Wimbledon 2008 starts today and runs to July 6 and I discovered that Wimbledon provides a two week ‘Wimbledon Live‘ service. For a flat fee of $24.99 you can stream live matches to your PC or download up to 250 matches in .wmv format after the match is complete. Matches will be available until May 1, 2009. Day passes will also be available but so far I haven’t found pricing details.
As usual, my TiVos are queued to record as many matches as TSN and NBC air. But, all too often, matches that I want to watch are not broadcast. Or, too frequently, certain channels have exclusive rights to particular high profile matches with the result that they are not shown on the channels that my cable provider, Rogers, makes available to me!
All video is in 384 x 288 with a 4:3 aspect ratio. I took a quick look at the free streaming demo of the 2005 Federer vs. Roddick Wimbledon Final. The quality wasn’t great (see pic above), but it wasn’t bad either. Because the service only works with Windows Media Player, the it’s not available to Apple users and, presumably, not available through AppleTV.
Note: In addition to the free streaming demo, I tried the free downloadable version but it would not play without having to first sign up and give them my credit card. This kind-of defeats the “free” part of the ‘Download (FREE)’ offer.
I had the Wimbledon LIVE package last year and I thought the service was great. I actually work for MediaZone, the company that provides this service through wimbledon.org, and I am really pumped for the tournament this year.
A support person from MediaZone has just responded to my question. I posted his/her answers in the underlying post here:
http://www.daleisphere.com/wimbledon-live-stream-or-download-wimbledon-2008-matches/
It’s still unclear whether a media extender like the xbox 360 can be used to play these back. I’d test it except for the fact that for the last few months, I can’t get my 360 to talk to my main Vista 64 PC – period! At one time the media extender worked fine. Now it doesn’t. I spent about 5 hours trying to get Media Center to play nice with my Xbox 360 and it just won’t work.
If anyone has tested accessing the Wimbledon downloaded content on a 360, or any other media extender, please let us know either here on ZNF or in the comment section of the underlying post on my site.
…Dale
@Dale
Well the product is not designed to be played back with xbox 360 or other like media extenders. You can, however, hook up your computer to your TV and watch it from there. Thanks for your feedback Dale, let me know if you have any other questions.
That’s debatable… Shouldn’t the purpose of Microsoft media extenders be to move Microsoft-DRMed content around the house? I bet subscriptions would go up with extender support. I’d rather sit on the couch with a remote control than sit at my desk. Though the majority of finger pointing should probably go to MS for not making this more seamless…