Sunday, March 22, 2009

Back on the horse, maybe

Let's see, it's been more than a year since I've updated this blog, so I suppose it's a bit overdue for a new post. So let's have at it ...

As mentioned around this time last year, the cult of Facebook and Twitter have both taken my attention away from blogging. Micro blog posts seem to work better there and driven me from longer thought pieces or decent blog entries. So be it.

Anyways, not surprisingly, I spent the past four days immersed in March Madness. While I saw my share of decent finishes, Cinderella stories and my predicted Cinderellas that didn't pan out (I'm looking at you, North Dakota State), I was mostly intrigued by how well the March Madness on Demand product worked out this year. It was obviously plugged to no end on TV and online, and it served a great purpose (and for free, no less).

However, that product (and similar iPhone application) seems to work best when you're not watching TV. If you're like me and you pay as much attention to the other scores scrolling across the top of the screen as the action, you'll get really frustrated watching the MMOD game as you would the live action. As with any streaming live event, there's bound to be lags in the transmission, so there's a good chance the game you're watching online is about 10-15 seconds in gametime action behind real time. It becomes a bit odd when CBS switches to whatever game you're watching online.

Interestingly, you don't see that strip of scores across the top of the picture in the online feed. Oh yeah, the picture quality is great, depending on what level you choose. The highest level of quality is very sharp.

As for another quirk/feature, you can toggle between games but only when there's game action on. You can't switch games during commercials. You do have to watch the ads, a separate set of ads than the ones you'll see on TV. A bit annoying if you want to check other games during the commercials, but hey, that's a huge reason why it's free.

Finally, I did plunk down the $5 to check out the iPhone app for March Madness. If you've got a wifi connection, you'll get online video and it's decent quality. The video there does have the other scores stripped scrolling across the top of the screen, so in a way it seems closer to watching your local TV station on your iPhone or iPod Touch, but of course the lag issues are still in effect.

Once again, the product is great and if I didn't have a job where I can flip among all the games at once, it would be a solid replacement.

Meanwhile, that Sirius/XM merger may be complete, but there's still programming limited to just one side or another. While the NFL is available on both services (heads up to the whole Sunday Ticket debate), the NCAA tournament games are only available on Sirius. That was more reason I could check out all the MMOD stuff; otherwise, I might've been driving around listening to games.