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Did you know MLB has an App Game that Could Enable You to Win $5.6 Million?

April 17, 2012 by

A few weeks ago we looked at a number of apps that Major League Baseball has made available to fans, including the ever popular MLB.com AT Bat 12 as well as the recently released At the Ballpark, both of which have been very well received.

What I missed was the app Full Count that delivers streaming content and the fact that the game that fans can participate in to try and break Joe DiMaggio’s all-time consecutive hit streak is not only an app but has a $5.6 million prize, so a short comment on both is worthwhile.

Full Count is an app that was developed in conjunction with Yahoo! Sports and it provides a range of features including up to the minute player and team stats, scores, live look-ins at key plays and in-game progress video highlights.

A user can pause a video and rewind it if they so desire and they can follow an embedded twitter feed that includes ones from analysts, commentators and MLB.com insiders. The program is free and can be accessed on iPads, iPhones and on PCs. This looks to me like the second best thing to watching a game at work.

The second app is called MLB.com Beat the Streak presented by Scotts and it involves an effort by fans to participate, but that have the potential to win a $5.6 million grand prize. To play you pick one or two players from a list supplied by MLB on a daily basis. If your player gets a hit on the first day you have the start of a streak. You keep on selecting for as many days as your players keep you in the game, if you have a day with no hits you are set back to zero, but can start again.

There is no limit to how many times you select any individual player, and you can make selections up to 10 days in advance, a boon to those with weekend duties or travel obligations. The contest ends with the end of the 2012 regular season. The first to reach 57 consecutive games wins.

To play you need to register at www.mlb.com/bts or www.mlb.com/fantasy and then download the app, which is currently for iPhones, iPod Touch and iPads only.

This strikes me as a great way to keep fans not only engaged but actively following all players to ensure that they have a hot hand and pay attention to what pitchers their selected hitters will be facing.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Athlete to Follow, Baseball, Contests, Fantasy Sports, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Smartphone, Twitter, Yahoo Tagged With: ,

Panasonic, LiveU Team Up for Mobile Cellular TV Cams

April 16, 2012 by

Panasonic announced Sunday that is is teaming up with cellular-modem camera pioneer LiveU to build a pro TV camera with a cellular connectivity unit bolted to the back of the camera, to make live mobile broadcasting easier and cheaper.

As we said last week we here at MSR think that cellular-equipped broadcast cams are a big thing going forward. For professional broadcasters and networks they theoretically can enable more live broadcasts from more places, even at major events and stadiums. And then there’s also an entirely new segment of broadcasting that they might enable — such as a small school streaming live to the Internet, without the need for a satellite truck or other expensive broadcast gear.

The Panasonic-LiveU deal, announced at the NAB show in Vegas, calls for “an integrated camcorder and live video uplink solution, utilizing the groundbreaking LU40i video uplink device and the new AJ-HPX600 P2 camcorder with planned wireless integration features.” So basically it’s a cellular modem bolted onto the back of a camera. Though this isn’t the finished product this demo version picture gives you an idea of what it might look like, and it’s a big improvement over cellular backpack modems or even the belt-holster thingy that LiveU recently announced.

Anyone else at NAB see any more cellular camera stuff? Let us know in the comments. Would like to get some more granular details about costs for the cell modem connections.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption Tagged With: , , ,

Sony’s SmartWatch allows Sports Viewing on the sly

April 16, 2012 by

Have you ever been stuck in a meeting when an important, or even not so important, game was on and you were missing all of the action? Well Sony may have a solution for that with its SmartWatch, a Internet linked wristwatch.

Much like a generation of school kids once hid transistor radios to listen to baseball games now they can actually watch them. The beauty is in its simplicity. No need for a second wireless contract to run the SmartWatch, it connects wirelessly to a user’s Android-powered smartphone and from there to the Internet and beyond!

The timepiece has a 1.3-inch screen and provides a vibration of alert flashes for incoming calls and text messages that are communicated from the smartphone via Bluetooth. The messages and caller information is displayed allowing the wearer to decide if they need to respond immediately or not.

The display, which also does function as a watch, has touchscreen capabilities and Sony claims that there are already apps that have been tailored specifically for the SmartWatch that are available at the Google

Sony sees this as much more an entertainment device than a communications one and specifically mentions that it is a great tool for watching live content and entertainment. It said that this is just the first in a planned series of devices that are designed to expand the smartphones reach.

I really like this, and with a $150 list price could see getting one just to while away the hours when I am sitting through a day of presentations at a conference, particularly if the conference has free Wi-Fi. Of course I have had a number of bosses that would frown on the use of such a device so you might not want to flash the watch around the office showing MLB At Bat 12.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Baseball, Live sports via mobile, Smartphone, Sony Tagged With: ,

MLB.Com At Bat 12 Popularity Soaring

April 12, 2012 by

Bad weather is always an unfortunate fact of life, even more so when it coincides with the start of the baseball season. The joys of watching your favorite team play can be severely dampened by an early season rainstorm.

Yet fans are watching games in record numbers, by using MLB.Com At Bat 12, an app that baseball’s interactive media arm MLB Advanced Media, has been publishing for the last five years.

As the time has passed the popularity of the app has grown tremendously and this year the app passed the 3 million download mark, fur months faster than it managed to achieve last year. And yes. Last year was also a record pace for the program.

