NTN Playmaker Information

The Playmaker:

AKA's - Gamebox, NTN Box, Trivia Box, Box, Game Board, Keyboard, Machine.

I normally just say "gamebox." Sometimes women will use just "box,"  and say things like "My box just died," or "My box is on its period," providing a little comic relief. Anyway, NTN officially calls them playmakers.

DITV Playmaker

Digital Interactive Television: My local TGIF finally got the DITV box in April. After playing a couple weeks here's may assessment: overall a much better system. DITV boxes have better range, more reliable communication, charge faster and last longer than either of the old or new style boxes; no antennas either. It seems to me that the only drawback is that the system is a bit more tight. That is, the time available to get maximum points seems shorter. With the old playmakers, I used to be able to get 280-305 points on the third clue on a regular basis. Now with DITV, I seem to barely get 280 when I'm right on the answer as the last clue appears. As I get more playtime on DITV I'll go ahead and put out more info and retire the info about the old playmakers, because those are destined to go away in the near future.

Here are some more notes on the new DITV boxes provided by LILJOL:

1.  The new playmakers are supposed to be able to last an entire broadcast
day (11 A.M. - 2 A.M. the next morning), provided they get an overnight
charge.  Due to that NTN has made it virtually impossible to change playmaker
numbers unless one has manager function access.

2.  One feature taken away was the ability to change player accounts and/or
names (used to be able to do so while games were still going on, except for
premium games and some premium game spinoffs).  With DITV, if one tries to
change names during a game, all points will be lost.  Apparently someone at
NTN wanted to cut down the number of "salutes" (generally, handles beginning
with F, followed by truncated versions of other handles, sites, cities, etc.).

3.  If a player arrives between games, don't bother logging in until the
graphics for the new game start.  For whatever reason the DITV system logs
out those players, forcing them to log in again.

4.  Much more of a rolling/pressing action is required to get answers to
register on the keypad layout in The Play Zone.  Also, switching answers
seems to take longer than before (very hard to "double clutch" and still
score a full 1000).

5.  At least the ugly sight of mangled and/or missing antennae will soon be a
thing of the past.

Old Playmaker Info