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| 7:16pm EDT, Thu Sep 2 |
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MLB Puts Live Baseball on the iPhone
By:
The Online Reporter
Publish Date: June 19, 2009
Complete articles are posted three weeks after they have been sent to subscribers. To request a copy of the current edition, e-mail paperboy@riderresearch.com .
| - Works on Wi-Fi and 3G
One problem with afternoon baseball games is that they’re hard to watch at
work – that is, unless you have an iPhone.
Apple upgraded the iPhone to the 3.0 operating system this week, starting a
new era in apps and goofing off at work. Major League Baseball’s Web site,
MLB.com, creator of the At Bat application, is now able to stream live games
for no additional charge — for now.
The first game streamed by MLB.com was Thursday’s 2:20 p.m. game between the
Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox with another game to follow at 8:15 p.m.
Owners of the $9.99 application will initially get to see two games per day,
chosen by MLB.com. The games are subject to local blackouts just like TV
broadcasts — the downside to GPS functionality is that the iPhone knows where
you are and can help block you accordingly.
MLB.com has said it will show the entire slate of games as the season
continues, which likely will mean users will have to pay to watch some games.
One of the new iPhone updates is the ability to buy content within an app, a
nice place for MLB.com to capitalize. The company has not yet announced any
pricing.
The site is saying its video will play regardless of whether the iPhone is
connected to a Wi-Fi or 3G network. The site’s servers are set to detect the
strength of a user’s signal and tailor the video accordingly. The app also
has DVR functionality, allowing users to pause and rewind live games on the
device.
The Initial Run-Through
Reaction to the first event was much the same with everyone we spoke to. They
were very excited about the content but the video stalled and had some
delivery problems when using it over 3G.
While the Wi-Fi network held up and produced a smooth video without any
blockiness, the 3G service was definitely subject to some noise and
interference.
The complaints were heavily outweighed by the fact that the streaming content
was available and that it was a free upgrade to users who had previously
purchased the app.
Another big plus for the app is the statistics it puts at a user’s
fingertips. This app was popular before the streaming was announced because
it can put a ton of stats in front of a user in a way that’s easy to navigate
and understand.
Where the app will have to go from here is finding an innovative way to
display the stats either with graphics or as a video overlay.
Thoughts on the Tech
The app’s network-aware video delivery is the type we first heard about
earlier this year from Ortiva Wireless. The company’s mobile Video
Optimization Gateway (mVOG) monitors the device used, the content being sent
and the network conditions of the mobile receiver, changing quality and other
conditions to optimize the video stream. This service is currently being used
by Vodafone Portugal.
The Ortiva system works with one high-quality video feed that it can adjust
downward to meet the network capabilities for a quality streaming video.
Craig Lee, Ortiva’s marketing and business development VP, said the appeal of
these services is the ability to “dial in to a specific live event.”
Ortiva was not involved in the streaming for MLB, but Lee said this was a
good sign that things are going in the right direction. Lee said that
companies are seeing users and usage trending upward, which will lead to more
demand and more services streaming content.
Lee said the next move forward for the MLB service and similar offerings will
be improving the awareness of the networks and knocking out some
interference.
For right now, the iPhone generally adjusts and changes a video’s bitrate
about every 10 seconds and doesn’t do much else with the stream. Some
existing services, like Ortiva’s mVOG, can adjust the bitrate quicker than
that and can clean up the video by removing some of the noise, so we know
that advancements for this type of delivery are already in use.
When services start adopting WiMAX and LTE once those networks are ready,
these problems will not instantly disappear. The 4G services are a bigger
pipe, but they still suffer from all the old problems like electronic
interference.
Lee said networks are trending toward being dynamic for this kind of content
delivery out of necessity – the uncertainty of the network at the handset is
“the nature of wireless.”
For our initial look at the mVOG service, see: “Ortiva Wireless: Specific
Streams and Increased Reach,” at:
http://onlinereporter.com/article.php?article_id=14984.
Other Sports on Deck?
Major League Baseball is one of the first major sports organizations to jump
on this new technology and start making its content available, but it won’t
be long before others join the party.
The National Football League in the US has had pretty good success with cable
and satellite packages and is doing okay with its Net and mobile videos. The
same goes for the National Hockey League. While some rights have already been
bought up, a mobile distribution deal is at least being considered. Depending
on the overall reaction to the rest of the MLB season, apps for these leagues
could be ready by the time their seasons start up.
One league that sports fans around the glove hope will follow suit is
Barclays Premier League. Whether you call it football or soccer, the league
is hugely popular on TV, the Web and mobiles.
While mobile apps and other offerings tend to have stats, scores, text news
and some get video highlights and goals, there’s room for an app that can
stream out live matches.
Infindo Technology has one of the better Premier League apps. Back in
October, two weeks after its initial launch, the English Premier League Live
Score app become the most downloaded paid application on the iPhone. It has
since been dethroned, but who knows what will happen when the season starts
up again this August?
Whose Home Run?
It’s hard to tell if this move is a bigger deal from the MLB standpoint or
the AT&T-Apple perspective.
For MLB, this is putting live TV on mobile devices and will increase the
number of people its content can reach. Mobile TV hasn’t had too much success
in the US, partly because no one can agree on whether it should be run like a
cable TV aggregator or an a la carte pay-for service.
The big thing here is that these are major sporting events that most cable
and satellite providers require customers to buy special packages to see. Now
it starts at under $10.
From the AT&T and Apple angle, this is either a testament to MLB.com’s
servers or some enhancements of AT&T’s network the company hasn’t been
touting. Most likely it’s MLB’s servers being that good combined with a
select, limited amount of content.
AT&T still restricts SlingMedia’s SlingPlayer app to a Wi-Fi connection on
the iPhone. This is likely because of the expected demand from users for
constituent TV streams, with heavy demand likely in places with efficient
mass transit. AT&T allows other mobiles to use the 3G network to view
SlingPlayer content, likely because none are nearly as popular as the iPhone
handset.
SlingPlayer for the iPhone is $29.99 and as of press time still says that it
“only supports streaming over a Wi-Fi connection at this time.”
Whoever is responsible for the app and the ability to stream over AT&T’s 3G
network, we have one request: more please. Other services could benefit
greatly from this ability. Imagine if this opened up to a company that’s
dominating the streaming sphere, like Netflix. Instead of the current
offering that’s limited to only managing a queue, users could watch videos on
their mobile across an incredibly large network.
Not only will increasing these options be great for services, but they’ll
make it possible to go from mobile to TV and back watching the same content
and never losing a step, a feature that could drive adoption of new mobile
and new TV technologies. |
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