2
Nov
2009
Watching Football on Computer
If this really is to be the future of tv sport, then someone needs to think about cushions.
A wooden Ikea chair is not made with two hours of football viewing in idea, which meant that by the final whistle, I was hankering for the comfy sofa.
How many an other fans paid ‘tween £5 and £12 to watch the equate live was later revealed to be close to half a million. Some were angry about being asked to pay anything.
There was a lack of enthusiasm in my peer group, partly due to the fact that England had already qualified, but also because a 20-inch computing device screen does not have the same appeal as a 40-inch plasma.
Millions of people view broadcasts in this way on the iPlayer, but watching a live event for two hours would be a new feel for many.
Even with a laptop sitting in comfort, or viewing the web on your television via a PC, the picture will not usually be approaching high-definition quality.
So for most people, computers can’t yet offer the modern football experience. What they are good at, however, is forcing people through mundane processes of registration.
Finding the official Ukraine v England web site was an ordeal, with a quick Google search throwing up many others that also promised a live stream.
Rather wary of getting a hand-held tv camera peeking out from a duffel coat in the crowd, it required a double-check on the BBC Sport website to make sure this website was the real deal.
Then there was a number of hoops to jump ended, starting with a demo video to check the expert capability (the basic BT broadband package happened with flying colours), then the creation of a PayPal account to pay the £10 charge.
‘No proficient problems’
There was a further hold-up as PayPal retrieved that five years ago, I once used eBay to sell something or other, so I still had a PayPal password. What it was I didn’t know, so there was some other delay as it e-mail me the answer.
England fan
Some England fans were angry the only online broadcast was on the web
Eventually I was in, ticked “pay” and we were up and moving. Half an hour before kick-off, I logged in and the live streaming sprung into action effortlessly.
There in the studio was James Richardson, known to Channel 4 viewers as a classy presenter of Italian football game, and Sven-Goran Eriksson, who used to supervise Mexico and one or two other teams.
If this truly was a test case for web broadcasting, the major success was there were no technical problems. The picture didn’t buffer or freeze once, but the quality was not great, more akin to watching footballers in a computer game.
There’s the little fella (Lennon), passing it inside to the gangly one (Gerrard), on to the pale, chunky guy (Rooney).
Distractions
Costume dramas and nature programmes you might watch on iPlayer have lots of close-ups. But the action in a football match like this is streamed and is so far away that trying to make out the small figures is difficult. Certainly, faces, shirt numbers and names is hard to identify.
One of the most interesting differences with the television experience is the distraction of the mouse.
The equivalent of channel-surfing was to flick on to gmail or Facebook or Twitter, when the action on the pitch got a bit dull.
It’s a good opportunity to engage in the kind of banter you’d enjoy with mates if they were on your sofa.
One emailed me to say: “Didn’t even notice Stevie Gerrard. It got so bad I found myself online banking.”
Another said on his Facebook update: “Missing my TV remote.”
So, there is a dimension to webcasts that televisions can’t match. But no number of humorous tweets can make up for the joy of five friends on your sofa, munching pizza and watching a big match.
And until web viewing through TVs truly takes off, strange days like this for football fans may prove to be an isolated and quirky experiment.
