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Sling Media provides enhanced remote viewing for fans

October 19, 2011 by

Sling Media delivers SlingPlayer for Tablets
Paying a bundle to get a sports bundle on your home entertainment unit and not willing to double dip to get it on a mobile device as well? Then maybe Sling Media may have the solution for you in its SlingPlayer platform.

SlingMedia has taken the next step in delivering streaming media to mobile users with the latest release of its $29.99 SlingPlayer platform. The SlingPlayer for tablets is designed to support tablets that run the Android operating system 3.0 or later and enable a user to basically watch home TV while on the go and is an enhancement on its previous offering for Android-based phones.

This is great news for sports fans that are seeking a method to gain access to the packages that they may already be paying for at home while on the road, and is a major step up for Sling Media’s offerings in this space.

There is more to the deal than simply paying $29.99 for the app and suddenly getting all of your home sports and other programming on your Android-based tablet. You must first pony up for a Slingbox device, which start at $180 and go up from there.

The program gives users control as if they were at home, with features that include being able to set a DVR at home, channel surf and browse content while still watching TV anywhere a user has an Internet connection.

The existing SlingPlayer application for Android Phones will continue to work on tablets in “Compatibility Mode” on tablets at no extra charge but it provides video at a much lower resolution than the tablet specific platform.

There is also available a SlingPlayer Mobile offering for Apple’s iPhone and iPads that also provide remote control over home TV and DVR and is available for $29.99

Filed Under: Android, Apps, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Sling Media, Tablets Tagged With: , , , ,

Monday’s Tech Tidbits: Apple iPhone Edition

October 17, 2011 by

Samsung and Apple still claiming patent violations
Samsung has quickly struck at Apple’s new iPhone 4S, a product that sold 4 million units since last Friday, by asking for an embargo in Australia and Japan on the product, claiming patent violations. Apple and Samsung are both claiming that the other is violating its patents.

Apple to unlock iPhone?
In other iPhone news the report is that Apple will be offering an unlocked version of the phone in the next few weeks. The good news is you can add SIM cards in countries to avoid the ridiculous roaming charges, the bad news is that it will be expensive, and only GSM compatible.

Google kills unpopular products
Google continues to clean house-product wise. The company plans to focus on its successes such as Android and Google +. The latest two to be cut are the lamentable Google Buzz, its poorly thought out social networking program and Jaiku.

Google seeks to defrag Android development
Look for Google and Samsung to deliver Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) this week, after delaying its debut due to the passing of Steve Jobs. ICS is an effort to unify the Android ecosystem after it has been under increasing criticism for increased fragmentation and slow updates. Be interesting to see how well it works.

Samsung will also expand its Smartphone lineup
Following the ICS news Samsung also has a new Android-based smartphone that it plans to drop onto the market this week as well. The company is maintaining a very hard driving stance in the market both in regards to new products and aggressively taking on Apple.

Is the market waiting for a Microsoft OS for tablets?
That is what the Boston Consulting Group is claiming in a recent report. A survey found that a majority of consumers would prefer Microsoft’s Windows over Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS. Really?

Android app downloads to be tops by Summer
Xyologic, a startup that tracks and indexes the App Store claims that the monthly Apple iOS app downloads will be surpassed by the monthly Android app downloads by June 2012. Aren’t there already more Android-based devices out there?

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Boston Consulting Group, Google, iPhone, Samsung, Tablets Tagged With: , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag-How is your QB rated?

October 14, 2011 by

Apple stays hot
The demand for the new iPhone 4S is so great that even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak had to stand in line to get one, and not just in line, but over night! That might show the popularity of the latest phone offering from Apple, but reports from AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel is that they all sold out of the phone during the preorder period. A visit to their web sites shows that versions of the phones can be back ordered with a wait ranging from one to four weeks.



