Compression Conundrum: MLB.tv Almost There, But Not Quite

Posted by Seth in GAMING, GENERAL, INTERNET on 06-21-10    No Comments


Last week, Blum and I had a little debate over the usefulness of sports broadcast packages delivered via gaming consoles after ESPN announced a partnership with Microsoft to stream ESPN3 content via the Xbox 360.

I thought it was a pretty cool idea, but one of the concerns I voiced turned out to be well-founded.

Over the weekend, Major League Baseball ran a free preview of its MLB.tv package via the PlayStation 3. It was the first chance I’ve had to check out live streaming content over a gaming console, and while I still think this method of content delivery has some promise, there are definite drawbacks to it as well.

The MLB.tv package definitely delivers an HD picture, but something about the image quality wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it, but it just didn’t look as good as a true HD TV feed. Blum tells me that what I was noticing was the difference in the amount of signal compression between the feed delivered via the Web and the one delivered through my DirecTV dish. It was still a nice, bright image, and definitely watchable, but just not at the full clarity I’m used to.

On another note, I do think the package had better interactive features than Blum gave it credit for. You can rewind a game to any point, and as you’re rewinding, the line score pops up on the screen and it highlights what inning it is. So on Sunday, I missed the Pirates’ two-run rally in the eighth inning that led to their 5-3 win against Cleveland. I rewound the game until the bottom of the eighth was lit up in the line score and was able to stop it right there and watch what I wanted. There’s also an archive, so you can go back and watch games you missed, which is a nice perk. And that rewind function lets you sift through all those games and quickly find the action you’re looking for. One thing I didn’t see was a box score/stats display. That would be extremely useful.

Overall, I was fairly impressed, though I think the compression issue is something these packages will need to solve in order for them to really gain traction.



The Sports Tech Nihilist: Unimpressed By 3D TV

Posted by Seth in GENERAL, TELEVISION on 06-21-10    2 Comments


If you’ve been paying attention to the latest trends in televisions, you know 3D is all the rage. Having spent a little time at the local big box electronics store over the weekend, I’m trying to figure out why.

I sat down and watched a 3D TV demonstration — they had some soccer footage playing on a nice big flat panel set — and all I can tell you is I thought it sucked. For right now, 3D TV is a lot of hype over nothing.

First of all, you’re sitting there with those stupid-ass goggles on, and the fact is that while the effect is noticeable and is somewhat cool, you get over it in a hurry. What I saw didn’t look like an HD picture. It seemed like it was in significantly lower resolution than the typical HD picture I get on my TV at home. I’d much rather watch a pristine HD picture in 2D than the crapfest I watched in 3D in the demo.

It’s a cool idea. We all live for the day when everyone has a holodeck in their house and can interact with characters like they do on Star Trek. But from what I saw, this 3D TV thing adds no value. And the fact that the average consumer has no idea what it’s supposed to look like doesn’t help either.

For now, it just seems like a way for the TV makers to drive up prices on their sets by a few hundred dollars. I pass.



With Assist From Facebook, Pirates Punch Out Pierogi Guy

Posted by Seth in GENERAL, INTERNET on 06-21-10    No Comments


As if the Pittsburgh Pirates and their 17 (and soon to be 18 and counting) consecutive losing seasons hadn’t created enough bad PR, there was this little tidbit from the Steel City over the weekend.

Late last week, word leaked out that last October, on the heels of a 99-loss season, the Pirates secretly gave one-year contract extensions to their manager and general manager. The manager and GM were instructed not disclose this news publicly, but this is the world. Nothing stays secret forever. FoxSports.com reported it, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the Pirates were in the midst of a 12-game losing streak, which they finally snapped over the weekend. The concealment of this info for so long created a firestorm in sports-crazy Pittsburgh.

Here’s the tech angle to this story: A 24-year old kid who dons a pierogi suit to run in the between-innings pierogi races at PNC Park in Pittsburgh posted a snide remark about this on his Facebook page. He dared question the practices of an organization that has become the laughingstock of pro sports. But his boss — the guy in charge of mascots and in-game entertainment for the Pirates — apparently didn’t see the humor in it. So the pierogi kid got canned — from a job that pays $25 a night.

We’ve seen athletes get in trouble for things posted on their Twitter or Facebook pages, but now it seems big brother is watching the mascots and perogi racing guys, too. And just like that, we now live in an America where a pierogi can’t speak his mind.



Considering ESPN3 On The Xbox

Posted by Jonathan in GAMING, INTERNET, TELEVISION on 06-15-10    2 Comments


My heavens, some actual news out of a trade show. Shocker!

Yesterday, sports powerhouse ESPN announced, at the E3 video game confab in LA, that it will enter into a two-year, exclusive deal with Microsoft to stream ESPN3 — formerly ESPN360 — over the Xbox 360 via its premium subscription service. The move answers Sony’s similar hookup with Major League Baseball that streams its live Web  service via the PlayStation 3.

Let us step back and behold the stories here:

  • We see, yet again, the raw power for sports to command premium subscription dollars in the otherwise barren content wasteland that is the Web. Sports deals, even bad ones (more on that in a sec) now force the hand of even the world’s bad-ass video game box makers. I can’t wait for, say, the NFL to take its content to Apple with an iTunes deal. The fact is that as the great Web 3.0 shakeout  continues, sports will clearly not only be a survivor, it will be a winner.
  • How crappy a deal is this Microsoft? I will have to double check it when I actually see the service, but from here, all Microsoft is getting is the ESPN3 streaming service that’s already available via the Web. The only plus is that it’ll be on Microsoft’s platform and not a on a competitor’s. Think about that: Microsoft is paying for the mere right to reshow ESPN content on a gaming platform. It is getting nothing unique. Whooa!
  • Can Microsoft make good on its promise of adding unique interactive experiences to sports? The real shocker in sports tech is how lame Sony’s efforts have been to add content to the MLB material available on the PS3. Sure it’s cool to get games on a gaming box, but I’ve been underwhelmed at what those games are like, given that the PS3 is one of the most advanced pieces of computer hardware on the market.  Can Microsoft bring down the digital Berlin Wall that separates traditional linear sports and its interactive cousins? Or will the two domains remain as separated as ever?

However this breaks, the next 18 months on the Xbox and PS3 will be some of the most interesting in sports technology. In many ways, we are getting a critical early glimpse at what the next era in sports will actually be.

Stay tuned. Or rather stay plugged in.



Soccer Team Expects RoboCup Gold

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL on 06-14-10    No Comments


Here’s a World Cup soccer match that ESPN won’t be jumping all over to hype.  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reporting that the robot soccer team out of Carnegie Mellon University has high hopes for this year’s 2010 RoboCup going on in Singapore later this year.

Contestants certainly won’t be facing any vuvuzelas in the audience. (For the uninitiated, those are those loud, annoying horns they sell at all the stadiums that make watching World Cup games sound like you’ve got a beehive in your living room).

Robot soccer is  played with 5-inch cylinders that are lucky to move at a walking pace. And the fan base is, how shall we say, limited. But still the CMDragons are adopting a “hate the game, not the playa’” vibe. Team management was quoted as saying there is no reason why CMDragons team should not flat out win. And the operation is relying on a secret algorithm that will give their bots the edge in scoring.  But all is not as it seems in the CMDragons camp: Last year, their bots went blind when a program pulled a Bill Buckner and crashed.

So plenty of work remains.