After getting a sneak peek at Sling TV back in January at CES, many people were excited for the potential it held. At the time is was an invite-only system and only five major network channels signed up — ESPN, Food Network, TNT, TBS and CNN — but now the system is live and now has even more channels.
There is a free seven day trial period to test both the opening price point of $20 per month for the “Best of Live TV” service out on its own or even the add-on packages. The previously listed channels plus ESPN2, Adult Swim and the Disney Channel are available for the opening price point, but the extra channels include even more options.
The three channel lineups for an additional $5 each on top of the normal $20 monthly cost from Sling are Sports Extra, News & Info Extra and Kids Extra, with the channels on each shown below.
After putting in your information to register, Sling shows you a welcome screen as well as listing the service compatibility. CES had a running version of Sling on an Xbox, but the picture below is accurate in saying it isn’t available just yet. The Android app is available, but it will have to be side-loaded. The computer version of Sling works quite well and hopefully the mobile will soon be on par with it.
Sling shows channel category options in the form of an “All Channels” sidebar and once a selection is made, upcoming programs are shown along with their start times on that particular channel.
The quality of the broadcasts is up to the consumer, allowing you to select how much bandwidth and thus what the video looks like. On the highest setting neither the video or audio ever stuttered, however the quality seemed to move from the 1080p to about 480p despite my WiFi signal remaining constant.
For cord cutters, Sling TV is about the best option around for live entertainment. If you’re on the fence, I strongly suggest taking advantage of the seven day trial to experience it firsthand.
MLB Trade Rumors (along with sister sites Hoops and Pro Football Rumors) rolled out a big update on its Trade Rumors app last week, which now includes notifications. The free app available for iOS and Android has also been redesigned, with feeds laid out in vertical columns on the home screen. And did I mention that it’s free? Because I wasn’t aware. I was still rocking their old app on my iPad, which I paid a handsome penny for a couple of years ago.
In terms of the layout, each column is customizable. For example, I set up notifications for only the top stories out of the MLB, because really, I don’t need to know the instant that Joe Beimel signs on with a team. For my second column I added a stream of Victor Martinez, my top free agent signing in my Strat-O-Matic league (two-year, $29.4 million contract), so I can monitor his rehab following surgery to correct a torn meniscus. I set notifications to off for VMart as I just want a quick way to view updates on my own time.
Conversely, I added the Angels feed as my third column, as they are the team I follow, and set my notifications for all stories. Because when general manager Jerry DiPoto signs Rickie Weeks to a minor league deal and invites him to spring training, I want to know that immediately. And really, I want to be the first in the Angels community I interact with to curse Josh Hamilton when he jacks up his thumb sliding head first in to first base or waits three weeks before Spring Training starts to have surgery on an already ailing shoulder.
Multiple feeds can be added, depending on your preference. I added five, but didn’t attempt to add more. Perhaps the sky is the limit?
For those that prefer the design of the web site to that of the photo-heavy app, you can utilize the Power User option. It removes the images from the home screen and allows for more headlines. It’s pure text, just like the previous MLB Trade Rumors app. Right now it’s only available for the Android version, but it will be built for iOS.
According to Tim Dierkes — owner of MLB Trade Rumors, its sister sites and the Trade Rumors app — mobile usage has grown 16 percent since 2012, with 43 percent of its readers now consuming news and rumors from smartphones or tablets. He told me they continue to make it a priority to provide a mobile-friendly experience and are targeting two big changes to accomplish that, the biggest of which will be redesigns of the MLB Trade Rumors and Hoop Rumors web sites, part of which will be more mobile-friendly versions. Dierkes said they will resemble the Pro Football Rumors experience, which provides a more “stripped-down layout” for mobile users.
The second change will be a native commenting system. The site uses Disqus right now. Once the new commenting system is in place, comments will be integrated in to the Trade Rumors app.
“I think it would allow for better customization, better page load speed and also the content would be under our roof,” Dierkes said.
