New Scaratings

Visited a local BWW to test the new tablet, here's a fairly detailed report.

PM was smaller and thicker than I was expecting, at least it looks unique and not like a generic tablet. Appears to be fairly sturdy, at least twice as thick as a normal tablet with seemingly solid housing. Just so long as the screen holds up when dropped. Liked the tabs to prop it up at an angle.




Charging stations are pretty spiffy, located on vertical walls makes them much more noticeable to unaware customer. Kudos.



Login process is intuitive, seems a bit more time consuming than the blue PM. Haven't compared the actual keystrokes for each though, just noticed the username and password entry is two screens instead of one.







PM is very responsive during gameplay, certainly none of the standard BWW lag. The view mid-question.



I did notice two issues relevant to gameplay that need to be addressed.

1, The choices appear on the monitor a good second before they are completely visible on the PM. All five choices are up on the monitor before they even start to fill in on the PM. And then the choices on the PM slide in slowly making even more time lost. The answers on the PM need to mirror exactly what is happening on the monitor, that means starting at the same time and not sliding in as slow as they do. At present, a player without a monitor is giving up tons of think time. And even if you have a monitor, you have to watch the answers appear on the monitor and then look down to the PM. Not a great picture, but the monitor in the background with the PM in the foreground to give an idea of the delay.



2, If you are preparing to change your answer mid question and hovering over a different choice, the clues are now hidden because your hand is in the way. This was pretty darn frustrating to me, just seemed to be no way around this.



However I have a potential solution that would solve this and another potential problem. Reduce the font ever so slightly in order to add a row of numbers 1-5 at the bottom of the screen. This keeps the hand out of the field of vision and has the added feature of making the answering process more as it currently is. Serious players could use this to easily play multiple PM's with little change while casual players could still use the current tablet method.

Miscellaneous notes, the PM screen will only show 8 scores on the screen at a time instead of the standard 10 on the monitor. To scroll down simply drag just like a standard tablet. You can however see the 2nd page of the leaderboard in this manner faster than on the monitor.



The product isn't bad, but it does need some tweaking to make it work for all players.

Thanks, BO.

As a non-tech guy, this seems not to be so intimidating as I feared.

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liljol, still residing in a humble lil abode in Buzztime's Backyard, San Diego County, in The Horribly Site-Poor Golden State, California...

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Thanks for the report, BO. I know I was not the only one wondering about these things.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

Excellent Bo. Thanks for the pics, and the thoughts. Much appreciated.

It looks like at the bottom right of the screen, there is a little icon of a battery that presumably shows an approximate percentage remaining.

Very nice work BO. I have not been dreading them as much as some, but there were concerns, so it's nice to see that it looks like there are many positives and few negatives. Hopefully their long-term durability, especially in the hands of little kids or drunken adults covering them in beer or wing sauce, will not be a problem.

Thanks for the report, BO. Question: the "Exit Game" with the runnning man icon at the bottom left of the tablet looks like it would be really easy to hit accidentally. Did you have any issue with it?

No issues. Not 100%, but was thinking the exit game takes you to the <touch an option to begin> screen. So if it were to happen, you'd just have to touch the trivia option to go right back into the game. Regardless I think if one was to hit that button, it would only require one button to return to the game.

That actually brings up another possible point. Pretty sure when you start game play, you have to wait until the next questions begins in order to participate. There was a screen that said something to the effect of <please wait for the next question>. As it is now, when you enter game play you can receive partial points when entering in the middle of a question. That may not be possible with the tablet, so if you were to accidentally hit the <exit game> button in the middle of a question, you could be screwed for the remainder of it.

Again, not positive about that, just putting some pieces together from trying to remember the various procedures.

Can't hardly wait for those to appear in St Louis area....I may show the images to my pals in O'Fallon, IL.

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Mitch (MTCHWF/WLFFLY)

Co-Home Bar: Buffalo Wild Wings Edwardsville, IL and Time Out in St Louis, MO

Excellent work, BO. I'd say they are about as good as could be expected. Hopefully they'll consider some of your suggestions.

Hopefully. I did send a version of my review to KK who forwarded it to the development team. I would like to think the two issues mentioned are pretty important.

Excellent review BO. These look about the same as the tablets I tested in Downey last June. One thing I think is different is the tabs to raise the Playmaker at an angle. I think the test units had something that made them nearly vertical, which I figured would be of no use since it could tip over with more than a little pressure. Not 100 percent sure it was that way, but it seems familiar to me.

What are the odds?
One screen shot during a question and, of course, it's about Canada...

1, The choices appear on the monitor a good second before they are completely visible on the PM. All five choices are up on the monitor before they even start to fill in on the PM. And then the choices on the PM slide in slowly making even more time lost. The answers on the PM need to mirror exactly what is happening on the monitor, that means starting at the same time and not sliding in as slow as they do. At present, a player without a monitor is giving up tons of think time. And even if you have a monitor, you have to watch the answers appear on the monitor and then look down to the PM. Not a great picture, but the monitor in the background with the PM in the foreground to give an idea of the delay.

I wonder if there is a variable on the number of tablets in play and the choice lag you reference. IE, if 40 tablets are in play is is slower than 5 ?

In case BT is monitoring feedback on this site:

I like the signal strength indicator. This could help serious players avoid "dead" or low signal strength zones. It could also help players maximize "playmaker" responsiveness.

What is the range of the new box? Could someone steal one and play from home (not that I would!)? With the questions on the screen, someone will consider this (so long as they can rig up a charger).

Numbers on the bottom make a lot of sense.

Thanks to BO for the info!

Didn't take a pic, but there is a tag on the bottom of the PM that states it contains a GPS tracker and thieves will be tracked and prosecuted.

We actually didn't have stands at all at that time... (they weren't in their cases yet) but we did ask in one of the questions if you would use one



Now I'm not in product or dev, but from what I understand the number of tablets has nothing to do with lag (like on the blue Playmakers). I don't, however, know what creates this lag. (I'll try to find out)



From what I know the boxes should work out on the patio area, but if you leave the immediate area of the restaurant they will no longer function.

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^..^

Thanks for the comments, KK.

Thanks, BO, so much for the full report and photos. I join the others in saying your recommendation for the 1 to 5 buttons at the bottom of the screen would help not just multiboxers but anyone who is more adept at hitting numbers in a horizontal row rather than a particular row on a vertical screen setup. And the issue you raised about the tablets reflecting the monitors without a lagtime is also a critical one--if a location believes that someone can play off the tablet without a monitor, the location will be less likely to understand the need to have multiple monitors on so that its players won't be at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis other locations.

I see we're now up to 8 locations in Texas with the tablets, but still none near Houston. Maybe when it hits our area, we can get a group together and confirm if the original BWW lagtime problem has been eliminated or only appears when some critical number of people press buttons at the same time.

Brooke/AARDVK

OK, yes I remember the question. I think I responded that I would be afraid of it tipping over since I was picturing something that would make them vertical. Thanks for the clarification. By the way, I like BO's idea of the numbers running along the bottom too for Countdown games, although having used the mobile Playmaker for things like Playback (with button choices that included the pound sign) and Spotlight (with the numbers 0-9 crammed on the screen) I was not as fond of that interface. Maybe the larger screen would help.

Maybe someone at BT should take a look at the Tactus LCD popup button technology, when it becomes ready http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/13/this-is-the-future/.

gavv

BWW is driving this, not BT.

Well hell, the BWW a few hundred yards (laughing at LILJOL) from my front door just got the new tablets according to BT. Might have to review this thread and make another foray.