RSSAdobe Flash to deliver NFL games in full
By Tim Conneally | Published September 5, 2008, 6:51 PM
The National Football League, NBC Sports, and Adobe have announced their collaboration on Sunday Night Football Extra -- full-length live streams of NFL Sunday night football games.
Delivered in Adobe Flash, the games are promised to include the ability for viewers to change their camera angles, as well as access live statistics, in-game highlights, picture-in-picture views, and live blogs from color commentators.
Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115.0 or higher and Firefox 2.0+, IE7+, or Safari 2+ are required for viewing. NBC recommends a minimum 500 Kbps connection for stutter-free playback.
Running behind the scenes is Adobe Flash Media Server, supporting the huge number of expected connections. Adobe says its developers utilized the company's own Flex authoring environment, Flash CS3 Professional, and Photoshop CS3.
The technology was unveiled with the New York Giants and Washington Redskins season opener yesterday, but will officially premiere Sunday, September 7 at 8:15 pm EST, in a regular season match-up featuring the Indianapolis Colts hosting the Chicago Bears, from the Colts' brand-new Lucas Oil Stadium. The games can be accessed on snfonnbc.com.
While Adobe promises to "immerse" viewers in the games, the viewing window looks to be about the size of a default YouTube video. Since this affords low system requirements, it may make mobile viewing much more feasible than outright immersion...unless it's watched alongside the actual TV broadcast.
Huh.
Neat. BUT, is this useful for real time viewing or simply for a retrospective analysis?
"Oh wait, call a time out (again and again and again and again...) so I can review the past play several times from different perspectives as I don't want to miss the rest of the game."
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This is done for more exposure.
Now more exposure means more room for advertising.
More advertising in more spaces means more revenue.
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What's the point of this anyway? NBC is already broadcasting it nationally over the air (HD). Why did they waste millions on this technology when it's (probably) useless to anyone?
It would make sense if this is used to broadcast games that you cannot get locally. For instance, if you're an Eagles fan and live in Seattle, but you don't want to watch the Seattle games. If you don't have DirecTv Sunday Ticket, you can't get the Eagles games in Seattle.
Anyway, that was just an example.
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Your statement is completely true.
The NFL streaming business model is so stupid:
-Create an online streaming service for all games, but make it only available to overseas users. Majority of football fans are in the US.
-Create an online streaming of NBC SNF that only works for US users - they seem to forget that all US users get NBC over the air where as people overseas might not get the game on their TV service.
NFL needs to wise up...their streaming model is a complete joke.
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who's your source for those statements?
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Very nicely presented but to jerky on 2meg b/d even on lowest setting.
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I watched about half of the game online last night. It worked surprisingly well, but I wish that it supported full screen.
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Finally NBC has made a wise choice using Flash over Silverlight for interactive experience delivery.
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so? i watched it on HD over the air
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I am jealous of u, these bas****s with my cable only had like 3 real HD channels. we have about 8 but they are 480p which is crap, I have 1 CBS channel and 1 PBS channel that is 720p nothing better. it royally blows. Damn Bresnan!
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Does HD include the ability for viewers to change their camera angles, as well as access live statistics, in-game highlights, picture-in-picture views, and live blogs from color commentators?
I been waiting for the camera angles and on demand replays for eons...
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shoo i dont care about that i just want to watch the game in high deff on my living room TV with the speaker set on.
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i didn't realize this new piece of tech was preventing you from watching it on your hdtv. perhaps the next version will and then you'll have a reason to whine like a twat.
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well son at least i have a life and work hard for my stuff instead of going cheap and watch the games in low deff and over the internet chupa pinga
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