Wilson’s smart football hits stores next month for $200
Back in February, only a few months after Wilson introduced its smart basketball, the company followed that with a similar product for football players. Up until now, however, Wilson hadn’t shared any pricing or availability details about the X Connected Football. But today it announced that the smart football will arrive on September 8th for $200, the same price as the basketball version. With the Wilson X Connected Football, you can use an iOS app to get a breakdown of your throw, such as the distance, speed, spin rate and spiral efficiency.
Additionally, the NFL-approved ball comes with five game modes designed to help you improve your skills, as well as compare your stats with friends through the app. If you’re interested, Wilson is taking pre-orders already, which include a free copy of Madden 17 for PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.
Via: CNET
Source: Wilson
University of Miami’s sports VR app goes behind the scenes
The Olympics aren’t the only sports-in-VR news this week — college athletics will take the (virtual) field too. In conjunction with the University of Miami, EON Sports VR is starting a VR channel showcasing the school’s sports teams. Previously, EON has brought VR to baseball and football training. Men’s and women’s scrimmages, practice footage and huddles will be accessible via a $30 Hurricane-branded headset, according to a prepared statement.
Sounds cool, yeah? The headset is scheduled to debut in early October. While it sounds an awful lot like a relatively low-tech Google Cardboard setup, the University of Miami has bigger projects in the works as well. Like an algorithm to potentially predict ISIS attacks, has a hurricane simulation tank and even offers VR tours of its campus. Seems like this was a case of “when” it would happen and not “if,” considering that last bit.
Source: EON Sports VR
Dish and Sling TV cut a deal for NFL Network streams
That didn’t last long. On the heels of Dish Network deal with the NFL expiring, the company has announced that Sling TV (owned by Dish, of course) will have the NFL Network and NFL RedZone available for the 2016 season. Neither the streaming service or the NFL have said anything about pricing yet, but those details will shore up soon. It’s part of a bigger deal with Dish, as well, with the aforementioned channels coming back to Dish’s satellite customers as well.
What’s in store for pigskin fanatics? All 65 preseason games, training camp coverage, exclusive Thursday night games, episodes of NFL GameDay Morning, A Football Life, Good Morning Football broadcast live daily and Timeline, according to the league. Don’t be confused: the last one definitely isn’t the film adaptation of Michael Crichton’s worst book — it’s a show about big moments in NFL history.
Source: NFL
Twitter’s Olympics coverage includes live Moments and Periscope
Much like Google, Twitter is going all-out to make itself a one-stop shop for summer Olympics coverage… and this year, there’s a distinct focus on live action. The social network has revealed that there will be an Olympics-specific Moments section (shown below) that will help you keep track of your home country or individual sports as they happen, one tweet at a time. There will also be an Olympics-oriented Periscope channel — no, you probably won’t see someone broadcasting an event from their phone, but you may just get a feel for Rio de Janeiro from someone who’s there.
Twitter isn’t stopping there, as you might guess. You can use hashtags to trigger Olympics-related emoji (such as national flags and medals), while Vine’s Explore section will have related videos. And if you happen to be visiting Rio yourself, you’ll see live tweets on the city’s Arcos de Lapa aqueduct. Overkill? Maybe, but there’s no question that you’ll know when a favorite athlete gets a podium finish.
Source: Twitter Blog, PR Newswire
How to watch the 2016 Rio Olympics
The summer Olympics are just a few days away, and whether or not you’re a sports fan, chances are you’ll want to keep up with everything that happens in Rio de Janeiro. Thankfully, you’ll have many options to watch this year’s games. But before we tell you how to tune in, you should know the event officially kicks off on August 5th, but certain competitions begin earlier. For instance, soccer (aka football) has games on August 3rd, starting with the women’s match between Brazil and China. There’s also going to be gymnastics training that day. Whatever your favorite sport may be, NBCUniversal is going to have those of you in the U.S. covered — even in virtual reality.
For cable or satellite customers
Pay-TV subscribers have it easy. NBCUniversal will broadcast more than 2,000 hours of Olympics coverage across 11 different networks, all owned by the company itself. These include Bravo, CNBC, Golf Channel, MSNBC, NBC Sports Network, USA Network and NBC. Spanish speakers, meanwhile, can keep up with the games on Telemundo and NBC Universo. If you’re a soccer buff, you’ll definitely want to tune into these two often from August 3rd to the 20th.
