Blue Box Technology Brings Sailing To Life

28 January 2009

Blue Box Technology Brings Sailing To Life

tvnz.co.nz’s presentation of the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series will offer the most sophisticated animation technology yet – thanks to a small blue waterproof box fitted to all competing yachts.

The boxes, each smaller than a house brick, will send a constant stream of high quality data to computer graphics software, allowing tvnz.co.nz and Sport Extra viewers to follow a real-time, blow-by-blow ‘virtual’ race, seen from every conceivable perspective on any PC.

Coverage of the series begins on January 30 (weather permitting), and every day of racing will be live-streamed on tvnz.co.nz and screened on Sport Extra (Freeview Channel 20).  Racing begins at 10.30am.

The finals series, featuring Team New Zealand, will be live-streamed on the 13th and 14th of February.  The “Virtual Eye” coverage will be accompanied by commentary from John McBeth.

TVNZ will have race-by-race and daily highlights packages available online and podcast internationally.

www.tvnz.co.nz/sailing will be available from Thursday 29 January as a dedicated site for the LV Pacific series with news, videos, podcasts, event information and exclusive content from TVNZ’s yachting expert Martin Tasker.

TVNZ’s Head of Emerging Business, Jason Paris, says the ‘Blue Box’ technology supplied by Animation Research Ltd is superior to anything seen previously, and testing has delivered the most consistent data the company has ever had.

TVNZ’s coverage is part-funded by NZ on Air, which does not generally support sports programming.

“It’s fantastic that NZ on Air has helped make this happen.  They allocated funding from their Digital Content Partnership Fund because of the high level of innovation associated with the online presentation, and the new opportunity to promote and present a live, high-profile event to an online New Zealand audience,” Mr Paris said.

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