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Australian Open resorts to animated caricatures to bypass broadcast restrictions
- grajaganDev 2y ago"the Australian Open’s own channel has streamed select matches using cartoonish avatars of players instead of the actual broadcast." LOL - but why not? They need to do this for every sport.
- defrost 2y agoThere's a startup here for someone . . . Could even work for CSPAN, QuestionTime, and other political coverage ..
- inglor_cz 2y agoPresidential debates... perhaps the viewers could even choose their favorite skin etc.
- teractiveodular 2y agoThen plug in another AI that maps the cartoons back to deepfakes of the original players, and the circle of life is complete.
- nxobject 2y agoInstead of filling NFL game broadcasts with absurd amounts of graphics overlaid on camera footage, we could go the opposite direction and show minimalist renderings of live NFL games. Revolutionary.
- scripturial 2y agoI assume eventually there will be an upsell product that allows you to watch with a 3D/VR courtside view. I’m kind of surprised it doesn’t exist already. I think Apple would sell a few more headsets if they made this happen.
- YokoZar 2y agoSomewhat halfway would be a slightly delayed version of the game using much better-in-hindsight decisions about which camera angles to show during a play.
- Philpax 2y agoApple are recording footage - there are immersive videos on the AVP for MLS and a few other things, and they're tremendous, but nobody is streaming them yet. It's a lot of data, which I assume hasn't been cracked yet. In addition, the real end-goal would be complete 3D reconstruction that lets you view the stadium from any angle, but I imagine that's a few years away still - lots of technical problems to solve to create a scene and stream it in real-time.
- crooked-v 2y agoYea, there have been a few events where the (very expensive) Apple custom 3D rig has appeared courtside with no details given. It still remains to be seen what they're going to actually put out using it, since the Apple 3D content so far is extremely limited.
- ascagnel_ 2y agoThey do, at least in the US, as viewership has dropped and leagues have struggled to attract younger viewers. - The NFL provided a SpongeBob-themed alt-cast for a game last weekend -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcHIfPERX0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcHIfPERX0s - F1 has a similar graphics package+commentary for kids -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xUBfP2-BEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xUBfP2-BEA - The NHL used their new-ish player position tracking tech to produce a real-time (or at least near-real-time) game themed to Big City Greens last year, and is set to do another in a few weeks -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCupuTnNmQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCupuTnNmQ0 - The NBA has similar position-tracking tech, and used to animate a game on Christmas, with Mickey Mouse watching -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE68Q4oPcPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE68Q4oPcPs
- voidfunc 2y agoLet's do this for baseball.. would probably make everything way more interesting
- whartung 2y agoMLB StarCast generates ~7TB of data per game. I assume the bulk of that is video from the high speed cameras.
- oplav 2y agoMLB does something similar called Gameday 3D. https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-gameday-3d-guide https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-gameday-3d-guide The main difference is that it's rendered client side so you can control the camera for yourself. You can watch in real time during the season, the latency is around 30 seconds behind live action.
- mopenstein 2y agoAt one point data for every MLB game was available from MLB.com. I started writing a RBI baseball simulator using said data and the graphics from the NES game. But then I realized I'm not that good at programming but I still think it would've been neat to watch game 3 of the 1970 world series as played out by 1985 video game graphics.
- pedalpete 2y agoDoesn't this harm the long-term value of AOs rights sales to the broadcasters? If I know AO is going to broadcast on youtube, why am I as a European broadcaster going to pay them the same amount as I did when they weren't trying to work against me?
- tsujamin 2y agoI don’t think long-term value is their guiding star, if their previous NFT forays are anything to go by
- yardstick 2y agoYeah it very much feels like a case of biting the hand that feeds. What’s the long term goal of AO by doing this?
- zmgsabst 2y agoSurvival amid viewer shifts away from traditional broadcasts. The people who they sell the rights to are less valuable partners, so AO feels comfortable making them a less valuable offer while pursuing other audiences.
- tomhoward 2y agoIt’s weird how invisible tennis is on television in Europe. I was traveling in Spain and Italy last year when Roland Garros was on, which included major highlights like Nadal’s (likely) last ever match there and strong performances from European players like Alcaraz, Sinner, Tsitsipas and Zverev (indeed almost all of the current top ten men are European). But it was only on the pay channel EuroSport, which many homes (and thus Airbnbs) don’t seem to have, and was only available for us in one upmarket hotel in Spain we stayed in for an indulgence for one night. So the tournament promoters may be making the calculation that if the current TV rights holders aren’t ultimately getting many eyeballs watching their events, they need to do other things to build/maintain the profile of the sport with a view to one day offering it only via the internet (particularly if broadcast TV continues to decline and the networks can no longer afford large rights deals).
