Update 10:39 a.m., June 17: The first game streamed by MLB.com will be Thursday’s 2:20 p.m. game between the Cubs and White Sox. An earlier version stated the first game would be on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Apple upgrades the iPhone with the 3.0 version of its operating system. The new era could literally begin with a home run.
MLB.com, which sells the popular At Bat application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, said it will add live feeds of some games for no additional charge, at least for now.
Owners of the $9.99 application will at first get to see two games each day, chosen by MLB.com. (The games are subject to local blackout restrictions—and your iPhone, remember, knows where you are.) Thursday’s 2:20 p.m. game between the Cubs and White Sox will be the first to be streamed live on the At Bat application; the Tigers-Cardinals game at 8:15 p.m. will follow.
MLB.com says it plans to roll out the entire slate of games as the season progresses. Presumably it will make users pay to watch some games, using the new ability of iPhone developers to charge users for content within applications. The company says it has not yet settled on a price.
The video will play regardless of whether an iPhone is connected to a WiFi network or a 3G network. MLB.com says its servers will detect the strength of the phone’s connection and adapt the quality of the video accordingly. (It should be interesting to see the quality of the video over AT&T’s sometime spotty network.) The application also has DVR features, so users can pause and rewind live games from their device.
The implications of MLB’s move are significant. Live television on mobile devices has been slow to take hold in the United States, as channel aggregators like MobiTV tried to recreate the cable model in the wireless ecosystem. Content owners themselves, using mobile applications to offer their video a la carte to the people who are willing to pay for it, could get much more traction.
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