It’s that time of decade… FIFA’s World Cup competition is in full effect. And it’ll be one of the most watched events in human history – given the seemingly universal love of soccer (er, futbol), national pride, and widespread viewing technologies.
Here in the US, ESPN seems to have the broadcast rights locked down. Yet, they’ve got a number of partners to share the love. Above left is the HTC-designed, Qualcomm-powered FLO TV Personal Television ($200) on loan from the fine folks at TSS Radio. (review to come) Above right is a coworker’s Sprint EVO (also HTC-designed), streaming SprintTV, which comes bundled with new data plans. And it turns out that SprintTV is actually powered by MobiTV… who now offer the iPhone app seen below. Subscribe for one month ($10) to catch all the action.
The ESPN 3 site/channel is also streaming games online, for those who have partnered broadband service (Cox, Comcast, FiOS, etc). Odds are high that you have access, yet don’t even realize it. More interesting, Orb has figured out how to scrape those streams from a home PC and relay them to an Android handset or iPhone with their updated server software and app ($10).
Beyond the live video, of course, there are all sorts of other World Cup-specific apps with scores, news, and clips designed for multiple platforms – such as Goal.com and ESPN. Plus, Sirius XM is broadcasting audio of all 64 matches.
Don’t forget 3D coverage! ;)
I checked my local Sony Style store yesterday and discovered they were streaming matches in 3D. However, instead of a Comcast feed like they used for the Masters, this time the store was running a DirecTV feed. Don’t know why the difference.
The MobiTV app is only good when I have wifi access; otherwise, it is unwatchable – not only i cannot see the ball, sometimes the app is just completely crash and I have to take out the battery to recover. My friend told me FLO is pretty good all the time.