In a major shift compared to London 2012, some of the big television providers have big plans for 4K this year. Comcast, DirecTV and Dish have announced that they’ll be serving up 83 hours of Ultra HD content from the Rio Olympics. The only caveat is that most of it won’t be live, but this is still a perfect opportunity to put your shiny, new 4K TV to good use. The opening and closing ceremonies will be available in 4K on a 2.5-hour delay, while content from other events (such as basketball, swimming and track and field) is expected to hit the on-demand Rio 2016 portal the next day.
Whether you’re subscribed to Comcast, DirecTV or Dish, keep in mind you’ll need a 4K set-top box (and TV) to take advantage of this feature. So if you don’t have one yet, you have a couple days to try to make it happen. It’s unfortunate that FiOS, Time Warner Cable and U-verse customers will miss out on 4K content, but at least they can still watch in regular HD.
Watch on your phone or tablet, if you have a pay-TV login
People with pay-TV logins, even borrowed ones, won’t have much trouble watching the games away from home. NBCUniversal plans to stream 4,500 hours of Olympics programming, including live events, at NBCOlympics.com and thorough its NBC Sports App on smartphones, tablets and connected TVs. The application is available for iOS, Android, some Windows mobile devices, Roku, Apple TV and Amazon’s Fire TV. Not surprisingly, as mentioned earlier, having access to NBC’s TV Everywhere offering will require an account from a cable or satellite TV provider.
Olympics in VR
What a time to be alive! Virtual reality is everywhere: The medium is being used for different purposes across a variety of genres, such as education, film and in-home entertainment. Now, as part of its efforts to let viewers experience the Olympics in new ways, NBCUniversal will have more than 85 hours of programming available in virtual reality. The 360-degree video treatment is coming to a few different sports, including men’s basketball, gymnastics and track and field. But the content won’t be there for everyone. Aside from requiring a pay-TV login, it will be streamed exclusively on Samsung’s Gear VR headset.
Olympic athletes demoed Samsung’s Gear VR last year.
Cord-cutters
During the 2014 World Cup, Univision did the unthinkable: It let people in the U.S. stream every game up until the knockout round without a pay-TV account. But that’s clearly not a route NBCUniversal is willing to take. Cord-cutters have limited options for watching the Olympics. The obvious one is getting an over-the-air antenna though that only gets you access to NBC and Telemundo. For what it’s worth, the opening and closing ceremonies, plus most of Team USA’s bigger events, will be broadcasted on NBC. Telemundo, on the other hand, comes in handy for the Latino population and anyone who loves soccer.
Now, if you have Sling TV, you’re in luck. And if you don’t, you may want to think about getting an account, even if it’s only for the month of August. With the Sling TV Blue package, which costs $25 per month, you’ll have access to NBCUniversal’s NBC Sports Network, USA Network and Bravo. You also get NBC, but only if you’re in Chicago, New York, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, Philadelphia, Dallas and Fort Worth, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Hartford and New Haven and, finally, Washington, DC.
Sling TV also offers the Golf Channel and, for Spanish speakers, Telemundo and NBC Universo, but you’ll need the Sports Extra and Best of Spanish TV $5 add-ons. That said, the service is running a promotion for the Olympics in which it’ll offer a free preview of CNBC and MSNBC, giving viewers access to those channels at no additional cost until the Rio Olympics’ end. As a refresher, Sling TV works on the web, iOS, Android, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku and Xbox One.
PlayStation Vue’s Elite Slim plan channel list.
You’ll get a similar deal with Sony’s PlayStation Vue, which offers plans starting at $30 per month. The cord-cutter service has apps for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Roku, iOS and Android, giving you the option to watch on a TV or mobile device. You’ll want to pay for the $45 Elite Slim plan though, as that’s the one that includes every channel from NBCUniversal.
Pay-TV customer or cord-cutter, you’ll want to check out the official schedule to find out when every Olympic event is happening. Because the last thing you want to do is miss Usain Bolt get yet another gold medal in the men’s 100m.
Watch the Olympics in 4K Ultra HD on Comcast, DirecTV or Dish
The 2016 Summer Olympic Games are almost here, and despite the issues present in Rio, watching from home should be better than ever. If you’re in need of something else to display on your brand new Ultra HD television then we have good news — NBC will have 4K, HDR footage with Atmos surround sound available that’s actually downsampled from 8K (which you can see for yourself, if you live in Japan). The only problem? Not every TV provider will be pushing it to viewers, and it will be on 24-hour tape delay.