- nxobject 2y agoIf you missed the best at the bottom, it turns out that Tennis Australia does VC investing too now: > Tennis Australia has funded several startups through its venture capital fund as it looks to push into the technology space, including a failed flirtation with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that concluded last year. > The fund, AO Ventures, is worth US$30 million (A$41.8 million) and includes support from Tesla chair Robyn Denholm’s Wollemi Capital Group (which also has investments in the NBL and the Sydney Kings), as well as Art Gallery of NSW chair Mark Nelson and Packer confidante Ashok Jacob.
- DidYaWipe 2y agoLove it. I'm surprised they're allowed to use the audio, though. In the USA, the licensing notices specifically prohibit use of even "the descriptions" that appear in a broadcast. I suppose they'll close that loophole in other countries. The whole regime is a big F-U to fans, and to the taxpayers who subsidize these teams out the wazoo.
- randall 2y agoyou can’t copyright facts. descriptions of the broadcast might be copyrighted, but stating facts of the individual events can’t actually be copyrighted, regardless of what the nfl and olympics say in their disclaimer.
- stonesthrowaway 2y ago> but stating facts of the individual events can’t actually be copyrighted, regardless of what the nfl and olympics say in their disclaimer. That's interesting. Does that mean someone could go to an NFL game and broadcast the play by play of the game? Stating facts like: "It's 4th and goal, mahomes drops back and passed to kelce for a touchdown". You could legally broadcast that?
- NhanH 2y agoThe corporation certainly can kick you out of the stadium, but any law that can make such broadcast illegal is probably nigh unconstitutional in the US.
- jkaplowitz 2y agoIt’s amazing how many constitutional rights are allowed to be restricted by contract in the US. First Amendment free speech rights are on that list.
- drysine 2y ago>First Amendment free speech rights are on that list. Do you think NDAs should be prohibited?
- boomboomsubban 2y agoI like watching random sports on YouTube so saw this yesterday. I could only manage a minute, it was just bizarre. It did make me wonder how I could watch the Australia Open, but I wasn't willing to subscribe to ESPN to see it. Not bad advertising really.
- Eridrus 2y agoESPN+ is $12 for a month via Hulu. Seems pretty reasonable to me. Finding this info is ridiculous though.
- boomboomsubban 2y agoI have a low tolerance for paying to watch advertisements.
- ANewFormation 2y agoOf your primary interests in life where would you rank ESPN+? Now multiply that by $12 to get an overall impact since presumably you would be willing to pay at least as much for things you value more highly. This is why "just" $x per month is, in general, not a sustainable model for most things for most people and why 'piracy' is booming again.
- apitman 2y agoIs piracy booming again? Google trends show interest in Bittorrent has been flat since 2017.
- xboxnolifes 2y agoqBittorrent has been on a very gradual climb. Though, most people pirate through streaming sites, not torrents.
- shakna 2y agoPiracy is tending to happen via archive services now, rather than torrenting. The pirates are less sophisticated, so the distribution methods are "more familiar" to them.
- zfg 2y agoNothing like a bit of synthetic tennis: https://cs.stanford.edu/~haotianz/vid2player/ https://cs.stanford.edu/~haotianz/vid2player/
- courseofaction 2y agoIs there a level of fidelity at which the animated character becomes an issue? Are we going to be seeing unreal engine powered photorealistic characters before this loophole is closed? Does the rights holder have to specify that the motion data is not acceptable for rebroadcast? On the surface this seems like a cheap abuse of loopholes and any broadcast partner would be looking at them askance and consulting contacts and lawyers...
- numpad0 2y agoAnimation bone format probably needs a redesign. Human anatomy is universally represented as a simple chain of sticks with ball joints at the end, which is good enough for many purposes but not ideal for closeup shots of muscular figures.
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]
- edgarvaldes 2y agoLast FIFA World Cup I was looking for recaps on Youtube after the day's matches. A lot of results were unofficial videogame recreations (think XBox EA Sports FC) of the real match final score. It was very weird.
