BBC, SIS LIVE Put Focus On Murray as Wimbledon Reaches Final Weekend

With Andy Murray in the men’s semi-final against Rafael Nadal at this year’s Wimbledon, British hopes are high for a home-grown champion and host broadcaster the BBC is reflecting the mood of tennis fans in the nation.

The 2010 tournament has already thrown up enough sporting drama, with men’s title holder Roger Federer and five-times women’s singles champion Venus Williams out of the running, all of it captured in high definition and 5.1 for the BBC HD channel. The broadcaster is also showing full coverage on BBCs One and Two, the Red Button and the BBC Sport website, as well as producing the international feeds. BBC Radio Five Live is carrying full commentary and analysis.

TV outside broadcast facilities are provided by SIS LIVE, with a total of 75 Sony cameras being used around the courts. The only change from last year’s arrangements is the introduction of the X-mo high-speed HD camera from Inertia Unlimited. The system can shoot at up to 6933 frames per second for 720p and in excess of 2700fps for 1080i.

Nine courts were covered during the first week of the competition, with the figure falling to seven for the second.

TV coverage has been live during the day, with highlights on BBC Two every evening. Live action is streamed to BBC Online, with text commentaries delivered to mobile phones. As well as live streaming the BBC Sports website offers on-demand highlights, plus interviews from the main TV production and live scoring. The Red Button interactive service has a variety of viewing options, with a choice of up to five live matches, highlights and replays of the big games.

Up to two complete matches each day have been available on the BBC iPlayer, which also carries the Today at Wimbledon highlights programme.

International broadcasters and media groups are out in force in SW19, including Japanese pay TV service WOWOW, The Tennis Channel, Channel 9 and IMG. All are using equipment supplied by hire company Presteigne Charter, which is working with The Tennis Channel for the first time at Wimbledon.

The system Presteigne is providing is smaller than the one used by The Tennis Channel for the French Open but is still a complex set-up. Based on an EVS and IP Director network the installation features a Grass Valley Kayak vision mixer, a Pro-Bel Sirius 96×96 HD-SDI video router, with four Sony HDC-1500 camera channels and a PDW-700CB HD XDCAM camcorder.

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