It is March Madness once again and I am glued to the TV set looking for MSU games. But this year is a little different.
There are 4 simultaneous games going on all day but there is only one CBS channel in any given area. Until this year, you were out of luck if your local CBS chose to show a different game.
This year CBS is showing two games at once. One on their HD channel and another on their secondary digital channel. (Although once Duke started playing, they showed them on both channels :( The picture quality of the second channel is not very good but at least you can see a different game. That bumps the odds of seeing the game you want from 1 in 4 to 2 in 4.
Even better, this year the NCAA is running a website that allows streaming video of all the games. While they had this service in previous years, it sucked. You got a tiny picture with a crappy image. This year is the first time it is really usable. The video quality is still awful but at least it zooms to full screen and almost looks like regular analog TV. Definitely watchable. Definitely an improvement over last year.
MMOD is an example of the future. Content streaming straight from the content owner, the NCAA, to your home TV set via the Internet. CBS's HD picture is still the best but I will be watching for any chance I can to see MSU.
