Week in Geek: NFL to restrict non-game day interview footage?

Mobile Video the big story at this Year s CTIA Trade show

The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association trade show is happening this week in Orlando and video to the mobile phone is one of the big trends. New chipsets are getting close to market to enable more powerful phones video. Look for vendors such as Sequans, Thin Multimedia and others to compete with struggling Motorola to offer more powerful services such a WiMax enabled cell phones. These are expected come to market later this year or early next. WiMax wireless will compete directly with the current generation of broadband enabled cell phones from Verizon and others.

Godfather ships for Wii and PlayStation 3.
A very interesting test case for virtual entertainment came to market. Electronics Arts announced last Thursday that it is shipping
new versions of its terrific Godfather video game for both PlayStation 3 and the Wii. The Godfather is an immersive plot-oriented game that has traditional linear movie and TV feel to it. And how consumers respond to the title on the new competing platforms will give an indication about not only the future of these gaming systems Wii is on the way to becoming the dominant platform but for consumer preferences for all entertainment. Will PlayStation 3 s super-immersive, high-resolution environment be a hit with consumers? Or will Wii’s get up and act along style be more compelling? For sports producers considering the future of their franchises on interactive platforms, how The Godfather fares will tell us a lot about the future of plot-driven entertainment on new systems.

According to the
Sports Business Journal, the NFL may restrict the use of non game-day interview footage to those it directly licenses. Nothing has been decided yet, but these issues are due for discussion during upcoming league meetings. On one hand, this may not be a surprise: The NFL is tightening the reigns on its content as it prepares to take over production of NFL.com this year. The site has been produced by CBS SportsLine since 2001. But these moves are counter to the rest of the technology world. The story here is whether the NFL can change the future. Seemingly every other media entity is embracing the consumer content wave: end-users are becoming their own marketing voices, bringing the consumer into the process of spreading the word. But the NFL is going old school. In football parlance, it s like a team clinging to the running game while the West Coast offense sweeps through the rest of the league. The NFL is actively disenfranchising the consumer at a time when everyone else is doing exactly the opposite. Maybe the NFL is so crazy-popular that it won t matter. But they ll be flying solo. And it s worth following how they fare.

Quick notes

Apple TV gets to the media last week. Tech lord Walt Mossberg reviewed it. And it works. No surprise. Go here. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive
/solution-20070321.html Apple continues its push into the living room.

Prices on high definition DVD players are dropping. Toshiba said it will cut the prices to their players to the $499.

The Web s turning out to be a great spot for sports rules. All the major leagues Web sites have well done nice sport rules sites.

Fiber to the home is going to take forever Take a look at this recent coverage map. http://www.dslreports.com
/gmaps/fios.

And finally Forget March Madness on the Web. It s slick on the Xbox live. We demoed Xbox s new college basketball services during the tournament and it s cool. Mostly playing though the match ups yourself. But we wonder how long it will be before there is real-time instant replay for games.

Imagine having your Xbox instantly download the score and situation of the last two minutes of say the Ohio State game last week. How cool to play it yourself just after it happens.