thewashingmachinepost ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

the future of cycling on the box

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first we had channel four's half hour coverage of the tour for many a long year, until it was decided that cricket was a bigger audience draw, and the tour was relegated to the wee small hours before it disappeared of the face of the four. but happily, at the time, analogue satellite television provided us with the wonder that was (and in mainland europe, still is) eurosport, before that was usurped by mr murdoch, digital and the appaling mess that masquerades as british eurosport.

and we would currently all be running round with hands on head shouting 'make it stop, make it stop' were it not for the cycling palliative that is cycling.tv. the advent of high speed telecomms has allowed those of us with an incurable cycling fix, to have it satiated at least in part while spending hours on sunday afternoons hunched over the laptop. yes broadband and cycling.tv have saved us from reverting to the days when there was no cycling on the box.

if you think i'm overstating the case, just bear in mind that there was no eurosport live coverage of amstel gold on sunday 22 april. however, just to prove that they have our very best interests at heart, british eurosport were showing an hour's highlights at 8am on wednesday 25th. and for the first time since british eurosport started broadcasting, there will be no live coverage of liege-bastogne-liege this coming sunday, 29th april. but there will be live coverage of snooker that is also being broadcast by the bbc. and that makes sense how?

cycling.tv have the rights for fleche wallone on wednesday 25th and liege on sunday 29th, but for north america only, because eurosport already have the rights, even though they're not broadcasting in the uk. frustrating? you bet.

james and david

but politics aside, how is it that we can sit and watch live cycle racing on our computers, even if some of us are the all but discarded minority watching on intel macs (only kidding james)? cycling.tv offices and studio sit atop an impressive block in warple way, just an incredibly long walk from shepherd's bush railway station (some of us just have no real sense of direction). if you arrive on a sunny day, as we did, the view from the office balconies is quite impressive, and probably more than welcome to those who spend most of their day staring at video screens, operating remote cameras or sitting in the studio presenting items for the tv schedule.

managing director, simon brydon, took us out on to one of the balconies to show us the large satellite dish that receives the broadcast feeds from whichever scheduled races are on the programme. the emergent signal is decoded and fed into a surprisingly compact and evidently mobile real-time editing suite. this device allows producer neal vaughan to add the audio feed from commentators anthony mccrossan and brian smith prior to 'broadcasting' the result onto cycling.tv's computer screen. now that all is mixed to satisfaction the signal is fed to a 'very expensive' encoder and fed out into the world of broadband, where those of us with the necessary subscription can choose the feed most appropriate to our broadband speed.

encoding rack

what happens, though, if it's not working properly in the browser? well, most of us will have become used to receiving e-mails from team@cycling.tv which is often a euphemism for james shakeshaft, one of the coolest guys we've met in a long while, and who must have an envious record for curing glitches and being patient when the incompetent ask obvious questions (who me?). from the desk opposite james, lauren manages the station's channel content.

anthony mccrossan, with whom i shall be cycling the london-paris ride in june this year, very generously gave of his time along with neal, to explain how the studio (often used by rebecca charlton for those race previews and news programmes) works and how it's all planned to develop. the addition of a sony bravia flat panel beside the presenters' (very comfortable) armchairs will soon allow the display of edited footage and race routes to enhance the pre and post race discussions. sitting outside the main studio are a couple of nle workstations where recorded footage is readied for the recently added 'on demand' segment of each channel. and just to remind us all that it's cycling.tv, there were an impressive number of nice shiny bikes in the corridor - objects of desire for the weekly bike basket show.

on the day we were there, anthony and brian bikes in the corridorshould have been out covering the scheldeprijs vlaanderen (won by mark cavendish), but due to a degree of truculence on behalf of the host broadcaster, this didn't happen. so although anthony was in the studio, brian smith was out testing a cannondale somewhere in the metropolis. but we did have a chat on anthony's mobile phone, partly about the gaeme obree movie from the previous evening.

so if you haven't already subscribed, i don't think it's too impertinent to ask why not. with the fading commitment of british eurosport, cycling.tv is the future of live cycling coverage and they've all got their heads screwed on properly. but progress costs money, and aside from advertising revenue, subscriptions will fund the future

it's what broadband was invented for.

cycling.tv ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

as always, if you have any comments on this nonsense, please feel free to e-mail and thanks for reading.

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