As another season of high school football comes to an end, coaches across the country are crediting a new digital imaging technology developed by a Pennsylvania company with increasing their coaching efficiency--and their teams' win total--dramatically.

For high school football coaches, scouting the competition--or trying to analyze what went wrong or right in a game--once meant tedious hours rewinding and forwarding game tapes.

Now, the Landro Play Analyzer can cut that time in half--so viewing, say, every play your next opponent ran on all third-down conversion attempts from its past five games is just clicks away on a remote.

Coaches who've bought the system swear by it.

Craig Sponsky, head coach of Bishop Carroll High School in Ebensburg, Pa., which lost the Class A state championship Dec. 5, purchased the system in June and says it helped his team get to the championship game.

The team was looking for an edge, he said. "We're able to see things we may not have been able to see prior to" having it.

"It is such a great teaching tool. It saves time for the student athletes. It sounds kind of silly, but when you've got space on a video [while fast-forwarding or rewinding plays] you can lose a kid's attention immediately," he said.

Larry Greene, head coach at Pennsylvania's Central Bucks East High School, has been coaching for 25 years and didn't think technology could have done much better than when film gave way to video.

"It does what we needed to do, and it just gives you tremendous access to plays," he said.

Players can make highlight tapes of their best plays and games for college recruiters in minutes, he said. To have a tape made can cost about $250, he said, but his players use the machine to make tapes for free in a matter of minutes.

"Am I going to tell you, is it going to win games for you? Yeah, actually," he said. "I think it's the tool of the future."

Chris Wise, football coach at Utah's Bear River High School, credits the Landro with helping the team win the state championship this year.

"We went from 5-6 last year to 12-1 this year," he said. "We've cut down our time scouting-wise. We've cut down film-watching time so we have more time for practice."

The system involves a blue box about the size of a VCR or DVD player that connects to any television. Games can be recorded directly to it or transferred from a videotape by plugging in a VCR or digital camera.

The system can store about 20,000 plays--easily several seasons' worth--and costs about $5,000.

A modified computer keyboard allows the user to index the beginning and end of a play and plug in an array of information, including down and distance; defense, offense, or special teams; and other details. It's operated by a remote control that has only a few buttons to advance or review plays in real time or slow motion and a built-in laser pointer.