‘Are You Watching This’ Blows Up Cell Phones When Games Go Epic!

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 01-28-11    No Comments

You have to hand it to Mark Phillip. Here’s a guy who, back in 2000, fell asleep during a Jets game and missed a rare victory. So, scarred forever, Phillip goes off and gets his sorry butt into MIT, learns how to program, and then, in about 2007, he rolls out his web masterpiece: Are You Watching This?

That’s the service that takes box scores, web traffic and other info about a game and makes an automated guess as to whether that particular game is worth watching. It then matches that game to your location, your preferences for sports and other factors and sends you an alert when a game turns “Epic.”

As cool as this all sounds, the service has not been the explosive success Phillip had hoped for. It still seeks serious traffic and a media partner. But he’s plugged onward, redone the site and added features.

I’m liking the serious mobile integration and nice online video feed of great sports clips. I’m not sure this is exactly kosher rights-wise, but it’s slick and entertaining nonetheless.

It also doesn’t hurt that his buddies at MIT wrote a nice piece about him yesterday.

CES 2011: How Many Sports Tablet PCs Does The World Need?

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 01-04-11    No Comments

LAS VEGAS: Sports fans considering getting an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet computer to give their in-home game experience a much needed boost, will be facing on heck of challenge in 2011.

Too much of a good thing.

If this year’s 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show is any indication, there are not just lots of tablets here. There are lots, and lots. And LOTS!

AHX Global announced a new Windows-based Tablet PC. Vizio announced a line of tablets and smarts phones to work with its line of TVs. (That’s what’ pictured here.) LG is also showing a line of tablets. As are most other big gadget makers. There are analyst reports of the market for tablets basically doubling in 2011 to something on the order of 24 million units shipped. There is even talk of the old Opera browser — remember that? — will be coming to the market with an Opera-based tablet this year.

Now, no question, the well tricked-out iPad or Galaxy Tab tablet can be the ultimate couch potato’s sports weapon. Tablets bring all the online resources of instant replay, customized stats, direct camera feeds and fantasy impact to fans in real time. And they do so in a way that does not mess with your pure TV game experience.

But lets be honest there: Who is going to struggle through all these options just to buy a Tablet PC. Shopping for an iPad or Android tablet is tough enough now. I cannot see the average consumer caring enough about what tablet to buy when they are available as part of a package TV deal.  Can you?

Tablets definitely have their place in the sports technology world. I love mine. But too much of a good thing is just that. Too much. Unless this market organizes and fast, tablet computers run the risk of becoming a low margin, hard-to-buy item that the average shopper will simply not deal with.

Vizio Moves 3D Sports TV Needle With New 65-Inch LED Set

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 12-17-10    No Comments

If there is one thing Dan and I have been underwhelmed with, as far as sports tech goes for this holiday season, it has been 3D TVs. Pricey, relatively small and usually requiring clumsy active-shutter glasses, 3D is sinply not quite ready for holiday shopping primetime, at least for sports in 2010.

And while 3D’s problems are far from over, yesterday an interesting set showed up on the market that is changing this calculus just a little bit. Vizio announced the Theater 3D Razor XVT3D650SV LED, a legit 65 inch LED TV that offers reasonable features, good size and blessedly passive sync glasses.

All for the not obscene $3,500.

For sure, I have not seen this TV to check for image quality, but at least on paper, the set moves the needle just a bit for thinking about going 3D for sports. The passive sync glasses have less eye strain than active sync ones so game action is more fluid. The set comes with support for Vizio’s excellent Web apps which means you can Tweet during the game. And the LED performance should give reasonable results for game action and live TV.

I am not saying that you should run out and buy this TV, but if you are in the market, this Vizio is worth at least a look.  And that is news in the struggling 3D set market.

Prima Cinema has big league potential

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 12-11-10    No Comments

Los Angeles-based company Prima Cinema is poised to deliver the ultimate movie-going experience for the hardcore home theater owner. The proposed service would offer same-day, digital delivery of new films to home theaters on their theatrical release date.

It’s not cheap though. At $20,000 for the initial installation, and $500 per additional movie, this would, at best, be a niche service. But that got me thinking, could this concept be somehow extended and adapted to sports?

Yeah, unlike movies, sporting events don’t ever come out in limited release, they’re all same-day affairs, but just think about it. If the NFL, for example, could find a way to offer high-end customers extra value that goes above and beyond your typical Monday Night Football game, there could be serious money to be made here.

Imagine this: your own commercial-free, VIP game feed. Perhaps it could be something like your own virtual production truck with every possible camera angle and replay available to you, plus exclusive access to anchors during commercial breaks.

