March 28, 2024

Sports Technology

Let's Go to the Video

Software-maker XOS Technologies is beefing up its game plan.

Barbara Miracle | 10/1/2005

.The Pac-10 and Big 12 athletic conferences have a state-of-the-art instant replay system as they take the football field this season. The XOS Instant Replay system gives officials in the booth the ability to rapidly review every play and notify field officials if a call should be reversed. "You could compare it to something like a TiVo," says Dan Aton, founder, president and CEO of Sanford-based XOS Technologies.

The instant replay product is just one of a dozen or so tools that XOS provides to 650 professional and college football, basketball, baseball and other sports teams. Launched by Aton in 1999, the company started as a technology systems integrator for sports arenas before moving into custom software for coaching staffs.

The coaching system, called XOS SportsStation Elite, lets team officials organize hundreds of game events and review them on a laptop in ways that make sense to the coaches. In football, for example, a coach might want to see all plays by a specific player or all interceptions. "The key is that coaches don't necessarily want to watch games in the order they are played," says Aton. "They want to see like events together."

PERSONALIZED: SportsStation Elite lets coaches organize footage in ways that make the most sense for them.In early 2002, XOS added a high-tech playbook system of X's and O's when it acquired Knowledge Inc.'s automated playbook drawing and management system and then developed it into video diagramming. "We took the 2-D flat diagram and combined it with video," says Aton.

XOS says its growth is tied to a new streaming video website product for colleges and universities. XOS creates and hosts the websites, which are designed for fans who closely follow their schools' athletic teams. The sites typically include free video as well as a subscription service that costs fans about $75 a year and provides additional video -- kind of like a premium channel on cable television. The schools get the money from the premium subscriptions. "It lets parents and students see events that aren't on television," says Aton. "It helps the schools generate revenue." XOS already has about 130 schools using the service.

XOS' products take advantage of video compression technology that allows video files to be distributed, stored and retrieved on the internet.

What's next? In addition to growing the website business, Aton says there is "some great new technology" for the coaching software product. It includes a 3-D simulation that puts a player "in the game" to see how he performs without the risk of injury.

To continue its expansion, XOS is relying on $25 million in private investment raised over the past year.

Sports to Go: Want to keep up with your favorite sport or live vicariously through a game on your Palm? Here are some software options:

Madden NFL 2005
EA Sports $29.99
This best-selling NFL video game is now available for PDAs and smartphones.

NASCAR V2.23
Arzdog Software $9.95 (shareware)
Check the 2005 NASCAR Nextel Cup race schedule.

Links Scorecard 1.2
Concrete Software $9.99 (shareware)
Track your golf scores organized by course and graph them over time.

Hoops 4.15
StickMan Software $19.99 (shareware)
Input real-time scoring and statistics for basketball.

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