new wave TV

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Dave:


I thought you might find this article, scanned in from one of the UK
national papers last Monday, of interest.


Cheers


The Independent Monday 27 September 1993


Susan Watts


The Yachts that set off on the Whitbread Round the World Race carried the
weight of three extra crew members.


New wave television


To bring "live" footage to television viewers, the organisers of the
Whitbread Round the World Race have had to persuade the people who sail the
world's fastest and most expensive yachts to accept a box of electronics
weighing as much as three extra crew members. These are competitors so
dedicated to the performance of their hi-tech boats that they will even
discard the covers of books to keep the vessels as light as possible.


This year, for the first time, 10 of the yachts will carry the British
Telecom yacht video system so that they can send back the best and worst of
their times at sea. Yachts that do not take the system must carry an
equivalent weight instead.


After some crude editing in a mini onboard editing suite, participating
crews will forward their own two-minute clips through a Codec (essentially
a video version of a modem) to a satellite transceiver, which will send the
film via satellite to a ground station in Britain.


The footage is not strictly live, since it is stored, edited and then sent
in compressed form whenever conditions are suitable. A two-minute clip
contains so much information that it takes about 12 minutes to send. The
picture must then be built up from the bits that get through.


This is like finding the missing pieces of a jigsaw, says Edward Scott, who
heads the race project for BT. "These boats move around like corks so no
matter how good the tracking system is, the signal will get lost and have
to relock." BT has developed an error-correction system that finds the
missing information and resends it.


The stored picture then passes straight to BT Integrated Services Digital
Network, which sends it through fibre-optic links to Reuters' television
service; there it is decoded, edited on to videotape and released, via
London Sports Network, to any broadcaster throughout the world who wants
it.


"The beauty of the system is that it will allow television to do what it
does best- to go in and tell stories about people, and what it means to be
alone on the high seas," Mr Scott says.


Over the past two decades, communications in sailing have been transformed.
In the early Seventies the Whitbread race co-ordinators relied on
high-frequency radio to communicate with competitors. But this offered no
way of establishing where each yacht was, other than asking the crew to
relay their position. Chay Blyth, Britain's round-the-world yachtsman, is
said to have given headquarters his position and that of a French rival,
which later turned out to be twin peaks in the Ascension Islands.


In the last two races, yachts carried "dumb" beacons on a French satellite
link-up, called Argos, that sent off periodic location signals. But the
co-ordinators could obtain no idea of positions when they wanted them, only
as and when the signals came in.
This year, the race switched to Inmarsat satellite systems normally used by
ships, aircraft and trucks and added links to the world-wide global
positioning system, a network of satellites that can pinpoint a signal to
within 50 metres anywhere on the earth's surface.


Competitors and observers can also hook into a race information system that
gives facts and figures on each leg, such as speed, course and elapsed
time. The system includes voice messaging facilities, and any crew in
difficulty can use a "panic button" link to alert the world's rescue
services.