NBA is Using Microsoft Teams To Brings Virtual Fans Into Its Real-World Games (cnet.com) 28
When you tune into a National Basketball Association game after the league restarts its season on July 30 following a shutdown during the coronavirus pandemic, things will look a little different. From a report: There won't be empty stands and fake crowd noises like we saw this week at the season openers for Major League Baseball. Instead the NBA will invite fans to attend virtually, displaying their real-time heads in the stands using massive screens and Microsoft software. The social-distanced fan experience, which the NBA and Microsoft announced Friday, will be displayed on 17-foot screens installed on the game court, designed to reproduce the look of otherwise standard stadium seating. Microsoft will use its Teams software's new Together Mode to pipe the faces of up to 300 fans into the "seats." The fans will need to have special tickets to participate.
Will blackouts be in-forced? (Score:2)
Will blackouts be in-forced?
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Will blackouts be in-forced?
Of course! Letting anyone watch without limits would be socialism and anarchy! You don't hate America, do you?
Dear god (Score:3)
"...NBA will invite fans to attend virtually, displaying their real-time heads in the stands using massive screens and Microsoft software."
This is one of the most pathetic things I've read in quite some time.
How desperate for a sports-fix do you have to be to participate in this sad little exercise?
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Almost as desperate as the athletes that need to have an audience.
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I think anyone would become desperate once they start seeing their lively hood at risk of being destroyed.
Governments are talking about raising taxes to pay for for Covid-19. If they are raised enough... no one will be able to afford to pay for tickets and that means players do not get paid. The rich owners are not going to stick their heads out across the chopping block they are going to just take their money somewhere else.
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It's exactly the opposite. Without the visual distraction of crowds, it turns out athletes' hand-eye coordination improves. To the point that they don't miss shots often enough to be an interesting game.
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I think the fans pump the players up. I could be wrong, I don't watch basketball because of all of the self-congratulatory BS that follows every score.
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These arenas are designed to hold 15-20K fans. It's going to be pretty pathetic to be playing in front of 300 TV screens.
Balmer Returns! (Score:3)
All the fans are Chanting Developers! Developers! Developers!
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All the fans are Chanting Developers! Developers! Developers!
All the fans are chanting something in Chinese, because that's where the league thinks its future is. They certainly go to great lengths to kiss the Chinese government's ass.
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Am I really the only person who dislikes MSTeams? (Score:2)
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The text chat functionality works reasonably well. But the overall video experience is poor compared to, say, Zoom.
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Black Mirror (Score:3)
Anyone remember the episode of Black Mirror were the guy worked by riding an exercise bike and went on that talent show to threaten to kill himself? Yea this reminds me of that episode. All the audience virtually attending from their little cubicle bedroom.
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People claimed they were in tears by the end of that episode. Like people had no idea he would sell out too.
Re: Black Mirror (Score:2)
You would think they would have come to expect that from the show. They always take a hard left at Albuquerque.
Zoom to Teams, the 800Pound gorilla. (Score:3)
It seems when everyone found out zoom was potential Chinese spyware, all the corps jumped to teams.... plus MS was trying to auto install teams with office 365 updates... but what a dog teams is.
800MB just sitting idle doing nothing (and running 5 processes). WTF! Some users saying 2G of RAM after its been around a while, bringing lower speed PCs to a crawl.
Kids these days have no clue how to write memory efficient software.
Now get off my lawn!
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Where do people get this stupid shit? The NBA is Chinese-owned? Do tell...
Are they limited to 9 fans at a time? (Score:2)
Just like the Brady Bunch limit that exists in MS Teams?
Prepare to see.. (Score:2)