Fair warning, there are small ads that will pop up in the app. And while Dierkes replied to a commenter that he wouldn’t rule out disabling ads for in-app purchases, it doesn’t sound like it will be any time soon.
“Developing and maintaining the app does add up,” Dierkes said,” and we’re a long way from reaching break even on all that.”
Wondering if your old MLB Trade Rumors app will continue to work? It won’t. Dierkes said those apps are out of the store and may stop working at some point.
Under Armour has announced they have acquired MyFitnessPal, the nutrition and calorie counting app that claims more than 80 million users, for $475 million dollars.
The athletic apparel company has also acquired fitness tracking social app Endomondo, which boasts 20 million users, for $85 million.
Eighty percent of Endomondo’s 20 million users are outside the US, which will help in expanding Under Armour’s presence internationally.
“Under Armour’s demonstrated global leadership in health and fitness innovation is greatly enhanced with the addition of Endomondo and MyFitnessPal, as we continue to redefine and elevate the Connected Fitness experience for millions of people around the world,” said Kevin Plank, Chairman and CEO of Under Armour. “Similar to MapMyFitness, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal have established track records of unmatched equity, expertise and passion in the fitness and nutrition space, and they are ideal partners to enable Under Armour to provide data-driven, proactive solutions to help athletes of all levels lead healthier and more active lifestyles.”
Both companies will continue to operate at their headquarters in San Francisco and Copenhagen, Denmark, respectively.
Under Armour previously acquired MapMyFitness, a leader in the exercise tracking app market, in 2013. This series of acquisitions now allows Under Armour to claim they have “the world’s largest digital health and fitness community” with more than 120 combined users, which is about six times more than the Nike+ fitness community’s 18 million users.
On Wednesday, Wired published an opinion piece written by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler which unveils proposed rules to “preserve the internet as an open platform for innovation and free expression.” YES to real network neutrality and NO to fast lanes fantasies dreamed up by internet service providers. Can we get an amen? AMEN! Need a refresher on net neutrality? Check out this short video from Stanford Law School professor Barbara Van Schewick in which she explains why this direction is critical to the future of the country’s economy. Van Schewick is also the director of the law school’s Center for Internet and Society.
Over the last 15 years, the internet has been the sporting world’s performance enhancing drug. Twitter has changed the way fans engage socially. The emergence of streaming media has changed the way fans watch live sporting events, thanks to MLB.TV and streaming Super Bowls. Sports web sites and blogs, such as the monster that is SB Nation, have injected fans with focalized news and rumors to cater to their interests while building a community to digest the 24/7 news cycle. There are no more water cooler conversations. Because there’s the internet. Mix in growing mobile device consumption and you have an industry that hangs on a consumer with a fast, affordable connection. It’s why net neutrality, whether you’re for it or against, is so important to sports fans.
Wheeler takes advantage of Title II of the Communications Act to implement and enforce his proposal with the authority to selectively decide not to enforce sections of the act, which were put in to place 80 years ago. He writes that his rules will “ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services.” And he intends to fully apply these rules to mobile broadband. He promises no rate regulation, which should calm some fears of those that oppose the government’s wrap around our internet. “All of this can be accomplished while encouraging investment in broadband networks,” Wheeler said in the piece. “To preserve incentives for broadband operators to invest in their networks, my proposal will modernize Title II, tailoring it for the 21st century, in order to provide returns necessary to construct competitive networks.”
But that’s not to say Wheeler’s proposal is a perfect one. Gigaom’s Stacey Higginbotham wrote a fantastic summary of a fact sheet the FCC distributed regarding Wheeler’s plans to implement net neutrality. In that piece, Higginbotham sounded off on a loophole which should concern us all:
Finally we have the catch-all rule, which seems to be the agency’s way of future-proofing the open internet as much as it can. The proposal would create a general Open Internet conduct standard stating that ISPs cannot harm consumers or edge providers. It’s likely that things like zero-rating and sponsored data plans such as the one that AT&T offers will be adjudicated under the general conduct rule.
