Viz Multi Platfrom Suite powers play-along version of "Who wants to be a Millionaire"
A live, play-along version of the popular game show; “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” aired on TV2 Norway Saturday. The show featured a bolstered array of web-interactive elements powered by Vizrt technology. Viz Multi Platform Suite (MPS) and the Vizky client, both developed by Vizrt, delivered real-time 3D graphics to thousands of online participants to play along with show contestants, while maintaining the high profile visual identity of the show concept.
During Saturday’s live broadcast of the show on TV2, an online community logged in, watched the game and played along with the studio contestants in real time. The program, which has a history of drawing up to 700 thousand viewers for TV2 Norway maintained its popularity with its television audience. Thousands played along online and the online overflow crowd numbered several hundred thousand.
“Clearly the sheer number of online players proves the play-along concept is solid – and connecting a live broadcast to the internet in real-time answers the demand of today’s audiences,” said Petter Ole Jakobsen, CTO of Vizrt.
On Saturday, TV2 Norway broke from a pre-recorded format; broadcasting “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” live while adding 3D graphics and real-time play-along interactivity for the online community. Technology from Escenic, a company recently acquired by Vizrt, managed the profile of the online players through their new customizable community engine module.
With the addition of the play-along aspect the internet audience becomes available to studio contestants, joining the show’s other well-known “Lifelines”. The major challenge when developing the play-along concept was to find a technology that could handle the new live format of the show. Arne Berven, head of IT for TV2 approached Vizrt with the idea to incorporate Vizrt technology in order to achieve an unprecedented level of interactivity for the show.
“When I approached Vizrt with this idea of play-along, they connected the power of Viz MPS to help us tap into a very valuable resource,” said Arne Berven, head of IT for TV2 Norway, “The internet community represents an audience that is captive, engaged and hooked into the show in a very unique way. We’re charting new ground here.”
While most solutions embed graphics within the video stream, resulting in lower resolution and non-personalized content, Viz MPS keeps the graphic and video content disassociated until the last minute. On the end-user device Vizrt's Vizky client is responsible for the composition of video and interactive graphics directly on the display. Real-time, 3D graphics can now be rendered locally by each computer. This creates the highest quality graphic resolution and content that is both platform and user specific.
Because Viz MPS is based on the same creation and control tools as the whole Vizrt product suite in use at TV2 Norway, the station’s production workflow is unchanged, but content can now be distributed directly to any platform.
