While you were watching an AFC team win (!) the Super Bowl on TV -- and perhaps surfing one of the many Internet sports sites during commercials --  hundreds of fans at the game were taking the combination of spectator sports and technology to the next level.

Six hundred randomly selected Super Bowl XXXII fans in San Diego found touch screens mounted on the arms of their seats that gave them a broad array of new options. With just a touch of the finger, fans could view live action from a number of individual cameras in the stadium and on the field, watch replays from multiple angles, and pull up real-time statistics and information about the game. They also selected video on-demand, played games, and ordered souvenir merchandise.

The fans found these features in an innovative new product named ChoiceSeat, which was developed by Williams' Vyvx video services company with Venue Media. ChoiceSeat -- a Pentium-powered touch screen running Internet Explorer 4.0 -- is made possible by Internet Explorer's componentized architecture, which Microsoft has been delivering since Internet Explorer 3.0.

In addition to showing how Internet technologies can be used to merge traditional television content with PC technologies, the screens are one more example of how Microsoft Internet Explorer serves as a premier platform that other companies can build upon.

ChoiceSeat relies on a host of Microsoft technologies in addition to Internet Explorer:

• The servers are powered by Microsoft Internet Information Server.
• The touch screen clients are Windows 95 running Internet Explorer 4.0 in full-screen mode.
• Screen layouts employ cascading style sheets (CSS) and Dynamic HTML (DHTML).
• ActiveX controls manage the video feeds and switching.
• The Channel Definition Format (CDF) is used to load all of the graphics and screens into the ChoiceSeat image caches the night before the game.