We mentioned the fact that NBC’s Sunday Night Football games would be available on NBCSports.com and NFL.com last year at about this time, even though we weren’t part of the NBC family. So we aren’t being complete (just partial) company shills if we point out that it’ll be back for another year.
The product, called Sunday Night Football Extra, will feature the official game broadcast and four other camera angles. For 2009, NBC will use a full HD-quality player using Microsoft Silverlight and Smooth Streaming. (We don’t know what it means, but we think it’s good.)
Per the official release: “The video players, the highest quality yet, will include full DVR and functionality allowing the user to pause and scroll back-and-forth and even review plays in “slo-mo” — all while watching live video.”
The product also will include expert analysis, including fantasy tips and in-game chats. According to John Ourand of SportsBusiness Daily, a certain Internet slapola with whom you might be familiar will be hosting one of the chats.
I can tell you unequivocally that this report is not true.
See? I can be an NFL coach, too.
[Editor's note: In the interests of clarity, that last part is a joke of sorts regarding our running commentary that coaches lie all the time, in the name of achieving and/or maintaining a strategic edge. Ourand's report is accurate.]
Hey Mike, will you be one of the “expert analysis” guys? One would only hope!
Only as long as you talk about the Broncos and their great team this year!
Maybe this year they’ll have enough servers and I won’t have to spend the game waiting in the queue for the stream to actually stream.
Maybe you could suggest they get more servers, Florio, since they’re your people now. It sure would be nice to actually get to watch the game from those other angles.
Who cares about nbc games, who doesn’t have nbc? Stream the nfl network games! Or do you do that already? I’m pretty new to this site…
was great last year but I wish FOX & CBS offered something similar for the afternoons except the Sunday Ticket thing offered by the DIRECTV
Silverlight is very bad, it’s a proprietary Microsoft protocol which means Mac and Linux users will be unable to see the stream.
Well, its good to see that Florio stuck to his word and didn’t use the rumor site to shill for the new parent company..
oh wait, nevermind.
Silverlight is Microsoft’s attempt to clone Flash. (Flash… Silverlight… get it?)
I wonder how much Microsoft paid NBC to use Silverlight over Flash.
“stream” ??
more like “drip”…
This would be good for me since the local cable signal here SUCKS. Does it cost money? You say “product” like I gotta buy some shit. I’m a 3rd stringer in Houston now, I can’t afford to be throwing money around you know.
Actually Silverlight has better technology for playing media. The way it helps manage media is superior to Flash. Flash was never built to play video or audio where as Silverlight was.
Congrats to Florio- you may not agree with what he says, but he is getting more and more national attention.
I’ve never been in a household that couldn’t watch NBC. Even in the good ol’ days WITHOUT an antenna you could pick it up.
So I guess the technology is slick, but unless you’re trying to watch the games at work, this seems utterly pointless.
Wishbone, if you spent more than $9.95 a month on internet, you wouldn’t be waiting on it to stream. Everytime I tried last season, I could jump from camera to camera with no problem.
And Broncoman, if you really believe the Bronco’s are going to be “great”, then you may be the most delusional fan on here.
It is sad to see that NBC is in the 21st century while NFL and NFLN are still in 1990.
Put games on the net for a reasonable price….before the other half of the NFL fans finds out how to watch it on the net for free.
Don’t be like the music industry who sat on their laurels way too long. By the time they decided to make the online music biz legitimized 9 out of 10 horses were already out of the barn.
Wish the NFL would have offered a subscription for every nfl game over the internet. I’d pay and drop cable and satellite service.
Jose, Flash was not originally intended to play video. The fact that it’s become one of the most popular methods to stream video regardless of operating system or web browser means that, well, it’s a pretty good choice to stream video. Silverlight being originally conceived to handle video is totally irrelevant.
eaglealan, there’s a Silverlight plugin for Safari on OS X available from Microsoft. There isn’t a Linux plugin from Microsoft, but you can download Moonlight, which emulates Silverlight.