Ultimate access to the game. Cool, right?

Sporting News & Comcast: It’s Time To Get Interactive

Posted by Seth in INTERNET, TELEVISION on 11-22-10    No Comments

In its continuing attempt to avoid becoming the Montgomery Ward of sports journalism, Sporting News has continued trying to innovate in the digital domain. It’s latest play — a partnership with Comcast Sports — is an interesting step that could pay dividends if both sides use each other’s resources to mutual advantage. Of course, Sporting News has notoriously struggled since the dawn of the Internet age, so who knows where this is really headed. From the looks of it so far, they’re not taking full advantage of this partnership.

Full disclosure, I did some freelance work for Sporting News a few years ago, when they were still publishing as a weekly magazine, and I had a good experience with them. The venerable publication — now more than 120 years old — abandoned its weekly print product a couple years ago. It comes out twice a month now. I still subscribe and always find it a fun read.

But online, they’ve remade their website a few times over the years, including a relaunch earlier this year, and they’re still searching for the right answers. They launched a daily electronic magazine called Sporting News Today a couple years ago, and this new partnership with Comcast will add a few pages of city-specific content to that daily e-mag in those cities where Comcast operates regional sports TV networks. They’ve already started this in Philadelphia, and there are more cities coming.

The great advantage of this for Sporting News is that Comcast’s video assets could give the e-mags something they’re missing: interactivity. What they need to do is embed video from Comast into the product. From looking at today’s Philly version of Sporting News Today, they haven’t done that. Essentially all this partnership seems to have led to so far is a few extra Philly-specific stories, done by local writers who work for Comcast. And frankly, the stories aren’t anything special.

It feels like both Sporting News and Comcast have missed the boat here: This is the web. It’s an interactive medium, but they’re not delivering an interactive product.

This is completely counter-intuitive, but Sporting News has used a digital product to go back in time. Sporting News Today is loaded with wire copy and box scores — just like Sporting News used to be for all those decades when it was a weekly produced on newsprint. A lot of hardcore fans — fantasy league dorks like me who spend the evening looking at live box scores — already know a lot of that stuff before we go to bed. So we don’t need it delivered to our in box the next day.

You could make the argument that with the news hole shrinking at so many daily papers, something like Sporting News Today fills a niche. Anyone who has ever worked in the sports department at a daily paper has received the angry phone call from the guy who’s pissed off that the NASCAR results didn’t get printed. I had a call once from a guy upset that the results of some tennis tournament weren’t in the paper — and it wasn’t one of the Grand Slam events, just some other random tournament that nobody was interested in except this guy. But the reality is that there is no shortage of places to get that information.

Instead, Sporting News and Comcast should play up the interactive capability of doing business together in the digital domain. We’re talking video highlights, video roundtable discussions, blogs from the Sporting News writers that readers can respond to. And then use the local Comcast staffers to get at the types of stories the wire copy is never going to cover. It’s a platform with a lot of potential. These two companies just need to put their heads together and figure out how to execute it to its fullest potential.

‘Networkless’ Sports Gets To First Base With Postseason.TV

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 10-29-10    No Comments

With the Cablevision and News Corp continuing their ridiculous carriage feud into a simply numbing second week, it is remarkable how much alternative sports content I am finding as I seek to work around the traditional multi-channel cable and satellite packages.

And for a change, we’re not talking about stolen bit torrents or gray market uStream feeds, but legit first-quality game footage, available online from the league at great prices.

Case in point, check out Postseason.TV, the $9.95 extended content service from MLB.com.

Postseason.TV is simple: For $10 you get an impressive four-stream view of the game, choices of up to eight camera angles, very nice stat and on-demand packages and a pretty slick At Bat 2010 integration, which tosses the game to the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch — which looked tremendous with the new Retina display, by the way. Now, of course this is based on the Fox network feed, and for those of us in New York, being held hostage by Cablevision and News Corp, just getting to see the games is nice. But this view is pretty impressive for the fan. You really do get a much more immersive feel for the event. But even better, it not only lets users get around the petty News Corp-Cablevision dust up, it really trashes the entire cable TV business.

I can see this without having to pay for a full bucket of programing I don’t want. And MLB.com has priced the service just right. Considering that a lot of traditional cable packages now run $800 or $900 a year — while the broadband connection that I need to connect to MLB.com can be had for about $480 a year — I can spend $300 or $400 a year on a la carte content and still be ahead of the game.

