Sponsored post -- Samsung wants to hear your ideas

by David A. Arnott on Nov 12, 2010 9:13 AM EST in Enhance Your Experience

(DA -- This is a sponsored post.)

Along with many other writers on SBN blogs, I've spent the past two Fridays telling you how technology affects my sports-fan life, as prompted by the Samsung Corporation. Amazingly, the Samsung board of directors has been so pleased with the information SBN has offered them that they've decided to go on a tour of U.S. sports cities to ask us, personally, what's important to them. They've already visited Ben, proprietor of BlazersEdge, and I'm next on the list, probably because CEO Gee-Sung Choi is anxious to see the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

In any event, I'd like to go beyond teling them my theories about cell phones and video games -- in fact, I want to go beyond talking about what already is, and mine your ideas for the next step in sports fan technology. I mean, if I'm going to have an audience with the Samsung board of directors, I've gotta make the most of it. I know there are a lot of creative people who read Rufus on Fire, so let's brainstorm some brilliant innovations for cell phones, television, and the in-arena experience.

My (abbreviated) technology wish list is as follows:

1 -- Figure out a way I can turn off all announcers from television broadcasts and only hear the sounds of the game. As a corollary, figure out a way to broadcast TV shows and events with hundreds of different audio channel options. For sports, specifically, there could be the Official Broadcast Team, and then people who pay to broadcast their versions of events, whether it has to do with the game or not. If you pay for it, you get the audio channel. Good luck.

2 -- Mic up every player, and provide NASCAR-like radios for fans to rent, so they can listen to anyone, coach, player, official, or radio broadcast, all game. (Second stock car reference!)

3 -- Put a chip in the ball. Place a chip on every player. Track everything they do on the court or field, and make that data publicly available for free or low-cost.

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I like 1 and 3

Especially 1. 2 would be harder to do just because of the language basketball players use. Can you put a parental advisory on it?

In conjunction with the first one, I’d like to be able to turn off the bottom line ticker. This probably has more to do with ESPN than anyone else, but there’s nothing more annoying then recording one game while watching the other and having the score spoiled by a ticker. Along the same lines, I thought about writing an app for my phone that will filter all sports/team/score related texts during a game, just in case I’m DVR’ing it later or am watching the recording at that moment.

I’d also like camera control. I don’t need all the cameras. But I hate all the gimmick angles they try to use every year. I want the traditional, 3/4’s court view and I don’t want it to change except on replays.

by drapht00 on Nov 12, 2010 10:56 AM EST reply actions

or choose the teams to see on the ticker

by unccatfan on Nov 12, 2010 11:10 AM EST up reply actions

ive alwaysthought it would be cool, going off of your point David, to have a chip, or sensors in the ball, and on the goal line and what not to tell if it has crossed the line

by unccatfan on Nov 12, 2010 11:11 AM EST reply actions

goal line

How hard can this be? There’s got to be a way to reduce the refs influence on the game of football. It’s not like the NBA where refs get a lot of attention (and seem to like it). It’s that football is incredibly difficult to oversee. It’s funny that it’s a game of inches, yet your relying on the human eye to spot a ball, to determine touchdowns and first downs… I think the refs do a great job considering the circumstances, but it’s time for technology to do an even better job.

by drapht00 on Nov 12, 2010 12:26 PM EST up reply actions

I dont think I would like that so much.

I think if you get to tech. out there it will take away from the “feel” of the game, and anyways blaming the refs is part of the game. Why don’t you just make some robots to call the game for you? Also NFL or NBA that would cost millions to put a chip on every court (field) and every ball and the computers that you will need to read the information. And on to the other note #1 they did a football game like that back in the 80’s or 90’s (my dad was telling me about it) that had no announcers at all, and everyone hated it, although it would be entertaining more if you had mics on the players; I always wished they did that more now. If there scared about players using foul lang. then block it out, the T.V is like 7 sec delay anyway so just do that with the mics and ""bleep" out anything they say,

I win as if im used to it, and i loose as if i like it for a change.

by Noahzack on Nov 13, 2010 1:51 PM EST up reply actions