Spectrum Visual

Awards and Achievements

SVN were recipients of the Minister’s Award for Overall Technology Excellence and the Information and Communications Technology: Software, Services and Solutions sector award at the 2004 Technology Top 100 awards (an initiative of the Department of Science and Technology).

In 2003, Screendigest, the world’s leading authority on digital cinema, awarded South Africa (via SVN), jointly with India, as the digital cinema country of the year. The award recognised the work SVN has done in digitising film festivals.

SVN were one of the top five finalists in the 2003 T-Systems Age of Innovation awards. Additionally, they were finalists in the Most Outstanding Technological Innovation Award, as well as the 2002 and 2003 Top Technology 100 awards.

SVN orchestrated the rollout out of the world’s first digital cinema advertising network. The company was also instrumental in the first exhibition of a digital, high definition, full-length South African feature film, introducing the local movie industry to the benefits and cost-saving features of utilising digital.

Due to SVN’s achievements and expertise, they have been invited to present at numerous international conferences including a gathering of cinema advertisers (SAWA) in London in 2003. Additionally, they were invited to present their experiences with integrating digital technology into film festivals at the 2004 International Film Festival Summit in New York. SVN was also one of the key speakers at the Projecting the Digital Future of Cinema conference held in London in 2003, and earlier this year Spectrum was invited to present at Docanema in Maputo, Mocambique.

lotto

SVN have utilised their understanding of, and experience with, digital media to develop custom software solutions for our clients, primarily in the broadcast industry:

One such example is LiveXperience™, an interactive cinema advertising platform which makes use of mobile technology in combination with the digital cinema advertising solution. LiveXperience™ allows a person to take a digital photo of themselves (or have one taken) and MMS or email this to SVN’s offices. SVN then encode and distribute this via satellite to a particular cinema for exhibition as part of the digital cinema advertising reel. The exhibited photo then wins a prize and the person is called up in the cinema to receive their prize. To date very successful campaigns have been run for ABSA Bank, Coca Cola (twice) and Sony Ericsson with a number more campaigns lined up for the rest of the year.
SVN also developed an entire software and hardware system for the SABC for a large interactive game show created by the BBC called “Test The Nation”
In addition to the “Test the Nation” work SVN have developed software for 13 different game shows, including the National Lottery show and Vodacom Yebo Millionaires which integrates television and the cell-phone technology.
SVN also provide Vodacom, South Africa’s largest cellular network operator, and eXactmobile, a large cellular content provider, with digital material (movie trailers, music videos, ads, etc.) prepared and encoded for distribution to mobile phones.

In addition to this our software development skills have been used to build quite a number of game shows for television, most of the development has been built on top of a core graphic output engine, which we use for the majority of the game shows, and we then add a GUI (graphical user interface) on top of this, and build the game scoring rules into the application. In addition to this SVN has developed a hardware based voting system which utilises multiple handsets to gather votes from in-studio contestants, these votes are collated into our game show server and used live during broadcasts the largest of which has been for Test the Nation, a BBC developed game show, which is a live 2-hour quiz show broadcast quarterly on SABC. This quiz involves a studio audience participation component and cell phone/SMS based response handling and checking. We have to date completed 4 of these events very successfully.

The following gameshows all used software custom developed for the specific show, this included all the scoring and SDI generated CG scores for use during broadcast:

Test The Nation:-( Originally screened on BBC) This included the design and supply of the in-studio voting handsets, and the integration of a live SMS scoring system for over 64,000 viewers at home.

Lotto Live and Lucky:-For the Lotto show the Spectrum system was used to display the live overlay of the lottery balls as they were drawn during the live broadcast; once the final ball has been drawn the system would then auto-arrange the balls in order.

Amstel Salute to Success:-The voting handsets were used in the show finale to record a series of votes by the studio audience.

Flink Dink:- This gameshow made use of a computer controlled buzzer system, response times for up to 4 contestants were scored using the software.

Lotto Count Yourself Lucky:-This show comprised a series of games with cumulative cash prizes, which were offset against a series of random choices made by the contestants during the game. All the scoring and random 'slot-machine' display graphics were tracked an displayed using the Spectrum system.

Generation Game:-This gameshow features a series of smaller games, these games make use of the touch screen interface and output the player choices via SDI.

ABSA ATM:-For this gameshow the system generates a live scoreboard which tracks the contestants cumulative winnings.

Dlala Skhokho:- This is a youth quiz show, which makes use of the voting handsets in as True or False game.

Yebo Millionaires Game:-This game show features a series of cumulative scores which equate to a certain amount of cash prizes; the Spectrum system is used to generate the random 'lucky' combination.