Page 13 - June 2007 The Game

Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper The Game, June 2007 13
Horseracing is television, an interesting conversation with Owen Corrigan.
A Look at Racing in British Columbia
By Jim Reynolds
Recently my couch potato zone received an upgrade in the form of a 42" Plasma HDTV, with satellite dish and HPI, the 24-hour horseracing channel - horseracing around the world around the clock.
One thing that jumped out right away was the lack of consistent picture quality. Watching my favourite baseball team (the Cards) or any major league sport for that matter, you are amazed at the picture, but from racetracks across North America the signal is inconsistent and often very poor.
Why, if they want to promote the sport to a new and younger audience doesn’t every racetrack put in high-definition cameras? Racetracks have to present a better picture if they want to promote our sport to new, techno-savvy fans that are used to MLB or NFL offerings.
Taking that question to Owen Corrigan, President of Telephoto, the guys who film 43 racetracks in North America would, hopefully, explain it in somewhat plain English.
What Owen did help me to understand is that, as yet, there is no firm answer in a rapidly changing technical world. Telephoto is currently determining what they should recommend to their customers to take advan- tage of the HD world and digital technology.
"It will cost a lot of money to upgrade tracks," says Owen. "It’s not just the cameras and the lenses required which are different for HD, and a typical lens cost $50,000, so you can imagine if you’ve got five or in Woodbine’s case seven cameras, that adds up to a lot of dollars. And then you put a higher quality camera behind it, that’s more expense.
"Then there’s this dilemma in North America about what constitutes HD. It
appears that the whole technological buzzword thing of HD is a cake that is not baked yet."
Telephoto’s contract with the Federal government is up in 2009 and the bid process for renewal will contain specifications for them to bid against, so between now and 2009 the government is going to have to determine what it is they are going to ask for.
"Not Telephoto or the racetracks," says Owen. " Although they’ll have some input. They have influence, and they should exercise it soon."
Currently there are several manufacturers producing different HD formats. The lowest quality version is better than what we are used to and an improvement for the fan. And cheaper to transmit, so that will become important for tracks that are worried about the cost of not only cameras but also televisions, modulators and transmission costs.
Owen feels the picture from the camera is not the problem. The solution lies in better production. "The quality coming from the camera is broadcast quality at all racetracks because we have a standardized government contract. Everybody gets the same cameras whether you’re at Lethbridge or Woodbine.
"What you said earlier is that you see variability of quality from track to track and yet what comes from the camera isn’t variable. The quality of the picture has to do with these other steps in between. Often budget controls what the patron ends up seeing.
It all works something like this. The camera produces the picture and it then goes into recording equipment, and that is variable, SBHS, digital disc, DVD, betacam etc. to suit the requirements of the local track and whom
they deliver it to. Fort Erie for example uses Betacam, a discontinued but affordable system. After it is transferred to tape it has to be played back, i.e. for review or adjudication by the stewards. And the live camera pictures have to be put to an uplink, again that picture varies from track to track. Then there is the satellite image that becomes a whole different set of variables and economics.
"The single most important thing racetracks can do to improve picture quality," says Owen. "Is to upgrade the infrastructure they have; the television system, the distribution of signal, and the extension of the distribution and delivery system for getting their signal to market.
"I see evidence of it [improvement] at Hastings and at Fraser Downs with new monitors. But new monitors are the end result. We need to work backwards through the system up the chain to the camera. For example by upgrading modulators, the devices that change the television pictures to something that can be seen on a monitor. Are the current modulators acceptable for passing digital high quality signals? That’s not the case at any track that I’m aware of. Nobody’s invested in that yet because it makes no sense to invest in it until the whole thing is a sort of symphony, cameras, monitors and delivery infrastructure. And when that all comes together it will probably be three to five years down the road.
"By then there will no longer be standard definition cameras on the market, no cathode ray tubes that limit the width and aspect ratio. Plasmas will probably be gone replaced by LCDs and maybe some DLPs and some laser technologies. So those things will determine for tracks what they will spend their money
on. It’s probably good business sense to wait. It’s a little early yet.
"Most people," he explained. "think of horseracing as horses and people betting on them and the reality is that it has evolved - now horseracing is television.
"This organization (GCGC/Hastings) has invested in a new graphics system to standardize all of their tracks; Hastings, Fraser, Georgian Downs, etc. to create a unified look so that when you see a row of TV sets in an OTB you will identify a Great Canadian Gaming track just by that look. For example, they put the odds laterally at the top.
"And Woodbine is trying to give people a new way of looking at the game and has total- ly recognized, and they’ve gone the whole nine yards, that their product is television. I’ll bet I can’t count on one hand the tracks in North America that have got that. In terms of their approach to things they get the picture and understand that horseracing is all about television. I recently heard that the Board of Directors has approved something like $11,8 million to upgrade their television product.
"So back to your original premise, you’ve bought a plasma screen and you want to see higher quality. The reasonableness of that assumption is that it is going to take the tracks some time to convert even if they went to HD cameras now."
Thanks Owen for, uh, clearing that up. Now I get the picture, knowing it will only get better in time.
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