VYVX ChoiceSeat: In my last commentary, which was a response to ZDNet AnchorDesk Columnist Jesse Berst's article about possible plans for Internet TV set-top devices, I doctored up a possible next generation WebTV screen with a TV picture-in-a-picture. Would you like to see something that is more real-to-life and actually working? (Jesse Berst would probably find this display easier to see than the smaller TV window he was complaining about.) Then you have to check out the Vyvx ChoiceSeat touch-screen "venue display units" that may come to a Stadium or a Sports Arena near you. These "Vyvx Venue Display Units," a.k.a. Information Technology Equipment, were being tested for the past month at the San Diego Qualcomm Stadium for the San Diego Padres baseball games.

The Vyvx ChoiceSeat Venue Display Unit
let's you watch the TV broadcast, plus
on-screen statistics and on-demand replays,
of a game at the Stadium.

There is no keyboard, no mouse, and no remote control to use. You just touch the "buttons" on the screen to manipulate the display. The basic display interface consists of a main window in the middle of the screen where the television broadcast, replay video, or a html page can be displayed. There are buttons at the bottom of the screen from left to right, including a Back button (to go back a screen), a Help button, a Video button (for watching various TV/cable channels such as ESPN, the Padres' own baseball cable channel, the Jumbotron, and other channels), a Replay button for replaying a play you saw on the field from multiple angles that you can choose from, a Stats button to check out the game's line-up and other game, team, and league statistics, and a Games button for playing bingo (sorry, just the game and not for money) and other games, such as a baseball trivia game, to be added in the future. The right side of the screen has a small window with information about who's pitching, who's batting, and those players' statistics. The info in that window can be changed to show, among other things, a graphic of a catcher with dots to show where a pitch was in the strike zone. At the top of the screen in the upper left hand corner is a Menu button. After you press this button, you get, among other things, another button for a Baseball dictionary and the all important Control button for adjusting the volume for the earphone you can plug into the unit.

You can plug either an earphone or walkman
stereo/mono headphones into the side jack
on the Vyvx ChoiceSeat Unit.

If you go to the Stadium with a "walkman" stereo cassette/radio, you can plug in your stereo headphones into a jack on the left side of the unit to listen to the TV/cable broadcast. Otherwise, you would have to wait for either a Vyvx "coach" or a Stadium usher to give you a standard radio earphone. To the left of the screen on the actual frame of the unit is a touch pad control for adjusting the brightness of the screen. So whether you are in the shade over in Plaza Section 22, Row 18, Seat 14 or out in the sun in the field level section, you can make the screen display brighter or darker so you can better see the screen. The unit itself is connected to an adjustable metal arm that is connected to the arm of the Stadium chair. It reminds me a little bit of those black & white TV sets attached to waiting chairs in Greyhound bus depots. However, the Vyvx ChoiceSeat Venue Display Unit is much more advanced than those black & white TV sets that you had to feed quarters to in order to watch your favorite soap or sit-com while you wait for the bus. And the use of the Vyvx ChoiceSeat Venue Display Unit comes with your ticket (at least no extra cost for my ticket).

Also at the top of the screen display is an area to the right of the menu button for rotating banners (i.e., several banners are rotated one after another) above the main window. And at the top of the screen display to the right of the rotating banners is a square window on the right square window for more rotating advertisements (again, advertisements are rotated one after another), which appear to be AVI, MPEG, or MOV mini-videos or at least animated GIF files. The rotating banners and advertisements that I saw on the unit I was using at a San Diego Padres-Texas Rangers game were from Qualcomm, TravelCity, TeleBank, Sports Illustrated and Prodigy's Baseball Manager, Hasbro Interactive computer and video games, Budweiser, Visa, San Diego Toyota Dealers, NetGuide's Sports Guide, Doctor Design Inc., and Microsoft. BTW, the sports statictics provided through the unit is suppiled by Total Sports. Without knowing all of the inside stuff of this system, the system does not let you directly maneuver wily-nily around the net, but it only allows you to go to certain pages that I'm guessing are only on either the system's file servers or on an internal network with very few if any selected outside links. Any database info, such as from Total Sports, is probably imported into the system to make for a secure closed system.

Is the Vyvx ChoiceSeat Venue Display Unit any good?? YES! There were some almost unnoticeable minor glitches that can be tweaked. Some of the advertising pages did not load for a little while late in the game (maybe those ads were taking an extended seventh inning stretch). Also, some of the pages need to be tweaked to make sure all of the text and buttons show up in the appropriate window frame of the display. Nonetheless, IT'S A COOL SMART TV UNIT! The Vyvx ChoiceSeat units provide sport fans with more information to better enjoy the sports-watching expericence. People are used to watching sporting events at home, watching instant replays, and getting statistics on the regular TV boob tube. Given the advance in technology, it was only a matter of time before sports fans are given the same electronic capabilities at Stadiums and Sports Arenas. Yes, you have the huge Jumbotron, score display boards, and the P.A. announcer at Stadiums and Sports Arenas. However, there was nothing else to provide for the "remote control" experience for surfing for multiple bits of sports news and images. You know the joke about how sports fans, particularly male sports fans, click through multiple channels to seemingly watch all of the multiple sporting events on one television at the same time. That is, not until the Vyvx ChoiceSeat Venue Display Unit. You don't use a remote control with this unit, but you get to do some "surfing" for multiple bits of information with the unit. With Vyvx ChoiceSeat Venue Display Unit, there is the capability for surfing for multiple bits of information about the game, including checking multiple alternative views of a replay, and then checking out the statistics of all of the different players in the game. And, yes, you can watch the TV transmission of the game you went to Stadium to see in person, as well as be able to switch to ESPN, to the Jumbotron screen, and to any other channels that may be offered on the system.

Is this good or bad? Some folks would say why watch the game on that TV unit when you can just look up and watch the game on the field of play itself. The Vyvx unit, and any others that may be developed, could add to the sports-watching experience, whether it be at home or at the scene of the sporting event. People bring radios and mini-TVs to sporting events. Stadiums have been adding television sets, in addition to the huge Jumbotron that everyone can look up to see. So why not provide these Vyvx units at Stadiums and Sports Arenas also? If you don't want to use it, you can always move it aside. However, I would bet that you would glance over to the unit's screen to watch a replay on it.

The Vyvx ChoiceSeat Venue Display Units
will be all over the place in Stadiums and
Sports Arenas everywhere.

The Vyvx ChoiceSeat Venue Display Unit hardware was designed by Doctor Design Inc., a computer engineering firm in San Diego, California, for Vyvx Inc., which is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And it's being tested here in San Diego, a.k.a., "Silicon Beach." And the ChoiceSeat's software was designed by the Erbes Development Group. See below for some details on the Erbes Development Group's work on the software for the Vyvx ChoiceSeat. The actual pilot test in San Diego had at least five sections of approximately ten rows each set up with the units. I would guess that the Vyvx folks have been electronically monitoring how people were using the units. I would guess they were actually eyeballing how people were using the units also. The Vyvx coaches only asked certain people to fill out survey forms. There was also a Nielsen TV group in the outside ring of the Stadium and I would guess they may have something to do with the testing of the system. The Vyvx ChoiceSeat unit is a sign of things to come. Internet TV set-top boxes, such as the WebTV and the Net TV, and the new upcoming digital TV sets will incorporate capabilities similar to those found in the Vyvx units. Vyvx, Doctor Design, and Erbes Development Group are three companies that do think in TV terms for the future. THINK TV.

[For those in Southern California (San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, Riverside, etc.), if you get Channel 8 KFMB Television, you may want to tune in the 4:00 p.m. version of the Channel 8 News on Monday, 9-8-97, when there is supposed to be a report about the Vyvx ChoiceSeat units at Qualcomm Stadium. -ruel 9-7-97]

[For some of the viewers watching the 9-20-97 FOX television network's Saturday Baseball Game of the Week, you may have seen the San Francisco Giants playing the San Diego Padres at San Diego Qualcomm Staduim (some of the other viewers may have been watching the Colorado Rockies play the Los Angeles Dodgers), and you may have seen people at the Qualcomm Stadium using the Vyvx ChoiceSeat units for a few brief seconds. -ruel 9-20-97]

FutureNet, Etc.: Okay, you may have been waiting for the previously announced commentary about FutureNet. Well, [whether you love them or hate them,] that should be the next commentary. So stay tuned, folks!

Happy TV Watching!
Ruel

[10-22-97 Update: Jamie Erbes, president and managing director of Erbes Development Group Inc., sent in a message with an update on more of the background behind the Vyvx ChoiceSeat. Jamie writes:

I was looking for any recent press releases concerning our project and ran across your review.  Thanks for all the good things you said about the product.  It's nice to hear that someone actually enjoyed it.  You have some really great pictures of the seat units.  A table-top version is installed in the owner's boxes and suites.

I'd like to clarify something about the product.  You mention that it was designed by Dr. Design.  This is halfway right.  They did the hardware design.  However, our small consulting group designed and developed all of the client software for this project - including the low-level video/TV tuner drivers.  We're small, and don't even begin to do a very good job at advertising or marketing ourselves, so we're often overlooked when the time comes for credits.  

Anyway, just thought you might be interested to know who was behind the software...

Again, thanks for the nice review,

Jamie Erbes
Erbes Development Group Inc.
http://www.erbes.com

Cheers,
Ruel ]

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