While it sounds nice, a concern is that the more things that fall under this vague general conduct rule, the more flexibility the agency will have in determining what a network neutrality violation is. Flexibility can be a good thing, but in the government, it can also change with each administration and the political climate. I am concerned that this could be a loophole, but a senior FCC official objected to that characterization. “We see this as a safety net to catch any issues that are not covered as a bright line rule and to protect against new practices that may discriminate.”
The five commissioners will vote on Wheeler’s plan on February 26. If it passes, expect the broadband providers to tie this up in court for a long, long time.
Back to Van Schewick’s video. Her key question is who gets to decide what we do on the internet, the consumers or the ISPs? It seems to be a simple answer, right? Not according to some. Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas infamously referred to net neutrality as the “Obamacare for the internet” in November. To give the senator, along with those against net neutrality, a fair space, check out Cruz’s speech below.
Cruz fears politicians and the government will over regulate the internet with Title II, and believes that this will stifle innovation. In his #dontmesswiththenet campaign, Cruz warns that regulations will favor the “big guys with armies of lobbyists” and will burden start ups and entrepreneurs. But isn’t that really what the ISPs will do? Their boatloads of cash are already backing an assault against a plan that will protect consumers and maintain the internet that we’ve grown to love. How can anyone be against protecting an open, fast and fair internet, as Wheeler proposes? It’s because they’ll be negatively affected financially. And those are the ISPs. They’ll continue to lose cable customers as the number of cord cutters grow and won’t be able to charge higher fees for faster internet, as many assume they would. They’d get away with it if it wasn’t for that meddling FCC. And really, the only reason Cruz can justify his position and statements, which many have referred to as ignorant, is because those same ISPs must be funding his retirement. Or at least giving him free access the premium movie channels.
“The internet I want my kids to have is like the internet we have today,” Van Schewick says in the video.
And yes, agreed. Ultimately it’s what we all want, right?
We just want this internet that we know today to stay the same. My children should totally grow up with the freedom to stream movies from 20 years ago, watch three-star TV shows instead of doing homework or reading a book, battling friends online with the Xbox Twenty and learning the subtle nuances of the intimate relationships of pizza delivery men, naughty nurses and babysitters with pigtails. Because this is America, am I right?
GoPro will launch a channel for Roku box owners this spring, displaying content specifically from GoPro users. This expands the partnership GoPro already has in place for content viewing with Xbox, Virgin America and LG to bring streaming content to users.
Roku, who has already sold over 10 million devices as of September 2014, has set the pace with streaming channels at over 1,800. The GoPro channel will include featured content, crowd favorites as well as the option of finding out which version of camera took the footage. Much of the content will be user created, says Adam Dornbusch, Head of Programming at GoPro:
“GoPro content is unique in that it emotionally resonates with a global audience. The GoPro channel will make it simple for Roku customers to watch GoPro originally-produced and “best of” user-generated content on their televisions at home. We are excited to bring the world of GoPro to Roku customers as they are one of the most engaged customer bases when it comes to the amount of streaming content they view.”
With programs already in place ranging from news, sports, music, education and more, Roku’s expansion into the world of user generated content makes sense. Given the growth of GoPro over the years — for both professionals and amateurs alike — and the reach of Roku, this partnership should continue the expansion of both companies as well as benefiting customers with more entertainment options. What a time we live in for someone to film themselves with a GoPro while flying a drone modeled after the Millennium Falcon.
Last week Snapchat announced Snapchat Discover, their new content platform featuring partners like Vice, Comedy Central, and Yahoo! News. For the sports crowd, US users of the ephemeral messaging app will be served content exclusively from ESPN, while international users will get sports content via Snapchat’s partnership with Bleacher Report.