While RIM keeps cooling
Research in Motion was flying high just a few years ago as its RIM platform was a must have by corporate execs who used it to free themselves from their desks. The company had an overwhelming market share and no viable competition. However it looks as if the market has bypassed the company and it is feeling pressures that it is unused to and questions are arising as to if it can react properly and in time to save itself. That is the issue that is examined by Forbes and should be a warning to all companies that get complacent about their technology and market share. The recent three day outage that RIM recently experienced will not help its standings.

Sony brings video library to Tablet S
Sony is attacking rivals on multiple fronts with the rollout of its Video Unlimited for its Tablet S platform. The company is leveraging its strengths in multiple fields ranging from technology to movie distribution. The company will offer its Video Unlimited feature, which includes more than 6,500 films and 40,000 TV episodes from a wide array of film studios and networks, and will be available not only on the S Tablet but also on Sony Ericsson phones. Now you never have to miss “Friday Night Lights!” The company will eventually move the feature to other Android based devices, but not all of them and currently has no plans to support Apple’s iOS platform due to the high fees that Apple charges.


ESPN’s QB Ratings cause a Stir.
Ever wonder if ESPN’s much ballyhooed Total QBR system would give us a true look at how well a quarterback did in any one game? Here is a look at two QBs from last week. One was 26 of 39 passes for 396 yards and two touchdowns and his team won, the other completed four of 10 passes for 79 yards and a touchdown while also running the ball six times for 38 yards and a touchdown and his team lost. Which one do you think had the better game according to QBR? People have been raging about this all week around the sports world; however my position changed after I read this well thought out piece from The Big Lead. For a slightly different look go to the stats guys at FootballOutsiders.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, AT&T, BlackBerry, ESPN, Sprint, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Mobile Football: NBC a No-Show for Live Play-by-Play

October 3, 2011 by


In our ongoing search for the best mobile app for following live football play-by-play, on Sunday night the MSR research team decided to check out the options available from NBC, since the Peacock network carries the Sunday night game live on TV.

The verdict? For an Android smartphone user, NBC’s mobile play-by-play options are about as exciting as a handoff up the middle, far behind the functionality of services from ESPN and the NFL. There isn’t even a standalone app for Android phones — maybe the non-smartphone featured in NBC’s “mobile web” landing page is a tipoff — instead you are sent to a mobile-optimized web page that does give you a live score and can show details of the last play run, but that is all. We didn’t even get our turkey-and-chicken sausages halfway grilled before we switched from NBC’s mobile page back to ESPN, whose Gamecast app seemed to have new life on Sunday, without any of the non-updating problems we’d seen during previous weekends.

Since we are waiting for Tuesday’s expected new iPhone announcement to decide what our phone-upgrade strategy will be for the MSR Verizon account, it may be another week or two before we can check out Verizon’s NFL Mobile app. (Apparently NBC does have a standalone iPhone app, if you have knowledge of how this works please leave a comment below.) Until then we are putting ESPN and NFL 2011 in a tie for first, with Sprint TV a game behind and NBC’s offering at 0-4, looking for a new quarterback and maybe a new head coach.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, NBC Sports, NFL, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , ,

The Ongoing Search: What’s the Best Mobile Play-by-Play Service for Football?

September 27, 2011 by

NFL 2011 mobile app, showing play by play. Good clear screen, detailed info.


There’s a whole lot of folks telling you that you can keep up on football games by using your mobile phone — but how well do the services actually work? In an ongoing search that will probably last all season long, your MSR crew (meaning me) will perform random acts of mobility, following NFL and college games via mobile to see if these services deliver, or if they fall incomplete.

Monday night my dinner-making grill-master duties coincided with the Monday night tilt between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins, giving me a perfect chance to test out some of the mobile play-by-play services, like ESPN’s Gamecast, the NFL.com NFL 2011 app, and Sprint (my cell phone provider’s) Sprint Football app. The early verdict says: go with NFL 2011 as your starter, ESPN as your backup, and leave Sprint Football on the bench.

