Goodyear Blimp Will Broadcast Monday Night Football Games in High Definition Using JV

[Gregg Lengling]

WAYNE, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 25, 2004--
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JVC PROFESSIONAL PRODUCTS COMPANY announced today an agreement with The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company whereby the Goodyear blimp will provide high definition (HD) aerial coverage of a number of Monday Night Football games using a system incorporating JVC's revolutionary DM-JV600U high definition MPEG-2 encoder and DM-D4600UC MPEG-2 decoder. The first-ever high definition telecast of a sporting event from a blimp was successfully transmitted during the August 9, 2004 telecast of ABC's pre-season Monday Night Football Hall of Fame game.

"Goodyear is proud to make TV history once again, with our HD aerial broadcast on ABC's Hall of Fame Game," said Jennifer Arnold, manager of airship broadcasting and public relations for Goodyear. "We look forward to enhancing more major sports, news and entertainment telecasts with our HD views from above."

The "Spirit of Goodyear" blimp, based in Akron, Ohio, broadcast the HD images of the Hall of Fame game nationwide, a technological feat made possible by the JVC DM-JV600U encoder and DM-D4600U(c) decoder, working together with a Nucomm, Inc. microwave system and Ikegami cameras.

"On August 9, 2004 we accomplished the first successful transmission of high definition pictures from the Goodyear blimp to a national audience," said Lawrence Librach, assistant vice president Business Development Broadcast & Entertainment for JVC PROFESSIONAL PRODUCTS COMPANY. "In the coming months of the fall sports season, every satellite truck operator and every network executive will be able to see a live demonstration of a complete HD solution from the 'Spirit of Goodyear.'"

The DM-JV600U is an advanced MPEG-2 encoder that takes the uncompressed HDTV signals from an Ikegami 1080i camera, and compresses them into a 25Mbs transport stream. The transport stream is then fed to the Nucomm Analog-Coder where it is converted and transmitted to a receiving station on the ground. The microwave signal is then demodulated back to the 25Mbs transport stream and fed to a production trailer on the ground. All of this is accomplished with "The Spirit of Goodyear's" existing analog microwave system. In the trailer, JVC's decoder converts the MPEG-2 data into a 720p feed for ABC's HDTV telecast. The signal is also converted to standard definition (SD) for transmission to ABC's regular feed, enabling non-HD viewers to still see crisp, clear blimp shots.

"HD aerial coverage elevates this platform to another level. Spectacular views now can be enjoyed in spectacular clarity," said Drew Esocoff, director of ABC Monday Night Football. ABC first began broadcasting select Monday Night Football games in HD during the 1999 National Football League (NFL) season. With the announcement that all 2004-2005 Monday Night Football games will be broadcast in HD, the ability to broadcast HD images from the blimp offers viewers a complete HD viewing experience. Goodyear has committed to providing all-HD coverage from the Goodyear blimp for all of the Monday Night Football games it is scheduled to cover.

The Goodyear blimps have been a familiar sight over American cities for more than 80 years, and, since 1960, have delivered aerial views of sporting events ranging from Nascar to the America's Cup Yacht races to Triple Crown to the Summer Olympics. Goodyear will use the HD broadcast system in the blimps to broadcast other live sporting events, including the upcoming U.S. Open in Flushing, NY to be broadcast on CBS.

Additional information on the DM-JV600U high definition (HD) MPEG-2 encoder and DM-D4600UC 4:2:0-4:2:2 MPEG-2 decoder and high-resolution photos are available on the trade press section of JVC's Web site at http://pro.jvc.com/blimp.