For everyone over the age of 25, what this means is that the Snapchat app, which is primarily used to send pictures to friends that disappear after a set number of seconds, is now a full-fledged media platform.
Regular messages sent on Snapchat disappear after 10 seconds or less. However, stories in Discover will appear for 24 hours before being refreshed with a new batch of content.
The ESPN channel has great visuals and the UX will be familiar to Snapchat users (swipe right for the next story, swipe up for the content of said story). There’s no buffering for video and the content loads immediately—there was never a lag when I was reviewing it. Discover is supported by ads, but you aren’t hit over the head with them. You’re able to swipe them away much like you are the editorial content.
One gripe is there wasn’t any unique content developed for the Snapchat audience, something that may change as content providers become more familiar with the platform. With an estimated 100 million-plus monthly active users, there is great opportunity for providers to attract a young, mobile-friendly audience.
Snapchat insists that this isn’t a social media play, saying in a blog post, “This is not social media. Social media companies tell us what to read based on what’s most recent or most popular. We see it differently. We count on editors and artists, not clicks and shares, to determine what’s important.”
This may be true, but if Snapchat wants to get established in the content game they need to provide a reason to use their app over other native content apps. Right now I can’t see a reason why someone wouldn’t just use the ESPN app.
Additionally, one of the big strengths of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is curation — the individual has the power to select the content they see based on their network. Curated editorial content that is essentially cherry picked from what you can find on the web doesn’t provide enough differentiation or value to set it apart from social media platforms
Snapchat’s Discover also signals further fragmentation in the mobile content landscape, with content providers developing their own apps and social media apps like Snapchat developing content platforms. But with mobile video’s strong growth (it currently makes up 22 percent of digital video consumption), combined with the fact that young people aged 14 to 24 are now watching a majority of their video on screens other than their TV, a land rush for a slice of the mobile video market is an obviously play for a growing behemoth like Snapchat.
Popular sports website theScore has made the leap into esports with the launch of their “theScore eSports” app for Android today. An iOS version is in the works already. The company, which just set a new record for their site traffic at 10.2 million active monthly users, now features a specific app focused on the happenings in six of the biggest esports titles.
Featured within the app are options to follow League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Call of Duty. Within those games listed there are specific regions covered as well, currently consisting of North America, Europe, Korea and China. TheScore has promised more games and more regional coverage as the app continues to grow.
Right now some aspects of the app work are fully operational. The North American League of Legends Championship Series currently shows upcoming matches and scores. The StarCraft section isn’t fully complete yet, as neither scores nor regions were available at the time of the app launch.
There is a catch-all hub that doubles as the Top News section, where tournament announcements, player acquisitions, sponsorship news and more can all be found. Within the Top News section there is the option to sort by specific game as well, making things very convenient if a person only follows one or two esports scenes.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how young video games as a genre really are. When Ralph Baer’s “brown box” saw commercial release as America’s first home console, the Magnavox Odyssey, The Godfather had been out in theaters a month. The Watergate break-in was in its planning stages. Agatha Christie was still writing novels.
The Odyssey had no sound and no color, just a trio of white squares that could be moved across the screen. Cellophane overlays were affixed to the television screen to create backgrounds. Sadly, no footage seems to currently exist of Baseball in its full glory. Still, while words are meager, we can hope to replicate the experience as best we can.
The Odyssey’s baseball game was not a launch release, but one of a small number of supplementary games that were sold later that year by Magnavox retailers. Many retailers weren’t trained to sell or advertise the add-on games, and they’re consequently rather rare; copies on eBay generally sell in the $100 range, equal to what the system cost in 1972. (That price seems reasonable, and technically is. In 2014 dollars, it comes to $566.35, the going rate for cutting-edge entertainment.)
Baer’s Baseball wasn’t technically the first electronic version: John Burgeson and Don Daglow had previously created games on mainframes at their local universities. These games were more akin to OOTP than to The Show, printing out simulated box scores based on managerial decisions. The Odyssey was the first to reach the American home, and the first to employ actual video. But one of the most striking things about it is how much of a board game it is.
