The five-member build team uses a Polycom HDX 8000™ series room telepresence system outfitted with a 42-inch Polycom Media Center plasma display. Pevsner’s Baltimore desktop is equipped with a Polycom HDX 4000, a personal telepresence system that features an integrated monitor, cameras and speakers. Both systems provide Polycom UltimateHD™ technology, which delivers true HD video, content and audio.

Ten-Part Series Features Polycom Systems in Supporting Role as LA-Based Build Team Collaborates with Da Vinci Expert in Baltimore to Build Inventor’s Ancient Arsenal

LOS ANGELES and PLEASANTON, Calif. - Weapons designed by Leonardo Da Vinci more than 500 years ago are coming to life - possibly for the first time – on “Doing Da Vinci,” a new TV series premiering this week on the Discovery Channel. As a team of 21st century builders, engineers and historians collaborates to construct the medieval arsenal, a thoroughly modern innovation is taking a vital supporting role: high-definition (HD) video communication solutions from Polycom, Inc. [NASDAQ: PLCM], the global leader in telepresence, video and voice communication solutions.

The Polycom HDX series telepresence systems allow the show’s talented Los Angeles-based build team to collaborate with Dr. Jonathan Pevsner, a Baltimore-based expert on Leonardo Da Vinci. Each episode shows how the “Doing Da Vinci” team uses the Polycom systems to work closely with Pevsner, who describes Da Vinci’s intent for each design and advises on historically accurate approaches to building the weapons.

Though best known as the painter of such Renaissance masterpieces as “The Last Supper” and “Mona Lisa,” Da Vinci was also a prolific architect and engineer. In the ten-part original series premiering at 10 p.m. Eastern tonight, the “Doing Da Vinci” team uses materials available only in Da Vinci’s time to create an array of mechanical armaments, from a futuristic armored tank and machine gun to a fearsome chariot outfitted with four spinning swords designed to cleave enemy soldiers and horses in half.

“At the start of each episode, the build team comes to me over the Polycom HD video connection,” said Pevsner, who also is a faculty member at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a hospital for children with neurological disorders. “I can show them a model of the weapon, or I can bring up an image of Leonardo’s original drawing on my laptop and share it with them through the content window. A split screen view allows them to see me and to see the content at the same time, and it’s all in HD.”

The five-member build team uses a Polycom HDX 8000™ series room telepresence system outfitted with a 42-inch Polycom Media Center plasma display. Pevsner’s Baltimore desktop is equipped with a Polycom HDX 4000, a personal telepresence system that features an integrated monitor, cameras and speakers. Both systems provide Polycom UltimateHD™ technology, which delivers true HD video, content and audio.

“I can’t imagine going through this without the HD telepresence systems from Polycom,” said “Doing Da Vinci” Executive Producer Rob Katz. “We share so much information back and forth, with so much of it visual and highly detailed – and all the while we’re under tremendous time pressure. Without this Polycom HD video connection, the whole experience would take a lot longer and prove infinitely more difficult.”