There are only a handful of different models of roulette tables used in casinos, the company who were running this competition had there own table that was used in casinos around the country.
To use the program, the croupier would set the ball spinning first, and then the program would take a number of images, using these images it would calculate the trajectory of the ball, including where it would hit different parts of the table designed to make the results more random. The bumps and deflectors placed around the table are the hardest part of the modelling process. In the example I was referring to, if the ball was projected to hit a 'horizontal' deflector the program returned no prediction, and the user wouldn't bet.
Once the program had calculated where it thought the ball would land, it would return list of numbers around the calculated result where the user would bet their money.
The program of course did need to be calibrated, the model works flawlessly in ideal conditions, but each roulette table would be placed at ever so slightly different angles, and the ball and table surfaces would be of different states of ware. Calibration is a fairly simple process where the program records the first 20 or so spins, notes the position, and changes a couple of the predefined variables in the model.
There are plenty of online casinos that offer 'live video roulette' where no one is watching you and you can monitor the wheel as much as you like (in fact they do this on ITV every night as well). If what you are saying is true those online casinos would be losing money hand over fist, especially given the players have a computer at their disposal to do the monitoring.
The key difference in the online casino games which offer live video roulette, is that you cannot place your bet after the ball has started on its trajectory. In a real casino there is a time window between when the croupier starts the ball spinning, and when no more bets is called.
The program only needs to be accurate to 1/4 of the table for a user of it to make money.
Of course if you were to start recording roulette games on your smartphone in a casino, you would quickly be 'asked to leave'