Sky Sports on the iPhone. Heaven? (Part 2)

I had the foresight to end my previous post about the new venture between Sky Sports, O2 and the Apple iPhone by including a caviat that the real value for money could only be seen after I could establish weather the Apple Composite TV Cable would successfully stream the Sky Sport's footage from my iPhone to my TV. If it could, it would save a potential £14 a month in Sky TV subscriptions. If...


I excitedly unwrapped my cable at Christmas (tragic in so many different ways!) only to find that the boxing day test between England and South Africa would stream to my TV the audio only! At first I assumed the cable was faulty, wrong or indeed just plain mis-sold but then other content on my iPhone would stream perfectly. Even the BBC iPlayer made the successful transition. A quick Google search later and it appears the app blocks the streaming of the video for exactly the purpose of stopping me and my experiment. Technically I think streaming only works through Quick Time applications within the Safari browser or the iPod application itself. 


I've found this to be a real shame. Not only was the cable expensive but despite the good quality of picture, it is no real substitute for Sky Sports through the Sky box. There's no interactive menu, you can not pause live TV and depending on the network connection the streaming can be flaky. 


As in my other post today, broadband usage has also appeared on the horizon with this topic. To make full use of the service (even if the streaming to a TV did work) would probably require an upgrade in broadband subscription (for me anyway). 


In conclusion? Back to the pub for important football matches I think. I may be tempted to subscribe to the app on an ad hoc basis, but come the summer cricket season I may bite the bullet and return to my Sky Sports TV subscription!

Sky Sports on the iPhone. Heaven! (Part 1)

It's nothing short of miraculous. Sport, on a phone. The holy grail of a geek in denial!

Last month Sky Sports and o2 got together to offer this excellent innovation in broadcasting, offering an initial 3 month free trial as the carrot to the £6/month stick to view Sky Sports and ESPN through an iPhone! My first impression was somewhere along the lines of 'that looks cool and it's free, I'll give it a go'. However I had my suspicions regarding watch TV and live sport, on a phone. Following the success of TVCatchup.com, I perhaps shouldn't have been!

Somewhat masked by a live shot of cricket, the photo doesn't do the quality of picture justice. It would also have helped with my 'real time' plug had there actually been any live cricket, but the match today against South Africa was rained off (still we won).

So far about 3 weeks into my trial I've watched a few cricket games and a couple of football games. The only stipulation o2 have made is that it needs a WiFi connection to stream, which I can understand, even if TVCatchup.com doesn't. As long as there's a good signal the streaming it perfect.

There is one further test I'd like to do before passing final judgement. I'm trying to get hold of an Apple Composite TV cable to see what it's like streaming the iPhone feed onto a TV. If that's successful I might be tempted to pay the £6 charge (more than 66% cheaper than the cost for Sky Sports on the TV).

I'll post again after testing...