Earlier this week, Israeli broadcaster IBA came up with the first image of the 2005 score board. Blue and green are the main colours, and just like the points, the flags appear in glowing energetic balls. The spokesperson appears in the right top corner of the screen.

During a tender in 2002, vizrt was selected by the Estonian broadcaster ETV to develop the software behind the score board. “We had the following options. Get the scoreboard from Denmark (2001) which we didn't want. We could have used SVT's system, but we didn't like the limited possibilities we were left with plus there was a price issue. BBC's solution was way too expensive so it came down to vizrt. We chose vizrt because the price/performance ratio seems to be the best and we have seen what it can do. The system can even run on a PC”, the technical director of Tallinn 2002 said.

In 2003 (Latvia) and 2004 (Turkey), vizrt was again responsible for the technology behind the score board. From a PC on the scrutineer desk, the points are being entered into the system real time, which means they are entered as soon as the spokesperson gives them. With only a mouse click, the score board editor can give the douze points (as well as the other ones, of course). In case if anything goes wrong, an undo-button is available, as well as there is a backup system in case anything goes wrong at the scrutineer desk.

The system has been developed exclusively for the Eurovision Song Contest.

Photo gallery

With special thanks to TV & Radio Bits and Eurovil you can find images of several Eurovision Song Contest score boards in this gallery.