Fans are not just downloading the app, but they are using it with great regularity, unlike all of the education apps on my phone. MLBAM has reported that the service is seeing an average of 800,000 live audio and video streams daily since the season began.

We covered most of the details here earlier this season, but in a nutshell it is an app for Apple’s iPhone and iPad as well as Android devices and costs $19.99 a month or $109.99 a season to watch games.

This shows how multifunctional users are finding their smartphones and tablets and how a sports league can meet the fans needs at a price point that does not break the bank for fans.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball Tagged With:

ESPN3 Provides College Football Fix this Weekend

April 12, 2012 by

Missing college football, and to make matters worse, that huge pile of receipts and miscellaneous paperwork that represents your taxes adamantly refused to do itself? Well look to ESPN, specifically ESPN3 for a touch of stress relief as its starts broadcasting spring college football games.

The channel will be hopping around the various conferences and will have games from the ACC, SEC, Big 12 and Pac-12 on its slate. To top it off it will not be teams that you have to scratch your head about and wonder which state they are in, almost all look to be ranked when the season starts later this year.

Even better news is that this weekend is just the start of a three week span in which games will be broadcast, with 10 on Saturday, then an additional 7 the following week and a lone Oregon spring football program on the 28th.

Teams that will be included in the broadcasts include — Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, West Virginia, Florida State, South Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia Tech and Clemson. Six games are exclusive to ESPN3 while the rest will have some local blackout issues. The Florida State game will also be simulcast on ESPNU.

So now freshly armed with new ammunition in your procrastination arsenal, stock up on beer and chips and get ready for some football. The real advantage is that you can be watching the streaming service anywhere, so you can appear to be at your desk wondering why you thought that you could write off a $135 Taco Bell dinner, or even how you managed to spend that much there while watching your favorite team.

All times ET
Sat, Apr 14
1 p.m. South Carolina Spring Football ESPN3*

2 p.m. Miami (Fla.) Spring Football ESPN3

2:15 p.m. Virginia Spring Football ESPN3

3 p.m. Alabama Spring Football ESPN3

Auburn Spring Football ESPN3

Georgia Spring Football ESPN3

North Carolina Spring Football ESPN3*

4 p.m. Florida State Spring Football ESPN3*

Clemson Spring Football ESPN3

7 p.m. Vanderbilt Spring Football ESPN3

Sat, Apr 21
2 p.m. Tennessee Spring Football ESPN3

Ole Miss Spring Football ESPN3

3 p.m. Arkansas Spring Football ESPN3

3:30 p.m NC State Spring Football ESPN3*

4 p.m. Virginia Tech Spring Football ESPN3*

6 p.m. West Virginia Spring Football ESPN3

6 p.m. Mississippi State Spring Football ESPN3

Sat, Apr 28
2 p.m. Oregon Spring Football ESPN3*

*Exclusive to ESPN3

Filed Under: BCS, ESPN3, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football Tagged With: ,

LiveU’s New Cellular TV Camera Modem Passes Super Bowl Test; LiveEdge Still MIA

April 11, 2012 by

LiveU's belt-sized modem in action at the Super Bowl. Credit: LiveU

Mobile TV camera modem supplier LiveU said Wednesday that its new belt-sized cellular modem was used for live camera shots at the Super Bowl in February, according to a press release issued by the company. We here at Mobile Sports Report expect cellular cameras to be a big thing going forward, to enable more sports content live from where it happens without the expense of a satellite truck.

While LiveU has done the mobile/cellular thing before for sports its previous solutions were backpack-based to house the equipment that included modems and batteries. The newer LU40i unit, the company said, weighs in at around a pound and a half and can combine up to six 3G or 4G cellular connections to support a “professional HD-quality video uplink.” Our big unanswered question (we have a call in to the company and plan a longer look at mobile cameras soon) is how much does it cost to run one of these babies, since we are guessing that a live video stream would chew through a regular cellular data plan after a few plays. Our guess is that LiveU has some kind of deal with the cellular folks but we’ll know more soon.

The debut of the LU40i unit, which LiveU said was also used at the NBA All-Star Weekend, the Grammies and at CES and SXSW, begs the question of where are its competitors, especially the high profile LiveEdge, a company funded in part by Verizon and one of the companies selected to participate in Verizon’s “incubator” program for startups.

LiveEdge proposed modem unit, which snaps on the back of a pro TV camera. Credit: LiveEdge

LiveEdge, which originally launched with the idea of putting a WiMAX modem on the back of TV cameras, morphed toward LTE when it became apparent that the major cellular providers were moving to that technology. Last year, the company was highlighted by Verizon’s CEO at CES as one of the new apps for LTE services and scored the unspecified investment from Verizon as well as the incubator spot.

But since then there’s been nothing but crickets from LiveEdge, whose former CEO, Robert Klingle, has apparently left the building since he’s no longer listed on the company website. In fact the About page looks like it’s recently been truncated; it used to show other execs even after Klingle’s name was taken off earlier this year but now it’s blank. Repeated calls and emails to both Verizon and LiveEdge have gone unanswered, though one LiveEdge spokesperson who asked to remain unidentified did say several weeks ago that an announcement would be forthcoming soon.

Maybe at next week’s NAB show in Vegas? That’s where LiveU will be showing off the LU40i, which looks like the leader in the space for mobile, broadcast-quality TV.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBA, NFL, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: ,
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