Past pilot projects
POLAR
Polar Electro has been the market leader in technological innovations and heart rate monitoring ever since 1977. Neo Arena has started co-operation with Polar in 2007. The joint effort has yielded a tool that enables the heart rate collected by a Polar RS800 sensor to be displayed as graphics in television programmes.
The solution needs an add-on accessory to be connected to a wireless microphone system and camera. The collected data is embedded in the final program in post production. The aim of the pilot is to provide a tool for content creation companies to establish new formats or to use the application otherwise. The system is in test use on the Finnish TV programme Elixir.
NOKIA VIDEO CENTER
Neo Arena and Nokia conducted the Nokia Video Center pilot as an integral part of Nokia’s R&D joint project with the City of Oulu. A variety of TV and video services were tested on Nokia N95 8GB mobile devices utilising Nokia’s Video Center. By using the service the clients could access and playback videos directly through 3G/WLAN compatible TV and video services on the Internet. The following TV-services had been pre-installed: |YLE| TV1 and V2, MTV3, Sub, The Voice and Neo Arena’s programmes. Video services were represented by the community service Floobs, the City of Oulu, Kaleva.plus and the video archives of Neo Arena.
Feedback from the users was collected from the users through interviews, web questionnaires and journals on presentation of the service, usability and content. The following issues were addressed:
- How the participants use mobile devices
- The use and adoption of new TV and video content
- Demographic differences in adapting/using the services
- Using the services in various situations and locations
The results will benefit future product development for mobile-TV and video services, interfaces and multimedia terminal devices. Furthermore, the results address the questions concerning the usability of new TV and video services and they point towards future development trends.
The pilot was divided into two parts: the first stage between March and May 2008 had 75 participants mostly from the Oulu Polytechnic. The second pilot group of 75 persons were from the City of Oulu’s Innovation and Marketing department. The user group was co-ordinated by Outi Rouru-Kuivala.
OULU MUSIC VIDEO FESTIVAL
The Air Guitar World Championships were shot multicam and seen live on the Internet during the third year of co-operation between the Oulu Music Video Festival and Neo Arena. The finals of the Air Guitar World Championships were available through the AGWC website and newspaper Kaleva’s web pages. The pilot research was to test whether the present media school co-operation with OSAO Pikisaari could yield commercially profitable material, through the Internet video archive or marketed to third parties.
STEEL RING
The Oulu based professional boxing stable Steel Ring and the production company JPS Production broadcast a live, pay-for-internet feed from the Pohjoista Terästä boxing event held in Oulu in 2007. JPS Production filmed the fights. The three-hour live event was Flash-streamed through Neo Arena’s distribution system. A pay-per-view video archive of the event was opened in June.
The aim of the pilot was to survey whether boxing enthusiasts would be ready to pay a few euros in order to watch the fights on Internet-TV. A few dozen boxing fans watched the live broadcasts, a similar number registered for the video archives. The broadcast server suffered from technical difficulties during the live broadcast, but the content was solid and there would have been more spectators with more aggressive marketing strategies.
VETERAN SKI JUMPING
Neo Arena executed live broadcasts and programmes from the ski jumping veterans’ Finnish and World Championship competitions in Taivalkoski in February and March 2008. The pilot investigated how willing the customers of Elisa were to watch sports through their mobile phones. Hundreds of viewers across Europe watched the broadcasts from Taivalkoski. The arranger of the championships, Taivalkosken Kuohu, also tested selling advertisements for the Internet broadcasts in order to increase the visibility of the championship sponsors.
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