- BurningFrog 2y agoYeah, they were good enough that it took a while for me to realize why they seemed off. Creepy stuff.
- nyjah 2y agoIn case anyone is wondering how to pay for and watch tennis in US: there is a tennis tv app. That app allows you to watch the men’s tour. There’s another app, the tennis channel app, that is for the women’s tour and maybe some other random tourneys. Neither of those apps have the grand slams tho, ie the Australian open. For that , in the US you need espn plus and can’t get away from ads. And then there’s also the French open. And between nbc, peacock and whatever else, beyond pirating the matches, I’ve genuinely been stumped trying to pay for it legitimately. I saw this the other day on YouTube and it made me turn on the real thing.
- mbajkowski 2y agoThis is 100 percent the truth. Watching tennis in the US has become increasingly frustrating. I almost long for the old days where one could count on one of two channels to always have coverage. I wish Amazon, Netflix, YouTube or similar would step up and secure all the rights from college to Grand Slam tennis.
- djtango 2y agoNot quite on the subject of sports, but in Singapore sometimes it's really hard to pay to stream/download random movies/shows. Territorial rights just don't make sense anymore and I will die on this hill. The whole point about Netflix was that it proved that customers know what they want if you make it available. We now have global-first distribution channels why is it still so slow to disrupt those old creeky TV players
- chii 2y ago> The whole point about Netflix was that it proved that customers know what they want if you make it available. yes, but the media rights owners want the maximum money from their viewers, where as netflix model leaves money on the table. It's why i almost always resort to piracy, now that netflix has lost a lot of their licenses for stuff as media rights owners start their own walled gardens.
- djtango 2y ago
- JimDabell 2y agoThis reminds me of the voice ban Thatcher enacted in the UK back in the late 80s relating to the Troubles. It was illegal to broadcast the voices of representatives of specific political groups (apart from during elections). Mainly Gerry Adams, who was leader of Sinn Féin, a party strongly linked to the IRA and terrorism. The law was overly specific, so broadcasters, including the BBC, just dubbed his voice with a soundalike.
- defrost 2y agoSpitting Image had a lot of fun during those days with puppets and voice actors. Puppet Gerry Adams made a comeback on radio years later: https://youtu.be/vutbvLbRiMk?t=64 https://youtu.be/vutbvLbRiMk?t=64
- isodev 2y agoI would love to see a revival of this tbh. Everyone could benefit from not hearing or reading <insert rich guy that shall not be named> ever again.
- benreesman 2y agoI wish there was a browser extension where you you ad-block people’s voices while still hearing the news. When shit like that works well by default with very little effort or downside? That’s some AI I can get excited about. This tennis thing is so cool, I hope we see more shit like this where AI comes down on the side of the little guy.
- rainonmoon 2y ago> I wish there was a browser extension where you you ad-block people’s voices while still hearing the news. You're gonna freak out when you find out about reading.
- benreesman 2y agoThat's pretty good, I'm stealing that. You've just motivated me to go buy the cord I need for my Kindle and probably made my life a few percent better by doing so.
- userbinator 2y agoI wonder if the relative acceptance of this has anything to do with the popularity of "vtubers".
- wdutch 2y agoI think vtuber sports could be an interesting genre! Real displays of athleticism and sportsmanship but with digital effects to augment it. Maybe it's already been done, I'm not particularly in touch with online trends.
- aktuel 2y agoI guess this is for the kind of person who thinks that Esports is sports.
- worthless-trash 2y agoI expected wii sports music on the introduction. Was disappointed.
- verisimi 2y agoNick Kyrgios isn't actually black though. Wierd.
- fshafique 2y agoWith all the motion tracking they're doing, they could replicate this in a VR environment. You could watch the cartoonified game like you're actually there.
- ascagnel_ 2y agoThe NHL[0] and NBA[1] have already done officially-sanctioned cartoonified simulcasts. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCupuTnNmQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCupuTnNmQ0 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE68Q4oPcPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE68Q4oPcPs
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amelius 2y agoHow would they animate this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD-FkGeeR-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD-FkGeeR-U
- emills08 2y agoSpeaking of brilliance, I'll do you one better. The feeds were also live-streamed in multiple languages using AI. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/akshat-prakash_watching-the-australian-open-2025-finals-activity-7289205119542304768-ZvD9 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/akshat-prakash_watching-the-a...