Pixel Power Demonstrates Statistical Simplicity With Sports Info Leader STATS

Article	Dynamic graphics for sports television with minimum staff and resources Pixel Power is demonstrating how broadcasters can deliver comprehensive sports statistics live, thanks to a new alliance with STATS LLC, the world’s leading sports information, content and statistical analysis company. By combining data from STATS and the automated graphics creation of Pixel Power, production companies will be able to maintain the flow of statistics that sports fans demand while saving on specialist crew in the truck. STATS, owned jointly by the Associated Press and News Corporation, has a global reach and collects statistics on a huge range of sports from the big American games to sports such as cricket and rugby, taking in martial arts and poker on the way. Its sports statistics are continually updated and provide a wealth of detail in real time, fast enough to be used in live television coverage. Pixel Power has a drag and drop application called Pixel Control Toolbox. This allows an operator to build simple bespoke control interfaces for sophisticated graphics sequences. Pixel Control Toolbox can also interrogate external data sources – such as the STATS database – automatically to add information to the pre-defined graphics. Together, STATS and Pixel Power allow a single operator to create all the statistical sequences a director or sports fan could possibly desire. “Creating the statistics graphics for live sports events is usually a labour-intensive business, calling for a statistician or two, plus a production assistant just to get the information together to pass to the character generator,” said James Gilbert, director of Pixel Power. “Using Control Toolbox linked to STATS you only need a single operator, calling up templates from a simple menu which are automatically populated and ready to go. “That is a huge saving in resources and also makes for easier communication under the pressure of live broadcasting,” Gilbert added. “We see this alliance with STATS as being a huge benefit for sports production companies around the world, looking to boost their on-air look efficiently.” As well as covering more than 55,000 events a year with realtime data, STATS maintains massive historical databases, allowing any statistical requirement to be met. As well as live event production, the simple interface could also be used to generate an automated sports ticker or news feed using the STATS’ robust data feeds.
Company	Pixel Power
Date Published	9/5/2008
News Category	Industry News