The story behind football's innovative yellow first down line
sportsillustrated.cnn.com
sportsillustrated.cnn.com
Due to the yellow line technology, or some other augmentation they were doing live on the feed, all of the players would appear translucent for brief periods. It was really weird, but it made me stop and think about how many impressive live-processing algorithms get their hands on the video before it gets to me. It was the first time I appreciated how tough it is to do the "yellow line". This article is a very interesting insight to how it came about.
That was my favorite game of the year.
When it fails, it makes people look life frosted glass [2], but actually it's extraordinary that it's still working almost perfectly.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9qYZCl_F8I [2]: http://i.imgur.com/FExuLmY.png
[1]: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/Bronco_Stadium...
So interesting to see that FOX balked at the seemingly low $25k but ESPN didn't flinch and insisted on exclusivity for games they didn't even have rights to. Telling of how the networks viewed themselves and each other, but also how important it is to find the customers that are the true believers.
given the price per game and the market value for that, it seems like a low price to screw your competition. by insisting on an exclusive deal they couldn't use it in the playoffs - anywhere. what a well played "screw you buddy" move.
ESPN is the 800# gorilla when it comes to TV programming and just about every cable network is trying to emulate them.
"Hey, how's it going?" "Super busy!"
I don't miss that part of the culture.
Why? This quoted line above specifically.
When I did see the glowing puck it made me feel like I was watching NBA Jam on Ice.
The blue glowy bit is ok I think but that red tail comet is atrocious, it is completely distracting, covers up waaay to much of the screen.
Would you have been happy with just the blue glowy affect?
nope, agree with the other follow up - HD is good enough that any "enhancements" are now a distraction.
In terms of helping novices understand the game better, maybe visual indications of the zone the puck is in could be interesting, or direction of play so it's easier to understand off side and icing calls would be more helpful.
Another way to put that is that you can tell where the puck is based on the behavior of the players, and that's what you're actually watching. I'm only a casual fan, but I think I'd know where the puck is even if it was actually invisible.
The posters below who say it was a terrible invention are missing the point. The technology needs to be more advanced, not less: visual effects on the puck should be at the option of the viewer.
I am tempted to think that this was the first widely adopted (and accepted) instance of augmented reality. Very cool in that context!
We have a bay in our lab with a to-scale football field where we can run indoor tests, but on the field it is computer vision that is doing it all. The cameras are instrumented to get attitude, zoom, and so on (we have to modify the lens to get the accuracy we need), and then of course you have to compensate for lens distortion. If you look closely, the "line" is not a line, but a curve. If we drew a line it would look stupid, and not reg well in most parts of the image.
I can also imagine MLB having similar concerns as the NFL when, for instance, they insisted on removing the line as the ball is being spotted. That is, if they are showing the strike zone and the ump's call seems inconsistent, then it wouldn't be a "good look" for the sport.
Also, in speed skating, the technology gets used to project a moving line indicating where a skater should be to reach some goal (win the race, world record, etc)
Is there no HD footage for these events? Or do even short extracts get removed due to copyright issues?
Try searching for just "first down" with football, or viewing some game highlights on NFL.com.
The yellow line is impressive because it's done on Live TV though not as a replay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBFor0BgTEw
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7825468
They probably knew some people.
This article opens in May of 1998, just one month before the final use of the glowing puck in June of 1998. By this point everybody in that meeting must have known how hockey fans had reacted to the glowing puck. The interesting thing is that they bravely forged ahead anyways!
Execution may have been the key difference in fan acceptance. Fox made the puck into a giant glowing and color-shifting comet that practically screamed, "PEW PEW PEW!!!". These guys made a simple line that was meant to look, as much as the technology would allow, like a simple chalk line on the turf that some poor slob had to create (while erasing another) after every down. Would we still have puck-following tech in the NHL if Fox had been run by people with even the tiniest amount of taste or restraint?
The team that has the ball has four tries (i.e. downs) to advance the ball 10 yards. If the team that has possession is abl to advance the ball 10 yards or more within four tries, the marker is reset to the next 10 yards. That's why it's insufficient to mark the lines on the field: if I started at the 10 yard mark and advanced to the 12 yard mark, the line would have to be placed at the 22 yard mark. Painting lines would mean that the entire field would eventually have to be painted and unpainted.
I love American football but it's pretty much an acquired taste (lots of stoppage time, tons of instant replay, incomprehesible rules, heart-breaking inconsistency in the officiating, etc.)
This was before Google Maps, before GPS, and before digital maps of cities. You couldn't just go out and buy them in 1983; Stan's company, Etak, had to create them itself [1].
Per [2], here's a description of the the hardware platform:
The original Etak Navigator was a specially-packaged Intel 8088-based
system with 256K RAM, 32K EPROM, 2K SRAM, and a cassette tape drive
on which digital maps and some of the operating system were stored.
edits for formatting
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[1] Source: Personal conversation
His example was of the MLB, SportVision has high-resolution data on every single pitch, the MLB teams are paying through the nose for that data to run through their analytics. SportVision indicated that, based on ball trajectory, they often know more about the state of a given pitcher's health than the team or the pitcher themselves.
"Football" existed before, but simplifying somewhat, just about all the modern games of football derive from rules codified at British private-education schools in the 19th century. So for example, rugby football originated at Rugby private-education school, which then developed into American football. Off the top of my head I can think of association football, American football, Canadian football, rugby football, Australian rules football and Gaelic football.
Another company in the field (PVI) at about the same time used vision-based technology to similar effect. They got into a mutual patent infringement battle and ended up settling by cross-license.
I'm still trying to figure out why NBC (maddeningly) doesn't show the line of scrimmage. At one point I saw some vague report that NBC uses the third company in this space (SportsMEDIA) and that company has a license to the patent for the first down line but not the patent for the line of scrimmage. Which sounds silly and plausible at the same time. However, they advertise line of scrimmage as available: http://www.smt.com/products/smart/line-visual-insert-publish...
It is probably a policy decision based on a 2008 in-game controversy where the line of scrimmage was a yard off and one of the broadcasters (Madden) was using it as a basis for evaluating the call, and didn't know that the officials can't see the line.
In either case, they need to deal with it and get the line of scrimmage back in. It's a very annoying omission.
i think i've seen something similar, but it would be cool to have full on video-game style indications. player markers, etc.