Along with the mylar overlay, which interestingly and necessarily orients home plate on the right side of the screen to work with the Pong-based physics, Baseball came with playing cards, dice, tokens, and cutouts to help track all the information that three white squares couldn’t convey.
Before explaining the game itself, the controllers also require some explanation. Almost every modern gamepad fulfills the same set of functions, but before Nintendo gave us the D-pad, controllers were a mess. Every one handled inputs differently, and all of them did it badly. The Odyssey’s controllers were plastic cubes with knobs on each end, and the inputs were performed the way one would maneuver an Etch-A-Sketch: the left knob moves your square horizontally, and the right knob vertically. A smaller knob could impart “English” on the square acting as the ball, allowing it to wobble. Developing skill at the Magnavox Odyssey appears to have been as difficult as it was temporary.
Given the limits of what the Odyssey could do, in terms of square-projection, it’s a little surprising how intricate, or how needlessly complicated, Baseball turned out to be. Before play each team generated their lineup by rolling dice to determine each batter’s handedness and batting average, and recorded them on their lineup cards. These statistics altered the difficulty of each pitcher-batter matchup: the strike zone expanded or shrank depending on the skill of the hitter, and the handedness of the batter and pitcher determined the starting count. Hitters on the wrong side of the platoon started the at bat on a 2-2 count, while an opposite hand would only need a single ball to draw a walk. Perhaps ambitiously, the players were expected to update the batting averages of every batter after each plate appearance, depending on their success.
Runners were tracked on a cardboard field set on a floor or table, using tokens of various colors depending on the predetermined speed of the runner. These determined the outcomes of balls in play. A deck of cards randomized certain special events.
The mechanics of the actual gameplay, in contrast, are straightforward and even evoke the possibility of fun. The ball is flung from the left side of the screen, crosses over the pitcher’s mound, and hurtles toward the plate. There the batter’s square waits. The pitcher can twist the ball in the final 60.5 feet to sneak it past the batter, and if he does so in the correct range, the batter is out. If the batter’s square collides with the ball, it rockets back the other direction, where he tries to reach the left side of the screen, twisting it unrealistically to evade the fielder’s grasp. Depending on where along the overlay it left the screen, the hit is either a foul, a single, a double, or (depending on the luck of a card draw) just about anything.
The rules also allow for sacrifices flies and bunts, pickoff attempts and steals, and even balks. Play continues until nine innings are complete or, more likely, one’s patience is depleted.
It’s difficult to assess Odyssey Baseball. As the original home console, there’s absolutely nothing to compare it to: imagine the excitement and novelty of the Wii remote, and extend that to the entire concept of controlling the display of your home television.
Needless to say, it’s not something worth hunting down on eBay. The graphical limitations and the cumbersome controls would make it useful for no longer than a single experimental play-through (though you can try it here if you’d like). And its four pages of rules feel two pages too long, in what was to be the first instance of a recurring theme: the eternal conflict between realistic simulation and fun arcade experience. But there is actual fun to be had. It’s the same core concept that made Pong a smash hit two years later. It’s the reflex-based timing and tension of the pitcher-hitter matchup, distilled down to a useless white powder. It’s a good start.
It would be a long time, in fact, before video game baseball got this fun again.
By now there aren’t too many people who haven’t used Google Earth in some capacity. From looking up your house to checking out different monuments or landmarks, Google Earth has been a great and fun addition to the world. Until recently there was a Google Earth Pro edition, going for a pricey $399.00 per year, an option that generally only businesses took advantage of. The Pro version is now available for free as a download with the activation code GEPFREE. Though the lined URL does say free trial, the site itself notes signup, aka payment, is no longer required and shows the free code.
