Editorial: ESPN bypasses corporate red tape with iPad and Xbox 360, wannabe innovators should take note
By Darren Murph 
posted June 12th 2010 11:12AM
posted June 12th 2010 11:12AM
As part of our ESPN walkthrough in the shooting of a forthcoming Engadget Show segment, we stumbled upon a telestrator demo that involved the use of Apple's newly released iPad to control on-screen graphics, overlays, doodle input, shading, etc. If you've ever witnessed a sportscaster break down a play on ESPN by freezing the frame, marking up the screen and pointing out details in the shot using a variety of red lines and highlights, then you know what we're getting at. The tool used to decorate the display is dubbed a telestrator, and needless to say, the multitouch iPad has enabled ESPN to place a bevy of new options into the hands of its hard working analysts. There was also an iPod touch alongside of it for times when an iPad would be too bulky, but the solution generally ran as such: a VNC client was loaded on the iPad (and iPod touch, for what it's worth), and the outfit's Windows XP-based control interface was beamed over WiFi for use on the set. That's it. Staggeringly simple, yet incredibly effective. The in-house network enabled the WinXP boxes and the iDevices to interact seamlessly, with absolutely no perceived lag. We were able to toss an Engadget logo onto a Nebraska freeze frame with ease, and we're crossing our fingers that it makes the cut once college football season kicks off later in the summer.
The wildest part is that ESPN is actively using the iPad and iPod touch to dictate screens on live telecasts right now. As in, today (Junior). The iPad has been out for just over two months, yet somehow ESPN -- a massive corporation that should technically have all sorts of red tape bogging down this type of forward thinking -- has managed to not only get a setup working in its labs, but actually get the new setup working and onto shows that we're enjoying each and every day. Let's try reiterating this another way: a broadcasting company that is oft hailed for having some of the best graphics and on-screen technology in the universe is using the same tablet that you gave your mom for Mother's Day to do it. No proprietary hoopla, no overpriced / underpowered PDA from yesteryear -- just an average iPad that any Joe or Jane can pick up today and shoehorn into their life. Going from purchase to live-on-the-tele in two months is no small feat, and ESPN deserves a massive amount of credit for being both quick on its feet and ambivalent to the usual pressures of corporate acceptance.
As for the Xbox 360? It's being used for similar reasons. Put simply, ESPN's techies have no interest in wasting months and years creating proprietary IP that they could theoretically sell to others in the future. Instead, they're interested in serving the fan, and serving the fan involves using whatever tools are readily available in order to push the envelope faster than the competition. Each of the Virtual Playbook segments that you see on ESPN relies on just a couple of things: a developer Xbox 360 (slightly modded for integration into a broadcasting company) and a copy of an EA Sports title. Oh, and that same iPad to highlight players as the virtual play unfolds to viewers around the world. Just think about that: instead of waiting eight years for Pixar to create some sort of crazy new graphics scheme to let ESPN build their own plays and discuss them on-air, these folks picked up a $200 game console and started banging away on the code to make it happen.
We were also briefed on a forthcoming motion capture system that'll allow the network to show how high a skateboarder (and eventually, a snowboarder) is rising in a big air competition... in real time. And we're not talking about some guesstimating solution; we're talking about embedding tracking tags onto the bottom of decks and using an array of simple, off-the-shelf object tracking sensors to show how high a skater is going as the trick unfolds. The real kicker? These tags are the same ones used by logistics companies to manage inventory in warehouses, and ESPN's primary test subject is an unused office chair with tags strapped to the arms. You may laugh, but what this proves is that ESPN is still thinking like a startup and using whatever is at their disposal at the moment to beat the competition to the punch. Can you imagine the progress we'd see if major software vendors, standards makers and hardware manufacturers took a similar approach? Folks, it took seven years for the 802.11n draft to be "certified." It'll take ESPN fewer than a dozen months to change the way the world views new heights set by X-Gamers.
Upon talking to those involved with the projects discussed here, we got the impression that the bigwigs basically let the technologists run their own show (within reason, of course). They understand that ESPN wouldn't be anywhere near where it is without its innovating approach, and by letting the kids in the sandbox play with whatever toys they can get their hands on, the entire network is able to reap the benefits. Somehow, ESPN is able to be nimble in a world that's too often bogged down by authorization meetings and endless approvals by executives who have no idea what's truly going on. We can't count the times we've questioned a company on what's obviously a boneheaded decision, only to be told that focus groups and fancy algorithms assured them that the public would love it. If more companies would stop overthinking things and start having fun, we're pretty confident that we'd see more innovation, more discovery and less waiting for the next big thing.
