITV Sport in the UK to cover EURO 2004 following its successful contract with the broadcaster for the Rugby World Cup 2003. For that event, pictures were carried via three individual channels fed by four uplink trucks. And a 2 mbit data link with return path ensured ITV Sport had direct, continuous and reliable communications between Portugal and its London base. BTBS' next large sports event will be the 2004 Athens Olympics where it is part of the International Sports Television Services consortium (see View from the Editor: No sleeping satellites at SportelDubai - April 2004).
HDTV in action During June, BT Broadcast Services managed to entice S&T away from its television set and PC twice to showcase its broadcast capabilities and services. First stop was The Hospital High Definition (HDTV) Studio in London's Covent Garden where BTBS showed the Greece versus Spain EURO 2004 match in HDTV format over a glass of wine or two and some extremely tasty nibbles.
"We expect to see the roll-out of HDTV properly over the next couple of years," said John Beattie, director of broadcast sales at BTBS, who, bearing in mind the name of the venue, disappointedly did not introduce the event draped in a plastic stethoscope and thermometer twin-set. "And our role is to capture part of that market. This technology illustrates the sort of global service we can provide." BTBS offers a HD flight case that allows most trucks in its fleet to work with HD signals. This is then supported by BT's global fibre and satellite network that has HD capacity between London, New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Tokyo. The service supports flexible bandwidth, of 24Mb/s and 46Mb/s depending on customer requirements, and all current HD video and audio formats.
BT Broadcast Services routes its fibre and satellite feeds through the BT Tower - a prolific landmark on London's skyline - and location of S&T's second BT outing in June. Virtually every picture on UK television screens passes through the BT Tower which hosts the largest video switch in the world managing over 1m switching operations every year, an average of 3,000 per day. Over 50 satellite TV channels are transmitted throughout Europe from the London Teleport and customers further afield include, NBC, NHK, ESPN and Sky Italia.
Television control The BT Tower's International Media Centre (IMC), which went live in March 2003, offers customers 24-hour control and monitoring of their transmissions. "Technology is moving so fast," says Mark Wardle, director of technology and operations at BTBS. "The average life of a product used to be about 20 years, and now life cycles are shortening to as little as 18 months."
Prior to the launch of the IMC, all circuits were routed through the BT Tower which made operations extremely inflexible says Wardle. "Now, the IMC is like a car dashboard with the engine stored somewhere else - 150 PCs drive it but not one of them is in the main room of the IMC."
Resembling the control room at NASA, BT's IMC boasts a plethora of monitors and plazma screens that are constantly checking for breakdowns in transmission through a system of complex automatic alarms. The level of protection - or 'resilience' - that a client such as UK terrestrial broadcaster Channel 4 or digital service Freeview gets depends on how much they are prepared to spend. With the ramifications of a transmission going down during a high-profile sports event or during an advertising break being less than favourable, S&T was surprised to learn that not all commercial broadcasters in particular dig deeply into their pockets for full resilience. "Yet a couple of minutes of the advertising revenue lost if a transmission failed would pay for it," says Wardle. "At the end of the day, 99.99% is not good enough if the 0.01% lost is during the Wimbledon Final."
BTBS is a "service provider first and a technologist second," according to Wardle, but the company's ambition "is to make video as easy as telephony".
He adds: "With the technology and network reach we have with our partners, we can make that happen." S&T does not doubt it.
The SportShow 2004 and Online Bridge With S&T always on the look-out for examples of how technology is used to engage sports fans, a trip to London's Earls Court II for the SportShow in June was a definite must. Attractions on offer - apart of course from the excitement of watching the British Arm Wrestling Championships - included: the chance to partake in a 'nearest to the pin will win' golf simulator at the HSBC Golf Zone; the opportunity to thwack a few tennis balls against 'the wall' which has been built for Street Tennis, a new interactive tennis phenomenon apparently "sweeping the UK"; the chance to race or compete against Olympic times in rowing, weightlifting, volley ball, soccer, sprinting and middle distance running in The Swatch Experience; and the chance to bowl out a computerised Indian Test batsman in the Cricket Zone, powered by the World Cricket Academy. The genuine, non-simulated, bona fide, honest-to-goodness actual Rugby World Cup was also apparently on display, but that was a bit too real for us to look at. (Computerised version next year please organisers, with Jonny Wilkinson extras).
