Stephen Lynn, a Computer Science PhD student, recently received the best paper award at the European Interactive Television conference in Levan, Belgium. The paper, which he coauthored with Brett Partridge (CS Alum) and Dan Olsen (CS Faculty), is entitled "Time Warp Football." Using internet television technology from Move Networks and video obtained from the BYU Football office, they created a prototype of how television over the Internet can change the viewing experience. Time Warp Football allows the viewer to select the camera angle, replays, displays of statistics and most other facets of the game view experience. When the officials rule on a really close case of pass interference, the viewers themselves can work through all of the different camera angles and replay the play from as many of them as they desire.

Stephen said, "We focus on living room TV watching experiences rather than watching TV shows on your PC. The basic results from this paper include a set of interactive controls that work well for watching football (forward/backward play-by-play navigation controls, alternate camera angles, and on-demand statistics), the use of on-screen overlays as navigation guides, and video overlays of controller to help people learn how to use the system without formal training. We did in-home user evaluations of the system watching the BYU vs. Notre Damne game from 2004."

Does this system require a special television? No, the system works on standard televisions with the game being streamed over the home broadband connection. In fact, when this technology was tested in the homes of people in the Utah County area, people used their own internet service and television sets.

Paper Abstract: "We describe a system called Time Warp Football (TWF) which puts fans in control of the game watching experience.  TWF uses annotated video streams to enable instantaneous forward and backward play-by-play navigation and on-demand switching between multiple camera angles. These features allow fans to easily watch and re-watch plays they are interested in from any camera angle.  The annotations also allow for instantaneous game statistics whenever the fan desires.  We took TWF into eleven different homes, connected it to the home TV, and provided a standard wireless video game controller to control the experience. Based on in-home user evaluations, we found that TWF provides an easy
to learn interactive TV control system, effectively uses on screen prompts to enable groups to watch an interactive sporting event, and overall provides a successful interactive TV experience."

To learn more about the European Interactive Television conference, click here.
To learn about Dan Olsen's other research visit here and here