Watching bowl games on ESPN over the New Years has become a new experience for many Xbox Live subscribers, especially those equipped with a new Kinect. In many ways, it’s a sneak peek into the future of watching live TV.
We cut the cable cord a few months ago, so we watch ESPN3 on Xbox, which is a live stream of nearly all ESPN broadcast games on our TV set. Now in bowl season, ESPN3 is airing many of the biggies, from the Rose Bowl to the National Championship.
Here’s the dashboard screen for the ESPN3 app on Xbox. We recently added a Kinect, so we’ve been navigating the games “Minority Report” style, by waving our hands to the left and right, which triggers a scrolling action.
While it’s great for impressing friends, we’ve found the best “remote” for navigation is our voices, using the Kinect. Saying “Xbox play” and “Xbox pause” is much easier than waving our hands in the air to activate the Kinect — but you have to talk loudly.
Equally as entertaining, perhaps, is the ESPN College Bowl Showdown, an interactive game that ties into the live streams that lets you play against your Xbox friends — or all Live subscribers — in predicting the winners. While watching any game, we can pop up the vote count on the lower-third of the screen. The top winners who enter a sweepstakes are eligible for prizes, including a trip to ESPN HQ.
As a Washington Huskies fan, I scored big with the Holiday Bowl — among only 5% of people who predicted the winner (despite the fact Xbox’s headquarters is located in Huskies territory.)
This level of interactivity — you can also pop up an interactive scoreboard during games — feels very natural and less forced than many earlier efforts at interactive TV. We can’t wait for Xbox to update the Netflix app with Kinect control, not to mention social features with the Xbox Live community. And we definitely can’t wait for the Hulu Plus app, due out anytime.
The downsides? ESPN3’s streaming quality varies, and it doesn’t appear to be always related to our 20 mbps internet connection. At one point during the Rose Bowl, it looked like we flashed back to 2001. As far as Kinect is concerned, our family has two kids and a dog, which frequently confused Kinect when we attempt to wave to get its attention. Hence, the voice commands work better.
One more thing. I’ve “friended” quite a few people on Xbox Live over the years, but all in the context of gaming. Nearly all the friends are exclusively virtual. As Xbox adds the new social context of watching video, like Netflix and Hulu, I’ll need to adapt my friends list to more “real life” friends.