What is the Rising Star app?
What is the Rising Star app?
The Rising Star app is a mobile application that viewers of the Rising Star TV show can download for free to their smartphones and tablets to participate in the show. It is an innovative piece of software that is fully integrated in the show and allows viewers at home to decide who progresses in the talent competition - in real time.
In a first for the TV industry, audiences vote live on air via the app during a singer's performance and their decisions play out in real time for the audience and the performer to see on screen.
The Rising Star App is available across different mobile platforms in different territories including iOS (iPhone & iPad), Android and Windows Phone.
How does the Rising Star app work?
Once the show starts, viewers can opt to log into the app with either their Facebook account or an email log in.
When a performer walks out on stage, he or she is separated from the studio audience and the judges by a translucent floor to ceiling LED screen. As the performer begins to sing, the judges and viewers at home vote on the performance via the app. Images of the voters logged in via Facebook appear live on the LED screen facing the performer as the votes are tallied. Only if a singer wins over 70 per cent of the audience, does the wall rise and the singer steps out as a new star to bask in the applause of the live studio audience.
How does the app cope with millions of multiple users?
The system behind the app is a state of the art, ultra robust software and server system that comprises 6 main components handling vote logging and reporting, user registration, content management, monitoring and cloud infrastructure.
Once a vote is logged via the app it is transmitted instantaneously to Google's custom-built, load balanced cloud-based servers that have been specially developed with Screenz, Rising Star's global second screen technology partner. Google's servers are designed to tabulate tens of millions of simultaneous votes instantaneously.
This kind of technology can go wrong. What happens if more people vote at the same time than the system can handle?
Screenz using Google cloud have created an incredibly robust system that can process tens of millions of simultaneous interactions via the application to create a real time voting experience. The system stress tests that Google and Screenz constantly undertake are performed at a level far in excess of the most ambitious voting levels estimated in any Rising Star broadcast territory.
What happens if the show is broadcast in a number of territories simultaneously - how will the system cope?
Each country has is own set up and database, each system has his own servers configuration, CDN and platforms so nothing is overlapping.
What measures are in place to combat fake votes, voting robots etc?
A range of security mechanisms are deployed on the VSC including: firewall, IP restriction, VPN-only access. Furthermore, utilization of a cloud-based system allows for quick updates to implement latest security standards.
