Low Delay ‘Clip-on’ First at Silverstone
Juan Pablo Montoya won his first race for McLaren after a tense duel with Renault's Fernando Alonso at the British Grand Prix.
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| Images - Courtesy of Malcolm Bryan |
Another ‘first’ at Silverstone was the appearance of Gigawave’s new low-delay ‘Clip-on’ wireless camera system. Two of these systems, with a latency of less than one frame, were used to film pit lane action and paddock interviews as part of ITV Sport’s live coverage of the event.
BBC Outside Broadcasts have, for the first half of the season, been using been using two standard D-Cam ‘Clip-on’ wireless camera systems as part of their contract with production company, ‘North One’. However, Gigawave engineers took advantage of the short break between the French Grand Prix in Magny Cours and the recent British Grand Prix to upgrade both 3.5GHz systems to ‘low delay’.
A Gigawave driver collected the two systems on the Tuesday afternoon and returned them to Silverstone on the Thursday morning, immediately prior to the British Grand Prix. After satisfying themselves that the systems performed to specification BBC Outside Broadcasts engineers immediately put them to work in the pit lane and paddock areas.
According to the engineers on site, the performance of the system was totally unaffected by the new encoding techniques. Likewise there is no apparent loss in quality. On the contrary, subjective tests suggest that the picture quality has improved.
So, in every respect, the new low delay D-Cam ‘Clip-on’ will take a lot to beat. For British driver, Jenson Button, it was a different story. Button, who started second on the grid, was no match for the McLarens or Renaults and had to be satisfied finishing in fifth place, 40 seconds behind the winner. Now that is serious delay!
Silverstone, UK - July 2005
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