ESPN360 is supposed to be another “groundbreaking” event in streamed video and IPTV. Before I got round to analyzing the ins and outs of how they were going to charge — and how much — I figured I’d take them up on their free trial. It’s to run from today through the end of the World Cup.
I planned setting up my desktop to receive live — and run a comparison with my laptop streaming wirelessly to the living room where I’d be watching live in HDTV.
So, I typed espn360.com into my browser and this is what I got:
Latest Update:
After the usual 17 minutes of wandering through registration > determine the acceptable number of characters for user name > min/max characters for password > uncheck and opt out of 7 spam sources > remember to use the spam email address — I finally got to try ESPN360.
After sitting and watching the message below my macromedia player blink on and off for several minutes > transferring from att-starwave.com — I gave up and went back to the TV set.
Worked just fine using Firefox on Mac…
Grade: B+
Maybe if I watched more sports I’d lose some weight.
That looks like the old player they used, which was actually pretty decent. The new one is a whiz bang Flash doohickey which is less than impressive.
I have a little writeup over on my blog. I see you were as impressed as I.
I tried this at the office, and it work ok.
I tried this at home, and was denied access.
Turns out that ESPN has a deal to provide or not provide access based on ISP. At work the ISP is Verizon, so it was ok. At home I use Cox Communications which did not pay ESPN for access.
So much for net neutrality! Let’s face it, you have to pay to play sometimes . . .