Sweet! I love espn. If apple tv or google tv ever allow you to pay for the channels you want, espn would be one of the view I would actually purchase.
@engadget
how about an article on how awesome the live telecast in on the PC and how flash has enabled a pure awesome experience?
@coolkams03 So you didnt get the memo that you can watch live games on MLB.com and other major sporting leagues with a subscription on a pc or mac, or even linux os?
@coolkams03 .. Because Engadget is a GADGET blog not a "this is a cool web app" blog. Understand ?
@taligent
engadget mentioning about bugs in flash was about "gadget" i guess
@coolkams03
Please troll somewhere else.
What the hell is it with you people ? If you do not like the story move on. Nobody gives 2 $hits about you or your opinions.
@pavelbure neither yours
@trihy
agreed.
On a related noted, these plus ipads on ebay n craigslist sure add up to huge sales that apple calls success. I call it BS marketing
@pavelbure
i dont mind them posting here
i get self esteem i dont even need :P
@supraped69
A much better college football photo to analyze
http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/2401/suh.gif
@supraped69
Any corporation could incorporate Macs and iPhones if they really wanted to but most of them are controlled by Microsoft and Windows-sucking fanboy lapdogs who'll go out of their way to say that Macs can't possibly be approved because they don't meet Microsoft Certification or some crap. I hope those corporations fall on their faces with their ass-dragging attitudes. They won't listen to employees who might like to use Macs or iPhones, they'd rather depend on some Windows-junkie IT manager that grew up worshiping Bill Gates and the Microsoft way of life. There's only one way to them, the Microsoft way.
Good going, ESPN for trying to break the typical corporate stance.
@coolkams03 flash hasnt ever created a pure awesome experience ever.. While flash is necessary for ads and such it is god awful horrible at video. There is no reason any modern computer would not be able to stream video at a reasonable rate, except for flash. Perhaps some of you may have noticed how much better you netflix experience got once they started using silverlight.
@supraped69 If they took Tiger Woods, Brett Favre, A-Rod, and Lebron James, loaded them all into a rocket, and fired them away into space, ESPN wouldn't know what to talk about anymore.
@zonkie
God Damnit.
@MosesusedaniPad I think you missed the part where they said the iPads are merely running a VNC client and connecting to XP machines running the actual software. Like any other major corporation they too still rely on Windows.
There's good reason too. To get the kind of administration capability active directory and group policies can give you a company needs to pay for even more software, and even then most competing software can't come close to the control. Suffice it to say, it'll be a LONG time before corporations running thousands of machines will use anything else, and it's not just because of ass-dragging (well, unless you want to say Apple was dragging it's ass in not coming up with a solution themselves when designing OS X so it COULD be a large-scale business OS).
Developer xboxes are waaay more than $200
@snugs Yep, they cost $5000, and are only available if you're approved to use one by Microsoft. Since they're not using it to make 360 games that would bring in revenue for MS, they may have been charged even more. Of course you could always hack one for a few bucks more than $200, but that would void their warranty and get them banned from XBL =(
@engadgetcomexcludeengadget
ESPN does make games so I dont think they had to pay more than other developers for it. But $5k vs $200 is def a big difference.
@engadgetcomexcludeengadget I can imagine how that call to Microsoft would go:
"Hi, this is ESPN at the Disney headquarters. You might know us from our xbox games such as Disney Tron, Disney Up, Disney Bolt, Disney G-Force, and dozens others. We would like to order a developer xbox. We'll be using it as a telestrator for tens of millions of viewers, it will be mentioned on engadget and other high profile blogs, etc."
"Yeah, well if you're not developing a game on it, it's gonna cost you an extra 2 grand."
@williamnot
But you have to keep it in context. ESPN is part of one of the largest media corporations in the world. For them to drop $7K is nothing. $7K to them is the equivalent of $5 for us. They probably just put it on a credit card and went on about their day.
ESPN using the iPad?! I wonder if any of the forward-thinking Disney directors had a subtle hand in this?
@d0mth0ma5
If Jobs had a hand in this, he would make sure that every viewer knows that the analysts are using iPads. Free advertising, sorta like Modern Family.
