NFL

This week, we offer a hands-on demo of the new glasses-free 3D laptop from Toshiba; figure out why NFL streaming on the PS3 doesn't work; and take a poll of who is buying the new Star Wars Blu-ray box set.

Bonus: Download the show's jaunty theme song as a free MP3 here.

… Read more

I am an NFL fan, and I don't have cable. For those reasons alone, I was incredibly excited about this year's addition of DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket to the PlayStation 3. Like MLB and NHL streaming apps before it, Sunday Ticket is an extension of DirecTV's NFL game-streaming package, which has already been available on the PC, mobile phones, the iPad, and Android tablets. The PS3, however, is the first gaming console to gain NFL game-streaming capability.

It sounds great, but be aware of the caveats. First, Sunday Ticket costs $340 to activate for one season. That's $90 more than the cost of a PlayStation 3. Second, Sunday Ticket does not work for all games: In fact, it's only for 1 and 4 ET Sunday games outside of one's local broadcast market (hence, "Sunday" ticket). Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football, and Thursday night games won't play. As a Jets fan, I'd still need to watch games via over-the-air broadcast, as I normally do.

That's standard knowledge to anyone who's already used NFL Sunday Ticket, but it's useful disambiguation for newcomers, particularly cable cord-cutters hoping that Sunday Ticket will be a catch-all solution. It isn't, entirely, especially since ESPN and NFL Network are cable-only. For those, you'll either need cable TV or a local sports bar and some beer money. However, I was curious and extremely excited to see if DirecTV's PS3 app could vault the NFL to a new level of access for the cable-free.… Read more

The Web breeds fantasy.

It lets us become different people. It lets us impress those we never thought we'd ever have a chance of impressing. And it lets us believe that we are just as wily, difficult, and very slightly obnoxious as the most successful people in the world. The New England Patriots' coach Bill Belichick, for example.

Yet now that fantasy football has become more prevalent in human minds than, say, learning a foreign language (some say 25 million people will have teams this season), a couple of NFL players have come out and expressed some heartfelt--and not … Read more

New Madden games are like football seasons: each one arrives full of promise and hope, and inevitably it's either disappointment or excitement depending on who you are. Anyone who's even slightly confused, apprehensive, or disinterested in the NFL will find no friendly hand of welcome from Madden: at its heart, this is a game for football fans, not football hopefuls. We start with that observation because, unlike last year's efforts to make Madden 11 more accessible for the newcomer, Madden 12 chooses to deepen the deeper parts of its game instead.

Scott:I'm speaking mainly of Franchise Mode, that perennial way for fans to endlessly play out alternative NFL season histories with obsessive detail. Franchise mode now has a deeper free-agent bidding system, between-game practices, and player attributes beyond mere ratings that flux on a per-game basis like a role-playing game, to name a few. My favorite is the more realistic preseason period, where games now cycle first-, second-, and third-streamers more realistically, and cut-down days make you force hard decisions on your rosters just like a real NFL team, turning your preseason into a mini reality show.… Read more

The unexpected practical uses for iPads seem to be multiplying each day. Earlier this month, United Airlines announced it would be purchasing thousands of the tablets to move toward a paperless flight deck, downloading flight manuals and more onto the iPads.

Then today, we got word that the National Football League's Tampa Bay Buccaneers is buying an iPad 2 for each of its players, to be loaded with the team's playbook and game videos to study. Somewhere, loggers and paper companies are surely cursing Steve Jobs while timber forests are enjoying the reprieve.

Traditionally, teams from high school level up to the pros have spent countless hours in darkened rooms watching video from past games and game footage from other teams in preparation for game day. A new tradition may instead involve a roomful of gigantic men staring down at tiny tablet computers.

"It's crazy how much technology has changed the game," second-year safety Cody Grimm told the St. Petersburg Times. "Stuff that we used to come in here to see, we can sit on our couch at home and have access to it 24-7. It's awesome."… Read more

While Dan's changing his newborn's diapers, Scott invites his college buddy, David Tze, over to discuss how a discontinued tablet with no current support gets to be the most popular tablet on the market right now. Fox's announcement to delay its program streams on Hulu causes an online piracy upsurge. The NFL Sunday Ticket comes to the PS3 for a price higher than the current price of the console. Lastly, will backward-compatibility on gaming consoles be missed? … Read more

Football season is upon us, yet being a football fan often feels like a punishment if you enjoy technology; streaming of NFL games has lagged behind the NBA, NHL, and MLB in terms of device availability.

Sony announced today that NFL Sunday Ticket will be available on the PlayStation 3 this season, bringing the only method of viewing all NFL games to a video game console for the first time.

The price of adoption isn't cheap: New customers who aren't already using DirecTV will have to pay $339.95 for the privilege of streaming a whole season of games. Existing DirecTV customers have to pay $50 to activate the PS3 connectivity.

Another caveat: this only allows access to out-of-market games, meaning that die-hard local fans (such as myself) will have to watch local broadcasts and regular television for their teams, and hop off the PS3--or, keep the PS3 and TV in a picture-in-picture orientation. … Read more

The PR flacks for Craction, a new online football game, deserve a little credit for getting one point of their rollout publicity campaign correct: it's more or less impossible to have a fully functional life while aggressively competing in an online fantasy-football league.

Dedicated fantasy-football participants--the type of people who spend hours neglecting their jobs and families to pore over player stat sheets looking for the best punter--often sacrifice their maturity and dignity in an obsessive pursuit of a statistically perfect virtual NFL football team.

Craction looks to offer football competition without "all the fantasy-sports commitment." The game launched online this month, but Scott Schmidt developed it in 2000 when he was a business student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

"I wanted to stay connected with my friends who were spread out at colleges across the country," Schmidt said during Craction's debut. "NFL football was something we could all relate to, but I knew I'd have trouble getting people to commit to fantasy football because it requires so much time. So I just invented a better game." … Read more

In this episode, we talk about how cable companies' attempt to port their services to digital apps both frustrates and confounds us, the debut of the NFL 2011 iPad app, what's new in Netflix streaming, and how busy broadcast news was this week--from the royal wedding to the reported death of Bin Laden.

Bonus: You can download the show's theme song as a free MP3 here for a limited time! … Read more