Overview
Every Sunday afternoon during the season, The NFL RedZone channel takes fans from game to game to see all the key moments, live as they happen on the field. The channel is designed to deliver the touchdowns and most important moments during all the Sunday afternoon games. While this is great for fans at home, there was a strong need to improve the in-stadium experience for fans. Thus, the concept of bringing the RedZone channel into the stadiums was born.
Business Objective
With today’s growing technological advances, and the ever increasing amount of information fans can get at home, The National Football League recognized the need to improve the in-game experience for fans. The NFL wanted to build a tool to record, capture and display highlights from their own RedZone channel. This would provide fans in the stadium with current highlights from games around the league, and is something that each club can customize.
SharpHat Involvement
Due to their expertise in designing and building highly intuitive systems, the NFL called upon SharpHat to help design and develop the RedZone Highlights application. SharpHat met with the NFL to gather requirements for the system. SharpHat then worked with the NFL’s technical staff to design the system and created a detailed functional specification document. Again working in conjunction with NFL’s IT staff, SharpHat developed the first phase of the application. SharpHat also provided project, task and time management to ensure the system would be ready for Week 1 of the 2010 NFL season. Once development was completed, SharpHat assisted the NFL with the system test phase and then provided live game support during the first week of the 2010 NFL season.
The Results
SharpHat built the NFL a highly intuitive user interface; that seamlessly navigates between multiple media files; integrates with the NFL’s existing statistical system to provide real time statistics and game scores. The application provides thumbnail previews of video clips and transition files; automatically saves all changes to database; supports use of Xbox controller for video playback; supports 720p and 1080i resolution; provides the ability to rapidly toggle between saved playlists, and drag and drop user interface which supports touch screen monitors.
The RedZone Highlights application and hardware was operating in all 32 NFL Stadiums for Week 1 of the 2010 NFL Season.
Technologies
- Visual Studio
- .NET Framework 3.5 (VB)
- Multi-threading
- 32/64 bit compatible
- SQL Server Express 2008