@dorothymantooth Well, the Modern Family episode wasn't the works of Apple either.
http://livefeed.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/04/modern-family-cocreator-explains-ipad-use.html
@dorothymantooth Isn't Jobs on the Disney Board of Directors? Or am I imagining that?
@MowDownJoe
I know that he's the largest individual shareholder in Disney (at like 7% or something) but I'm not sure if he's on the board.
@dorothymantooth No, he is, that was my point. http://corporate.disney.go.com/corporate/board_of_directors.html
@d0mth0ma5 .. Do you have the reading comprehension of a 5 year old kid or did you not even bother to read the article ?
The iPad is just used as a VNC client for a Windows XP based app.
It's hardly something Jobs is personally going to get involved with. The only reason they went with the iPad is because someone probably had one lying around.
@d0mth0ma5
And my point is that this probably isn't Jobs' call. If it is, it would be much more publicized. Use some common sense.
@taligent I was being semi-serious at best. I'd say your childish name-calling was ironic, except that isn't what irony is.
@d0mth0ma5 So what is your point exactly? Seriously, is AOL owned by disney? or apple? Jesus Christ. Surely they cant write a well balanced, great flowing article. No it isnt that, it must be a fucking conspiracy. Maybe a man didnt land on the moon. Please, please, please share that sweet, sticky icky awesome shit you are smoking. Or come out of the land of crazy.
@dorothymantooth I wasn't being totally serious, it appears that Jobs doesn't manage much at Disney despite that being where he gets the most money ($47 million annually compared to about $15 million).
@Lord Dark Helmet I wasn't talking about the article! The article was great!
@d0mth0ma5
Jobs still likes to oversee Pixar, one of his greatest creations, but he doesn't do much managing anymore. That's sorta the point of this article. These innovations weren't profound managerial decisions. These were just simple solutions put together to create the best experience for the analysts and viewers.
@dorothymantooth
Jobs didn't create pixar. Alvy Ray and lasseter did. Jobs did steer them to success, in money and actions
@d0mth0ma5 You mean like Steve Jobs? The biggest shareholder in Disney? I suspect ESPN had access to iPads before two months ago.
@MowDownJoe It doesn't mean that he has the power to demand that anyone do anything.
About all it might have done was a call to whomever to say "okay so this guy named X is going to call saying he's from ESPN. He's legit."
But it's not like everyone connected to Disney does whatever will make Jobs happy because he's on the board.
@dorothymantooth
He probably wouldn't cause they have to beam xp on it to get it to work.
Wow. Massive point taken. My company is exactly the opposite of ESPN. Slow, big moving dinosaur which relies on the IT department to fix everything our shitty devs push out. *Sigh*.
@Lord Dark Helmet I am apart of that IT department. Great article.
@Lord Dark Helmet
I guess there's two sides to every Schwartz.
@James T Kirk Indeed, Bigger and smaller.
Well, I have the bigger shwartz.
Why they just didn't code/program on average computer? What advantages have ipads and xbox over pc in their case?
@engaged They are cheaper than the average/above average computer with out fiddling with the drivers for the hardware, they can focus on the applications already made to do these things and quicker roll out of what they want. How is fiddling with trying to find the right hardware, then testing the fuck out of it and then trying to wrap around the drivers, application layer, then more testing, then more revising when they can cut to the chase and use existing hardware. Did you read the article?
@engaged
They did code on normal computer. But in each case the playback mechanism is new.
iPad instead of dedicated telestrator..coding is on XP
The xbox 360 has me puzzled though as well. Couldn't they have just coded for a pc based EA game and still had the same effect?
@TWiz
It wouldn't be as fun. Any reason to have a 360 lying around, eh?
@TWiz .. Same reason as Lord Helmet said. XBox 360 is a closed, stable platform with a lot less "moving parts" (running processes, background services etc) than a PC.
Not to mention dramatically easier to test on.
@Lord Dark Helmet
All of this ranting about device drivers and such makes me think I am listening to Windows users try to slam Linux. It really is terribly surreal. This is a major corporation dealing with computers, not your grandma or some casual gamer.
@jedi You're right, i mean, a lot of people forget that downtime isn't as big a deal at large corporations as it is to home users. I mean, in what parallel universe would the relative stability of a gaming console be in any way advantageous to a major realtime visual media company?
... oh wait, i mean the _opposite_ of right.
Go Nebraska!
Big Ten here we come!