Vizrt graphics add an entirely new dimension to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway race experience.
Originally published by AVNetwork
Screaming across the pavement at 230 miles per hour, today's IndyCars are marvels of modern technology. But up until this spring, the technology at the facility that hosts the sport's greatest event, the Indy 500, was relatively ancient.
The new permanent control and broadcast room replicates the components usually found in mobile broadcast trucks, and supplies the HD video feeds and graphics to the video boards around the track.
At Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the world's largest-capacity sports venue, the technology for the in-venue broadcast systems was 10 to 15 years old, and based on 4:3 aspect ratio, standard-definition video. Due to the success of Panasonic's work at other major sporting venues over the past few years, including Texas Motor Speedway and Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, the speedway management chose the company to upgrade its aging infrastructure. But to do so presented some distinct challenges.
The unique part of working with Indy is that there's so much history, and the facilities have so much historical significance, said Keith Hanak, executive vice president of AV Solutions at Panasonic. So many of the things that they needed us to do were to keep with the tradition of the things that their fans have come to expect.
The biggest expectation, Hanak said, was the sightlines. Unlike the other racetrack installations, where the company was able to install one or two massive video boards, the peculiarities of the facility at Indianapolis made such an arrangement unfeasible without disturbing spectators' views across the infield. So Hanak and his team decided to go with a distributed solution, with 20 large video boards positioned around the 2.5-mile track.
The newly renamed Panasonic Pagoda, which houses the control room.
These video boards-composed of Panasonic video wall modules ranging from 10-millimeter enhanced resolution LED to 16-millimeter SMD LED-augment the spectating experience, providing fans with high-definition views of the entire speedway. But what the fans don't see is the technology that drives these displays: the equipment in the new broadcast and control room housed within the Pagoda, the distinctive, 13-story-tall, glass-sheathed tower at the start/finish line.
Steven Webber, systems engineer at Panasonic, was tasked with designing the broadcast and control system, which was to be a permanent installment of all of the components typically found in the mobile broadcast trucks that accompany almost every televised sporting event.
Some of the equipment found in the room includes Forecast Consoles custom furniture, a tvONE CORIOmaster mini display controller, NewTek 3Play video replay system, Blackmagic Design 40x40 router, Panasonic AV HS6000 32-input switcher, and a Vizrt graphics system, which Webber implemented for the very first time in this install.
The integration of the Vizrt graphics system was very unique, Webber said. It was a very complex, new setup for Vizrt, that uses graphic animations and their new scaling abilities of their newest systems. So we helped beta test it with engineers in Norway.
The Vizrt system, made up of the Viz Trio and Viz Engine HD SDI, adds an entirely new dimension to the race experience for spectators. The system pulls myriad data, including all of the car timing and telemetry, and displays it on the video boards. So not only can the race audience view the action on the entire track, but they can see all of the data behind it as well.
One of the 20 new HD video boards at the speedway. The Vizrt graphics system in the control room can supply these screens with a wealth of data, including speeds, race positions, and car telemetry.
They can look up and see the top order of the cars, who's in number one position, their speeds, their tachometers, all the telemetry about their cars' information like how hard they're breaking in the corners or who's following them, Webber said. It's all put through the Vizrt system, and presents it on the LED screens in a nice way for the audience. We customized that solution for Indy.
According to Hanak, engineering the solution that Panasonic ultimately implemented took two months longer than the actual installation. The team worked from August 2014 until this January designing the system, and worked from then until mid-May to integrate it.
Webber said that the video feeds were able to be distributed on most of the preexisting fiber-optic infrastructure, with only about 10 percent of the cabling needing replacement. In the end, the labor seems to have paid off, in a technologically enhanced show at the event known as The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.
Better than 98 percent of the viewing audience-which is 300,000- plus people for the main event, the Indy 500-a better view of the race than they ever had previously, said Hanak. We're very pleased of where we ended up in terms of the improved experience for the fans.
Read the original article.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Vizrt graphics add an entirely new dimension to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway race experience.