As you are going to hear me say now and for the foreseeable future, sports is a public trust that content creators and broadcasters share with fans. If they cannot be responsible enough to deliver on that trust, there is no room for them anymore. Hey, our friends in the print journalism business are having a tough time these days because the Internet changed the way people get their news. Looks like the same type of shakeout could be on the way for cable companies.

3D Cameras Coming To Mobile Phones: The DIY Sports Broadcast

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

Watch out ESPN. Looks like you have a fresh competitor: sports fans. Cell phone cameras that contain decent-quality 3D cameras are beginning to find their way to market. The first one we know of is a 3D cell camera from Sharp. And yesterday the M-67 from Spice Mobility began to show up in markets. There is a lot to like in the prices. This unit is less than $100.

Everybody that dismisses the DIY factor in sports content, should spend a few minutes on YouTube and type in their favorite teams name. Here is a search for Yankees. Now sure, Fox, and CBS and all the rest are there. But there are plenty of videos from a wide variety of other sources.

Give these video makers a high-powered 3D camera in their cell phones, and look out.

3D cameras for cell phones: Keep an eye on it.

Surviving The Fox Lockout: Long Live Lingerie Football

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 10-18-10    No Comments

Since those of us here in New York don’t have access to Fox NFL and baseball broadcasts, courtesy of Fox’s feud with Cablevision, I have been finding some tremendous new sports.

I checked out some United Football League action on the web last week. And now I’m talking a look at the LFL. That is the Lingerie Football League. Yes friends, this really does exist. Basically it’s arena football played by women wearing low heat coefficient uniforms that just happen to resemble underwear.

The next game will pit the Seattle Mist vs. the Sand Diego Seduction on Friday night.

High powered offenses, these teams are not. Over nine games, or a little more than halfway through the season, both the Mist and the Seduction have combined for 467 total yards, or a little more than 25 yards each per game. Ouch. That still works out to something nutty like a half-yard a minute during the course of a game.

The only upside here is the broadcast partner is MTV2. Which means it is at least on TV. Hopefully New Yorkers will soon be able to say the same for the Giants and the World Series.

With No World Series, Now We Can Bet On … Macs!

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 10-18-10    No Comments

As day three of Fox Lockout continues here in the slum that is Cablevision’s TV viewing area, it is interesting what I am finding to do without football and the baseball playoffs. It turns out Apple’s “Back to the Mac” media event is coming up, and there is actually a bookmaker out there that has calculated the odds on what to expect from the event. You can get the full skinny from Mickey Richardson and his team at Bookmaker.com, but here are some of the highlights:

What will happen on Wednesday’s “Back to the Mac” event?
There will be an 11-inch version of Macbook Air
YES     -750     88.5%
NO       +150    40%

Updated iWork & iLife
YES     -500     15%
NO       +100    50%

There will be a Facetime for iChat in new OS
YES     -750     88.5%
NO       +150    40%

The next version of OS X will be called Lion
YES     +150    40%
NO       -750     88.5%

Yes, it really has gotten this ugly. I can’t even remember what football is.

10/17/10: The Day Cable TV Died

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 10-17-10    No Comments

Like two bone weary dinosaurs fighting over the last rancid carcass right after an asteroid strike, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Chuck Dolan’s Cablevision are in a fight to the death.

If either side gets its way and no significant comprise is found, what happens here will be the beginning of the end for sports on cable and satellite TV.

In case you don’t live in the northeast, News Corp and Cablevision are bickering over the rights fees Cablevision pays for News Corp content. That means everything on the Fox TV network, including the NFL and the World Series, not to mention The Simpsons and American Idol. Cablevision is screaming that Fox is raising rates by a significant amount, though the exact amount isn’t publicly known. News Corp is countering that Cablevision runs its Fox broadcast feeds for virtually nothing and has been doing so for years, so it’s time they paid the content freight. The result is that Cablevision is not carrying Fox today. And as impossible as this may be to believe, that means today’s New York Giants game was not on TV for a large chunk of New York City, for what I believe is the first time in franchise history.

Do both sides have a point? Sure they do. But the larger technological realities render the entire argument moot.

Without the monthly subscription fees from cable TV providers like Cablevision, Fox won’t have the dollars to pay for top-tier sports content like the NFL or Major League Baseball.

If Fox gets its way and drives through a big increase in rates,  those fees will certainly be passed to consumers. Considering our country is going broke, there just won’t be the demand for cable TV as a service if the prices are precipitously increased. Currently, average revenue per subscriber in the cable industry is in the $75 range. If that jumps to, say, $100 or higher in order to pay for sports programming, probably something on the order of 20 percent of cable customers will give up the service. Remember, non-sports content is readily available on the web via stolen bit torrents, and there are several sites that provide crappy but viewable stolen feeds of many sports events.

