science

PVI Virtual Media Services

PVI Virtual Media Services is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand PVI Virtual Media Services rather than just read about it. In short: PVI Virtual Media Services is one of the companies behind the virtual yellow-down-line shown on television broadcasts of American football games in the United States and Canada. Founded in 1990 as Princeton Electronic Billboard, PVI Virtual Media Services was a wholly owned subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corporation (NYSE: CVC) with a research and operations facility in Lawrenceville, NJ before being acquired by…

Key takeaways

PVI Virtual Media Services belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect PVI Virtual Media Services to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of PVI Virtual Media Services from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

PVI Virtual Media Services is one of the companies behind the virtual yellow-down-line shown on television broadcasts of American football games in the United States and Canada. Founded in 1990 as Princeton Electronic Billboard, PVI Virtual Media Services was a wholly owned subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corporation (NYSE: CVC) with a research and operations facility in Lawrenceville, NJ before being acquired by ESPN in December, 2010.

Services

The company pioneered the vision-based, match moving technology that allows the virtual insertion of images and video into broadcast video signals in real time, i.e., while the program is being broadcast. In addition to the virtual yellow down line, the technology has been used to place virtual advertising in broadcasts of soccer, baseball, ice hockey games and, more controversially, on some TV news shows, including the CBS 2000 New Year's Eve show when an NBC logo behind Dan Rather in Times Square, NY, was covered over with a virtual CBS logo. Originally marketed as L-VIS (Live Video Insertion System), their systems are now called inVU systems to emphasize their use of pattern recognition of images, and that motion sensors are not required on the broadcast cameras that the system is working with.

History The company was founded as Princeton Electronic Billboard (PEB) in 1990 by Roy Rosser and Brown Williams, based on patents on match moving enhancements filed by Roy Rosser. Brown Williams had been a senior manager at David Sarnoff Research Center (now part of SRI International) and knew that they had developed advanced, vision based pattern recognition and tracking technology for various U.S. defense agencies. A contract was placed with Sarnoff to develop a prototype that was delivered in early 1994. Although the prototype showed great promise in the laboratory, it proved wholly inadequate when tried out at the Baltimore Orioles 1994 season opener. Roy Rosser and a small team of programmers and consultants spent the next 18 months re-engineering the system, inventing novel methods and algorithms of pattern recognition and tracking so that the match making could work to the standards required by TV broadcasters under the variable conditions of a real game using the computing power then available. In July 1995, the system was first used to place virtual advertising behind home plate on a cable broadcast of a Trenton Thunders game. Later in the year, the L-VIS system was used to provide Parmalat virtual advertising in the center-circle of a soccer pitch during the Parmalat Cup played at the NJ Meadowlands Stadium. In April 1996, the San Francisco Giants became the first Major League Baseball team to regularly use the L-VIS system for virtual insertions for their home games at Candlestick Park. In March 2002, PVI acquired Israeli company SciDel Technologies, from its founders and major shareholder Scitex Corporation. SciDel developed a technology to insert electronic virtual advertisements into live and taped televised sporting events, which it sold as a managed service in the European market. On April 16, 2004, PVI aired Strike Zone, High Home Cam, and Ball Tracer on Fox's prime time broadcast of a New York Yankees–Boston Red Sox game. However, Fox retired those three graphics after the prime time telecast. In December 2010, PVI was acquired by ESPN. The R&D team moved from the old Lawrenceville NJ office to a new office building near the Hamilton train station. The team continued the effort of inserting virtual graphics in sports broadcasting. College Football, Basketball, Baseball, NBA production at ESPN uses vMagic for many different effects. On July 20, 2017, ESPN announces to the PVI team that their jobs are eliminated and the office is closed.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with PVI Virtual Media Services

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what PVI Virtual Media Services claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to PVI Virtual Media Services before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about PVI Virtual Media Services ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of PVI Virtual Media Services

In research: PVI Virtual Media Services appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses PVI Virtual Media Services in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: PVI Virtual Media Services is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics ESPN, Mass media companies established in 1990, Sports television technology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for PVI Virtual Media Services outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study PVI Virtual Media Services in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what PVI Virtual Media Services means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain PVI Virtual Media Services out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is PVI Virtual Media Services in simple terms?

Why does PVI Virtual Media Services matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study PVI Virtual Media Services?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on PVI Virtual Media Services.