WHITEFISH, MT / ACCESSWIRE / November 20, 2014 / In a compelling TED Talk,
former NFL punter Chris Kluwe talks about virtual and augmented reality
technologies and the near-term revolution in sports viewing. He states
that he constantly hears from fans wanting to experience, as closely as
possible, what athletes experience in competition. How can the consumers
immerse themselves in that world as if they are playing the games? The
Guitammer Company (OTC: GTMM) may have part of the solution, and a recently announced deal to televise hockey games live with the company's 4D Sports broadcast technology could be a tipping point.
Guitammer has developed and patented broadcast technology that allows
tactile or haptic data to be broadcast along with the traditional audio
and video data streams. This technology gives viewers the chance to feel
the movement and impact of the sporting event while staying in the
comfort of their own home. Following last year's proof-of-concept
broadcasts of National Hot Rod Association races on ESPN2, Guitammer is
partnering with the San Jose Sharks and Comcast SportsNet California to
broadcast Sharks home games with this tactile effect. In this case,
sensors are placed on the boards around the hockey arena, capturing the
impact of the players as they smash each other into the boards. Then
these impacts - the tactile-haptic effects - are added to the game's
telecast so the viewers at home can not only see and hear the game, but
they can, live and in real time, feel the action as if they were sitting
right at the glass in the arena.
Going forward, the deal is significant for Guitammer for a couple of
reasons. First, it is a partnership with the rights holder (the San Jose
Sharks) as well as the broadcaster (Comcast SportsNet California).
These are the type of agreements the company is looking to cut over the
next several years, with all of the parties profiting from and
contributing to the success of the program. Guitammer's goal is to have
its patented haptic-tactile broadcast technology sit at the foundation,
as the industry standard, of the progression toward more immersive live
sports broadcasts. This deal moves them considerably further along that
path and acts as a model for future agreements.
Second, Comcast SportsNet California is an NBC Sports Regional Network,
part of NBCUniversal, which is a subsidiary of Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA).
NBC Sports Group has the rights to broadcast NHL games through the 2021
season, and the group also broadcasts many other live sports. Guitammer
is positioned to advance its technology and impress both a major
professional sports league as well as one of the premier broadcasters of
live sports in America. This is a program that bears watching.
Guitammer's technology, and the ability to transmit feel, impact and motion, is crucial to the immersive experience. BBC News recently discussed
how people perceive sounds to be louder when accompanied by vibrations
and how, in the real world, sounds are conducted through the bones to
give people a wider range of sensory input than the airborne sound waves
in the eardrum. In fact, Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Glass technology uses
bone conduction transducers to communicate sounds to users. Adding this
sense of feel to traditional audio streams makes broadcasts much more
like the real world and more immersive, giving consumers what they want
in terms of the entertainment experience.
Combining this idea with the revolution in wearable technology, the
picture starts to crystallize. Wearables gather data from athlete's
bodies. The NFL is partnering this year with Zebra Technologies (NASDAQ:
ZBRA) to outfit players with RIFD sensors on their shoulder pads, and
since 2012 the MLS has offered wearables to every soccer team in
partnership with Adidas AG (OTC: ADDDF). These sensors can provide the
type of data that feeds Guitammer's broadcast technology, giving viewers
at home access to the motion and impact of on-field activities. Take
the ability to feel what the athletes feel and add in other existing and
developing virtual and augmented reality technologies. Suddenly, it
doesn't seem so far-fetched that sports fans can achieve their desire to
'play as' their favorite player.
Guitammer's haptic-tactile technology adds considerably to the 'reality'
component of the pending virtual reality, and the live hockey telecasts
are a major step in the evolution and deployment of that technology.
This agreement solidifies what until now has mostly been a vision of how
haptic-tactile data can fundamentally change how we consume live sports
for entertainment. Call it what you will, immersive entertainment or
augmented reality or virtual reality, but the revolution is being
televised as we speak.
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