Though the NFL 2011 app has a little annoying banner ad at the bottom of the screen (the ESPN and Sprint services also have banner ads), its play-by-play updates are generally more informative than ESPN’s, giving it the edge in a basically even competition. Both services suffered from an annoying lag time between play posts — which, if your screen is set to go dark to save power like mine is, means you may occasionally have to hard refresh the device to keep the app alive. I’d buy a beer for the first service to add a simple “status” banner that could tell you something like “play under review” or “game in TV timeout” so that you aren’t stupidly staring at the screen waiting for an update.

The Sprint Football app. Basically unreadable, so bench this one in favor of other services.

I ruled out the Sprint app after less than a minute — though it might be informative it suffers from a too-cute design that uses a screen shot of a football field as a backdrop, making its white type illegible when you are looking at a post that blurs into the lines of the field on the drawing. Seriously, Sprint folks — does anyone there look at these things? You can’t read it. Change it, please.

Both the ESPN and the NFL app, which have sensible, clear backgrounds, both suffered mightily to keep up with a fast, complex play — like the interception thrown by Dallas QB Tony Romo in the first quarter that ended with a fumble out-of-bounds call that needed replay review. The play by play apps were no help, basically stalling and never getting around to explaining what happened — they just both picked up with Washington running plays in Dallas territory.

ESPN's Gamecast app, not live but even this wrapup shows the clear black-on-white format that works well.

Having access to a TV set just a few steps away from the barbecue gave me the ability to see how well the online apps were keeping up — and the answer was, not well at all. Both the ESPN and the NFL apps were at least three plays behind the live action; if you watch the Internet version of Gamecast on your PC you can even see that the Twitter stream embedded in the app usually has info that is ahead of the Gamecast info. If I ran either one of these operations I would strip them back down to make sure that the play by play is as close to live as possible. Remember, fans may be using this service as a replacement for the TV announcers who annoy us all. So you’ve got to be faster than they are now.

The bottom line — neither of the top two services is satisfying if you are doing nothing but concentrating on the screen, since they don’t stay “live” enough to hold your attention or keep your phone’s screen lit. I will keep looking to see if there are other services that concentrate solely on play by play, as well as trying to cobble together a Twitter stream to approximate play by play because Twitter is fast. We should have a Verizon phone in hand soon to test out the NFL Mobile app, and we have also heard that Yahoo has a pretty good service so we will look for that as well.

Anyone else out there figure this out? Chime in below in the comments.

(all photos credit: MSR.)

Filed Under: Android, Apps, ESPN, Live sports via mobile, Monday Night Football, NFL, Sprint Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to get customized ESPN radio feeds on your smart phone, iPad

September 22, 2011 by

ESPN RADIO

Until now, mobile sports fans who wanted to listen to such popular ESPN programming as “Mike and Mike in the Morning,” The Herd with Colin Cowherd” and “The Scott Van Pelt Show” couldn’t cache the programs on smartphone memory cards. Listening to ESPN radio required a network connection and drew down battery life. A solution to that problem has arrived, for a fee.

This week, ESPN went into partnership with San Diego-based Slacker Inc. to provide ESPN on Slacker Radio, including premium services priced at $3.99 and $9.99 per month which allow people to store radio programming locally.

If you don’t want to pay to listen to what you want, when you want, Slacker is also delivering a near-instantenous free feed of content from The Death Star (ESPN) 

Slacker is the first digital radio distribution service to feature ESPN Radio, and the agreement turns up the heat on such competitors as Last.fm and Pandora to angle for similar deals with ESPN. The deal signals that ESPN is unafraid to be aggressive in flowing digital rights to its content for mobile distribution, which is considered key to the growth of the mobile sports viewing experience. According to Juniper Research, mobile sports content and services like the Slacker/ESPN offering could reach $3.8 billion in 2011.

Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA and AT&T subscribers can bill premium services directly to their accounts via Android and Blackberry smartphone applications, which are already available. A similar iOS application for iPhone and iPad is pending Apple’s approval.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, AT&T, Baseball, BlackBerry, ESPN, iPad, iPhone, Major League Baseball, NBA, NFL, NHL, Slacker, T-Mobile, Uncategorized, Verizon Wireless, WatchESPN, Wimbledon
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