With S&T spotting adults practically fighting over who goes next in the HSBC Golf Zone (we still have the bruises), the Sportshow offered something for both nippers and grown-ups alike (with S&T of course falling somewhere in between the two).
Resembling a bizarre cross between a Fun Fair and SportelMonaco, the exhibition area of the Sportshow also hosted a diverse array of companies and sports bodies, keen to introduce their sports and products to the Great British public. Intriguingly, China Expo 2004 was being held simultaneously next door in Earls Court I and S&T couldn't help but wonder how many sports service companies were ferreting around the Beijing 2008 stand… (we were too stingy to pay for tickets so unfortunately couldn't do so ourselves).
Back in Earls Court II however, one of S&T's most gracious hosts (i.e., allowed us to loiter around its stand) was The International On-Line Bridge Club (IOBC) that enticed potential new players of the card game with the promise of teaching them Mini-Bridge, a shortened, less complicated version of the game. The IOBC - which operates www.bridgeclublive.com - aims to have 1,000 UK schools within five years playing Mini-Bridge. In association with the English Bridge Union, it is producing a CD-ROM that will include animated instruction on how to play Mini-Bridge; a programme enabling kids to practice playing the game; and the opportunity to play with other schools globally online. "This will help build a new generation of Bridge players," explained Po Shing Lee, operations director of the IOBC. The company's Bridge Club Live website is funded completed by subscription revenue and gives Bridge players the opportunity to play each other online. There are no virtual players on the site, and the chat area has facilitated the building of a Bridge community, says Lee. "We aren't promoting the website as a dating service by any means, but many of our members have built up friendships and two members have even got married." Aahh! That sure brings a nice warm feeling to S&T's heart (unlike the so-called British summer).
Loving the Twenty20 cricket | | Source: EMPICS |
Talking of dating, cricket's new 20-overs-a-side format (Twenty20), launched in England last year and shortly to be spreading overseas, has attracted a considerable new female audience and now there are plans to capitalise upon that with speed-dating in the crowd. Apparently, one English county, Warwickshire, plans to line up wanabee lovesters in a speed-dating scheme in which they will have until a wicket falls to chat up each other. Meanwhile, Worcestershire, has constructed a Jacuzzi by the boundary and Hampshire has built a Bondi beach replica to make its resident Australian spinner Shane Warne feel right at home, mate.
With that in mind, S&T packed its best bikini and sauntered seductively along to the Surrey versus Hampshire match at The Oval on 3rd July, sure that true love might literally be a ball's throw away. Would S&T meet the online or print-based publication of its dreams? (S&T is not fussy). Or perhaps the electronic scoreboard would be prepared to whisper sweet-nothings into S&T's ears during the changing of overs? No such luck - it was not so much whispering as actual full-volume shrieking of 1980s pop tunes that belted out around The Oval during that evening, every time a 'four' or 'six' was hit. With the aim of Twenty20 being to score as many runs as possible without the usual prudence of a Five-day Test Series, those 1980s tannoy tunes were still ringing in S&T's ears for a few hours after Surrey triumphed over Hampshire. "The only way is up, baaaaaabbbby…." However, lack of romance aside, the sing-along-a-big-score certainly kept the crowd entertained and S&T can see why the Twenty20 series is proving a big 'hit' (pun-tastic) with the English public.
Sadly, that's it for this month readers. S&T is off to find a potential electronic squeeze on one of the Bridge websites that has virtual players rather than, heaven forbid, real people (yikes). All that is left to say is that we hope you like the revamped S&T website and have hours of fun searching our archives for the technology and bits of kit stories that tickle your own fancies. Until next month……
Rachael Church - Editor If you have any comments or feedback on this article or any of the features in Sport and Technology, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please e-mail your comments to editor@sportandtechnology.com.
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