US viewers have four choices for Ultra HD broadcasts from the Olympics: DirecTV, Dish, Comcast and EPB. Chattanooga residents will have to contact EPB for details on how to get channel 803, while DirecTV is promising a linear broadcast on channel 106. Dish Network will not have the Opening Ceremony available initially, but promises a broadcast on channel 146 and video on-demand highlights that will be in 4K, but won’t feature HDR. For Comcast, you should be able to see all the clips, but it isn’t pushing any Ultra HD via its cable boxes at all. Instead, footage will only be available to people who have Samsung or LG Smart TVs with the Xfinity preview app built-in.
Source: NBC
Google weaves Olympics highlight videos into your search results
Google is no stranger to providing useful info during Olympic games, but it’s kicking things up a notch for Rio. The internet behemoth has teamed up with broadcasters in 60-plus countries (including America Movil, BBC and Japan’s NHK) to integrate Olympics highlight videos into both Google search results and YouTube’s Watch Cards. It’s not the same as watching live, of course, but it could help a lot if work or time zones force you to catch up after the fact.
Logically, Google is promising plenty of raw Olympics news at the same time. Searches will turn up athlete bios, medal tallies and schedules, while the Google mobile search app can notify you when there are event and medal wins. While this kind of integration isn’t completely new, it could be more than a little helpful if you’d rather not visit sports or TV sites just to get a quick recap.
Source: Google Official Blog, YouTube Official Blog
Wearable tech will be everywhere at this year’s Olympics
It’s almost time. The 2016 summer Olympics are less than a week away, with the opening ceremony scheduled for August 5th. This year’s event, which runs through August 21nd, takes place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the organizers have reportedly struggled to prepare for the games. Whether Rio is ready or not, some of the world’s best athletes will be there to compete for gold medals in just a few days. Naturally, technology will have a presence at the Olympics. That includes wearables designed to make life easier and safer for Olympians as well as others supposed to help in training. Read on in the gallery below to learn about eight different pieces of gear the athletes will be using.
Major League Soccer deal lets you buy tickets on other websites
Sports leagues have historically clamped down on online ticket sales, in part to prevent the rampant scalping you see in much of the entertainment industry. Major League Soccer, however, is trying the exact opposite: it’s throwing things wide open. The league has forged a partnership with SeatGeek that will create a ticketing platform that works through virtually any website or app. Other sites could sell tickets, for a start. You could buy tickets from Uber before you hail a ride to that Seattle Sounders game, for instance.
This applies to resales, too. SeatGeek’s tech makes it possible to securely sell or transfer your ticket from other sites. Your fan club could set up a safe ticket exchange if it wanted. The biggest drawback may be the wait, as MLS is rolling out the new platform over the course of the coming year, starting with the league’s own sites.
MLS isn’t just being generous, of course — it has the motivation to loosen its grip on ticketing. As the organization acknowledges to Bloomberg, it’s small potatoes next to other US sporting leagues. It has both the “freedom” to experiment and a strong incentive to do whatever it takes to draw people in, including making it easier to snag tickets. Not that there’s much reason to complain. If the team-up works as promised, it’ll give you more chances to buy tickets on your own terms… or at least, it’ll help you offload tickets when you can’t make it.
Via: Bloomberg
Source: MLS Press Box
Olympic athletes are training with brain-altering headphones
Many of the athletes heading to the Rio Olympics are using some form of technology to help them out, but some of them are relying on particularly unusual gear. Halo Neuroscience has revealed that several athletes are using its Halo Sport headphones to (hopefully) improve the effectiveness of their training. The wearable is meant to stimulate your brain’s motor cortex into a momentary “hyperplasticity” mode, where it can more effectively build neural connections — if you’re in the thick of resistance training, you may move on to heavier weights that much sooner.
These are competitors you may recognize, too. On top of athletes from Sierra Leone (sprinter Hafsatu Kamara) and Trinidad & Tobago (hurdler Mikel Thomas), three of them are US medal-winners: 4 x 400m relayer Natasha Hastings, relay sprinter Mike Rogers and 400m hurdler Michael Tinsley.
This is as much marketing for the Halo Sport’s fall launch as anything else, so there’s good reason to be skeptical (especially given the $649 pre-order price). However, you can look at this as a grand experiment that goes beyond Halo’s existing partnerships. If the athletes training with these headphones come home from Rio with medals, it’ll suggest that this brain-changing headgear can produce quantifiable results.
Source: Halo Neuroscience, Medium
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