We’ll be taking a closer look at the downloaded version and highlighting some features that the free Google Earth didn’t have. Let’s take a look at Wrigley Field. It’s notorious for almost zero parking — and if you plan to visit, the official site strongly encourages public transit rather driving there yourself — something even the free version of Google Earth shows.
If you’re having a hard time picking out parking, it’d be hard to blame you. While both versions show the Free Parking for nights and weekend games, only the Pro version displays other lots (however the Purple, Brown and Irving Lots).
Maybe instead of visiting for a game, you’re interesting in moving to Wrigleyville (or wherever) and are interested in the local demographics. The data is from 2011, but does have the option to show the 2016 projected information on things ranging from income, age, gender, education and marital status.
Other options the Pro edition offer is the ability to print pictures at an impressive 4,800 x 3,200 resolution as well as making movies at 1,920 x 1,080. For the true nerds, the Pro also allows spreadsheet imports of up to 2,500 different addresses to get a wide swath of any neighborhood. From planning a trip to moving to a new neighborhood to making a movie of all the places you want to visit, Google Earth Pro’s new price makes it absolutely worth downloading.
For people who want to stream sports on their computers and devices, baseball fans have it pretty great. MLB.tv was really the first of the big four sports to offer live game streaming via the web, and the progress made by MLB Advanced Media has been strong, if not without its problems. It can be buggy, it can be laggy, but it allows us to watch baseball online with a reasonable success rate. But with all the advancements made for mobile viewing, simple web-based viewing has seemed to take a step backward.
Beyond my work here, I also occasionally contribute baseball writing to our sister site FanGraphs. In some cases, I’m looking to capture a GIF of a certain pitcher or a certain play. I know how to capture and convert the video — I’ve become fairly quick at it over the past few years. But actually finding the video can be troublesome thanks to the jenky way MLB streams games over web browsers.
In the past, MLB used a plugin called NexDef. I’m not privy to the reasons why this particular plugin was utilized, but I can say that it was crappy and unreliable. But it was needed for more advanced features like the live DVR capabilities and the switching of audio commentary. The biggest problem that I had with NexDef is that it very rarely recognized that it actually existed on my computer. It would constantly ask me to reinstall. Constantly. On both Mac and PC. Support was limited to a few sets of instructions on how to remove and (again) reinstall NexDef, but I don’t recall that ever solving the problem.
Last year, MLB.tv seemed to offer a NexDef-less way to view on the web. This was a welcome change, but more issues seemed to arise. Primarily, the time coding seemed to be all over the place. Say I wanted to grab a clip of Giancarlo Stanton hitting a double. I would look up the game logs and find out that he hit one in the bottom of the fifth inning. I would pull up the game online, and use the web player to switch to the fifth inning. I would not end up there. More often than not, the video would display that the game was about to start. Sometimes it would take me to the first or second inning. Sometimes it would thank me for watching, as the game had already ended. This left me to use the scrubber and the score bug on the video to try and find my way to the fifth inning. It was a long and stupid process.
But 2015 is a new year, and with it, MLB is promising a better version of its streaming service. Among the new features is the ability to watch Spring Training games via mobile and connected devices and the ability to sync Spanish-language broadcast audio. But they also list “web-based HD media player” as a new feature. Maybe there is such a thing as Santa Claus. If I can finally watch an MLB game online without wanting to punch my laptop, the 2015 season is already off to a great start. Heck, maybe my Astros will make a run at the postseason. Well, baby steps, I suppose.
I realize that the way I want to use MLB.tv is different from most everybody else. Still, if a product offers me the ability to jump between innings and batters, it should, you know, actually do that. I’m a baseball nerd, and I will probably always buy MLB.tv, warts and all. But if minor tech issues are turning away more casual fans, that becomes a problem. Readers of this site probably have the wherewithal to follow instructions on removing plugins. The average user does not. If MLB has fixed the tech problems that have plagues the site for years, we might finally have the perfect sports-streaming solution. Well, they’d also have to address the blackout rules. But that’s a different post, isn’t it?
