science

Sportvision

Sportvision 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 Sportvision rather than just read about it. In short: Sportvision was a private company, launched in January 1998, that provided various television viewing enhancements to a number of different professional sporting events. They worked with NFL, NBA, NASCAR, NHL, MLB, PGA and college football broadcasts.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Sportvision was a private company, launched in January 1998, that provided various television viewing enhancements to a number of different professional sporting events. They worked with NFL, NBA, NASCAR, NHL, MLB, PGA and college football broadcasts. Sportvision was co-founded by CEO Bill Squadron, CTO Stan Honey and COO Jerry Gepner, who had all worked together at Fox Sports and its parent company, News Corporation. The Emmy-award winning technology company introduced numerous groundbreaking innovations for sports broadcast, including the 1st & Ten yellow line for football and the K Zone pitch-tracking system for baseball, both done with ESPN. Sportvision's inventions paved the way for increased use of technology across sports and sports media. By way of background, in 1996, Rick Cavallaro, working for Stan Honey at Etak (then owned by Fox/News America) developed a way to track hockey pucks with a blue halo as seen by television viewers. It was assumed at that time that viewers had a hard time keeping track of the puck. Released as the FoxTrax puck, it was not a success but led to the 1998 formation of the Sportvision company and later that year the development of the 1st & Ten computer system, which generates and displays the yellow first down line that a TV viewer sees during a live football broadcast. The system became a major hit with television viewers when used during a broadcast of the Super Bowl. It has since become part of all standard American professional and college football and Canadian pro football broadcasts. Another popular Sportvision product is seen in broadcasts of NASCAR races. It is called RACEf/x, and creates virtual flags above the cars to make them easier to follow by the viewers. Sportvision also created the PITCHf/x system used by Major League Baseball to provide pitch data to users of MLB.com GameDay and viewers of Fox, Fox Sports Net, Rogers Sports Net and TBS, until its replacement by Statcast in 2017. The latest attempt for hockey was tested for deployment during the 2015 NHL All-Star weekend. The new system used computer chips to standardize and increase the volume of data tracked during the course of a game. In a deal finalized on October 4, 2016, Sportvision was acquired by SMT.

See also SMT (media corporation) PVI Virtual Media Services

References

External links http://www.sportvision.com/

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sportvision

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sportvision 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 Sportvision 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 Sportvision 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 Sportvision

In research: Sportvision 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 Sportvision 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: Sportvision is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2016 mergers and acquisitions, American companies disestablished in 2016, American companies established in 1998, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sportvision 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.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Sportvision” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Sportvision in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sportvision 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 Sportvision out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sportvision in simple terms?

Why does Sportvision 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 Sportvision?

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 Sportvision.