What this fight is doing is nothing less than training consumers to realize they can go around traditional cable feeds and content providers to get the content they want. Factor in that Google and Apple are pursuing major web TV products right now, and consumers will quickly see that getting the sports they want is no longer a techno-challenge.  And the wild part is, the leagues could easily cut the cable and satellite providers out of the mix. You do the math: Say the entire NFL schedule is available online for about $150 a year. Say 30 million people subscribe to it, which is conservative. That’s $4.2 billion in revenue that goes straight to the league each year. And that’s before commercials.

Considering the leagues are looking at $10 billion or $20 billion in total revenue, what exactly do we need cable TV for?

And sadly, both Dolan and Murdoch know this. What they are cynically saying here is this: “We are going fight over whatever remaining scraps there are. We lived as mindless savage dinosaurs. And we will die as mindless savage dinosaurs.”

Both sides need to come up with a reasonable deal that pays media companies for content while still protecting the value of multi-channel TV, and they need to do it without raising rates for consumers. In other words, both companies are going to have to get smaller, take less profits and be of less value. If they can’t — or won’t — do that, there won’t be much left of the cable TV business as we have known it.

The truly terrifying part for sports fans? When all of this happens, the only thing the Dolans of the world will have left to do is manage the Knicks and Rangers. And just think how crappy the teams will be when these knuckleheads have nothing else to occupy their time.

If weren’t so grisly, it would be hilarious.

Episode 73: The TSC Zombies Live!

We celebrate our final show at Hothead Studios by breaking down sports video games from E3;  talkin’ through some dang sports video baseball cards and then go getting into the fallout from Derek Boogarrd’s untimely death.  Finally, what we have all been waiting for: Dan on latest on with Posada’s crazy, tweeting wife. Share this [...]

Episode 72: Dan’s Cool Rugby Shirt

Blum breaks down 42 miles on a bike with no chain. Evans reports on the Oprah/Nike summit. Dan’s got a rugby johns he would like to share. And some high tech tricks to baseball scouting. (26.8 KB, 27.10 Minutes) Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 71: The NFL For President!

Dan breaks down the body blow online poker just took from regulators. Blum talks up the new book about what the NFL has to teach capitalism. Seth hates yet another video game. And finally ESPN on your iPad. (25.3 mb, 25.4 minutes) Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 70: “Are You Ready to Rumble?”

MLB TV’s online service is legitimately cool. The Masters will be a non-event online. Tiger Woods plays with crappy equipment and Blum compares betting on Wrestlemania to trading corn futures. Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 69: “A Podcast Unlike Any Other”

The organizers of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar seek to bend nature to their will with artificial clouds. Blum gloats over the NCAA Selection Committee’s epic seeding failures. Blackberry “Super” Apps underwhelm and Dan takes a crack at the new Masters video game. Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 68: “Revenge of the Nerds”

Seth and Blum mix it up with MIT over sports data. Dan reviews EA’s Fight Night Champion (virtual boxing is better than the real thing). Amar’e Stoudemire’s goggles get explained and the guys tour some physical fitness web sites. All that, plus, the week in review. Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 67: “Follow the Bouncing Blum”

Dan’s on the injured reserve this week, so Blum’s flying solo (with an assist from Seth the Tech Nihilist). In this episode: Seth breaks down March Madness On Demand, Blum wonders what gives with the crap-tastic apps that are dominating college athletics, a look into the NFL’s financial picture, plus the week in review at [...]

Episode 66: “It’s Hockey Night Tonight!”

It’s all hockey all the time for this week’s episode. Dan and Blum look at the cross-border battle between the Winter Classic and Heritage Classic as well as the Buffalo Sabres ownership change. Dan and Seth the Tech Nihilist reminisce about the classic NHL video games. Plus, how did a trade between the Stars and [...]

Episode 65: “Take This Job and Shove It”

Blum pitches his wild-eyed plan for NFL players to use social media to circumvent ownership. Seth the Tech-Nihilist gives his report on the new MLB.Com. Dan reviews NHL ’11 (it’s awesome) and digs into some racing tech at Daytona. Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 64: “Jets Fans are Damaged Individuals”

As Blum gloats, Dan lets the Jets know they can go straight to hell. Also, the best televisions for your Super Bowl party; Dan discovers Broadcast HD; Blum shares his illicit passion for wooden baseball bats; PLUS, the best sports e-books for your e-reader. Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg