谷歌眼镜赋予NBA赛事转播新视角

    CrowdOptic的解决方案不仅能让球队从球场的各个角度转播各种镜头，还能让戴上这种眼镜的人获取“承接画面”——就是那些在场边戴眼镜的球队工作人员拍摄的视频。在高空大梁附近的人可以俯瞰球场上的人，还可以看到他们眼中所看见的景象。费舍尔称：“不论观众是坐在豪华包厢里，还是又远又偏的座位，都能看到最精彩的场面，因为所有这些都是真正来自球场边活生生的画面。”而步行者队的愿景是，今后球迷们观赛时可以下载一个专用应用，它能让他们看到自己喜欢的画面——而不用管大屏幕上播出的情况。

    去年有一支球队加装了免费无线系统，确保有足够的带宽处理视频。随着越来越多消费者开始用上可穿戴设备，费舍尔相信所有球场将来都要升级无线系统。他说：“它不只是发个短信、传个图片那么简单，那是要传输实打实的视频。要让1000副眼镜都能做到这一点，全球没有哪个球场能处理得了这么庞大的无线流量。”

    目前CrowdOptic对自己的系统是按年收取授权费，每支球队每年收25,000美元。公司预计到本赛季末将与另外六支NBA球队签约合作。

    费舍尔一开始创建这家公司时的想法是，他们的成长平台会是手机。于是他们就为各种赛事打造了专用应用，再弄清楚球迷的关注重点是哪些地方——比如一场网球比赛他们主要关注哪些部分？他们都看见了哪些广告？他们这么做既能改善观众的体验，又能提供有用的数据，有助于让人了解广告和赞助价格——比如每个画面的相应价格——以及让人知道在特定时间里观众最想看哪些动作。由于他们这些应用能显示最受关注的地方，就能让安检系统实时监测到各种干扰比赛的情况，使其能够关注球场的特定区域以及时发现球迷殴斗这类事件。

    但由于每场赛事都得做个全新应用，这家公司到最后积累了一大堆无法重复利用的案例。谷歌推出智能眼镜后，很显然这种设备要比智能手机更适合体育赛事。费舍尔称：“这之后我们就找到发展方向了。我们甚至觉得我们这家公司就是为谷歌眼镜而生的。”

    率先采用这家公司解决方案的客户到目前为止都很满意。国王队还在试用这项技术并打算下个赛季正式采用。国王队总裁克里斯•格兰格说：“我们能让球迷看到以前在美国职业赛事中从未体验过的视角。不管是鲁迪•盖伊的扣篮，还是我们的吉祥物西蒙狮（Slamson）在场上滑旱冰，它都能让球迷们体验到几年前还不可想象的场景。”（财富中文网）

    译者：清远

    CrowdOptic's solution lets teams broadcast different feeds from around the arena, but can also let Glass wearers pick up "inherited views" -- video feeds from team employees wearing Glass courtside. A spectator wearing Glass up near the rafters could look at that person on the floor and see what they see. "You can be in the luxury box or the nosebleeds and see a view that represents best view of the action, because it's all coming from courtside," Fisher says. Going forward, Pacers envision a time where fans can download a dedicated app while at a game that will allow them to pick their own views -- regardless of what they're showing on the scoreboard.

    Last year, the team added free Wi-Fi to make sure they had enough bandwidth to handle video. As more and more consumers start to adopt wearables, Fisher believes that all arenas will have to upgrade their Wi-Fi. "It's not just texting and trading images, it's actually hardcore video," he says. "To do that for 1000 Glasses, there's no stadium in the world that can handle that kind of Wi-Fi traffic."

    CrowdOptic is selling yearly licenses for its system, charging $25,000 per team per year, and expects to announce partnerships with another half dozen NBA teams before the end of the season.

    Originally, Fisher founded CrowdOptic thinking that their form factor would be cell phones. The company would create dedicated apps for events, then figure out where fans were focusing -- what parts of, say, a tennis match did they focus on? What ads did they see? The company's work gave it a way to enhance the crowd experience and provide useful data that could help inform ad and sponsorship pricing -- imagine pricing per view -- as well as what parts of the action a crowd wanted to see at a given time. Since its apps could tell where the majority of attention was focused, security would be able to detect an interruption in real time, directing their attention to certain parts of the stadium to check for an event like a fistfight, for example.

    But since the company needed to create new apps for every event, it ended up with a lot of non-repeatable use cases. When Google announced Glass, it was pretty clear that the device was a far better fit than a smartphone. "We really have moved on," Fisher says. "We think this company was born for Glass."

    So far, its first adopters are pretty happy. The Kings are continuing to experiment with the technology and plan to use it next season. "We are able to provide fans with a unique point of view never before seen at a U.S. pro sports event," Kings president Chris Granger says. "From Rudy Gay dunking to our mascot Slamson roller-blading across the court, it enhances the fans experience in a way that was unfathomable just a few years ago."