TELEVISION


FiOS Rolls Out 3-D Yankees Game

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 05-11-10    No Comments


Imagine Derek, Ichiro and … well, you. The regional sports network, YES announced today that it will test 3D baseball broadcasting with a Yankees-Mariners game on July 10 and 11th. The service will be tested with FiOS, a local TV provider in NYC. And will not only be an interesting tech step, it will be fascinating test in acoustics: I will be listening  for a loud SMACK coming from the Steinbrenners slapping poor Cablevision upside the head. Those bastards currently overpay for YES content today. Imagine the fun they are having seeing that FiOS will get this trial before they do.

The game it shows that the Yankees will be going 3D sooner rather than later. I put the over under for a pure 3D YES feed for the 2011 season.

Discuss.




NBA Digital Tests TV Apps

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 05-03-10    No Comments


It looks like the leagues are catching on to this notion of porting their digital content directly to TVs, without the need for PCs, set-top boxes or browsers. NBA Entertainment announced today that it will be tossing in NBA Game Time into the list of apps that run on Web enabled TVs like those from Vizio and Roku.

The move is important on many levels. Here are the top 2

1) Others will follow the NBA’s lead. The move is important if only because a major sports league is testing the direct to TV digital content waters. Where the NBA goes, so shall MLB, NFL, the NHL and others. It’s a real step.

2) TV Apps Aren’t a Pain to Make. The move also shows how dead simple it is for sports leagues to make meaningful content for Web App enabled TVs. In other words, leagues can get to customers faster with apps and not spend time kowtowing to pain in the ass Apple when it comes to getting their software on the networks, like say dealing with the Apps Store.

And keep in mind, that no matter what TV Web Apps will be a big, BIG market.  There are 500 million some odd TVs working in the United States; and slowly but surely probably about 20 percent will have internet capability over say a half decade. That is roughly 100 million TVs, about 5 times the number of iPads users there will ever be.

Sports Apps are gold.




Rumor Of The Day: Tunerfish May — Or May Not — Spin Out Of Comcast

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 04-27-10    No Comments


tech crunch grabListen up: Today’s rumor of the day is from TechCrunch. Micheal Arrington, who owns the place, is hyping his big trade event in NYC later next month. And apparently one of the companies that’s paying him is getting “coverage.” Such is the state of American media.

Anyway, Tunerfish is important for sports fans because it might be tied into Comcast’s Fancast product. Plaxo, which is also mentioned here, is the failed address and contact play that Comcast bought. So if the two are related, fans can expect to be looking at some sort of social viewing thing.

Which is important now because the social sports is really coming. The iPad is the killer app in TV interfaces. And it hosts all sorts of interactivity. And some sort of social TV thing as you watch the game is clearly coming down.

And who knows, with its reach and bucks and NBC, Comcast might just be the player here.




Boxeeing Out The Competition: Boxee/Roku Deals Turn Leagues Into Broadcasters

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 04-21-10    1 Comment


When it comes to new media, it’s looking like the leagues are making their own media hay.

Over the past couple of days, two interesting sports tech deals got done: Gadget maker Roku announced it will stream NBA content via its boxes. And interactive TV software maker Boxee said it struck similar deals with the NHL. Both announcements got a fair amount of media coverage, with the moves viewed mostly as sports leagues pioneering new revenue channels for their games.

But this spin missed a larger, darker trend: Sports is the leader now in new technology efforts across all media. And in many ways, the leagues are replacing the media companies that used to be their partners.

What’s makes the Boxee and Roku deals important  is that they got done at all. Both Boxee and Roku have struggled do business with traditional media cable and satellite companies. These usual-suspect firms do not like to deal with outsiders, are slow to innovate and simply don’t have much money. That Boxee and Roku found suiters at all is news. But that they got not one, but two, sports leagues to take them seriously shows just how far off  the innovation ball most traditional media firms have become. It’s no accident that Disney is not experimenting with alternative delivery of ESPN on Boxee.

Unless the major media firms step up and decide they want to be real media companies, and not just marketing fronts looking to discount their way to cheap product, I cannot see any reason why an NFL, NBA, NHL or MLB will want to, or have to, deal with them.

Particularly for new media, the leagues are cutting their own path to innovation. And the leagues will be the big winners.




First Impressions of The Masters in 3D

Posted by Dan in TELEVISION on 04-09-10    No Comments


P4080512I got a chance to check out some of the 3D coverage from Augusta yesterday and I have to say that I was very impressed.  Going in I thought that not much could be added to golf coverage by adding 3D cameras but I was wrong.  Where you really see a difference is on holes where the tee box is above the green and you can see the depth, like on the Par 3 over the water.  It also works very well on 8, 10, and 13 where there is a lot of elevation on the fairways.  On a regular broadcast the greens and fairways look pretty flat but with a 3D broadcast you see why players are having issues with their shots because their lie is not not completely flat.  I’d also say that if you are looking at the 3D webcast thru a TV it will not be the same when we looked at that first it was almost like it was at half resolution, you need a full set.  Having seen 3D hockey broadcast and now golf, I am looking forward tot he 3D broadcast of the World Cup.