Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Sunday, February 15, 2009 at 9:01 PM PT

CBS Gives March Madness Gives a High-Quality Makeover

Hard to believe that the NCAA Mens’ Basketball March Madness Tournament is just around the corner — but it is, and this year CBS Sports is adding a high-quality viewing option to its March Madness On Demand (MMOD) video player.

2009_mmod_hq_player

The new player uses Microsoft’s Silverlight (CBS has a history with Microsoft and previously used the Windows Media Player). You can stream all 63 tournament games in standard definition at approximately 550kbps, or enjoy a sharper picture with the high-quality player with streams delivered up to 1.5 mbps.

Microsoft’s video technology already proved it can handle big sporting events during last year’s Olympics. Though Silverlight isn’t as ubiquitous as Flash, Microsoft says more than 100 million PCs have installed Silverlight 2.

bracket

The Silverlight player will also sport a new bracket view of the tournament, so you can pan around and select games to watch from the tournament tree.

CBS first launched MMOD in 2003 and through 2005, the network charged a subscription fee to watch the games. In 2006, CBS made MMOD free and the audience has been growing steadily ever since. In 2006, 1.3 million users registered for the service; in 2007 there were 1.7 million users and MMOD generated $4 million in ad revenue; and in 2008 MMOD had 4.8 million users and generated $23 million in ad revenue.

The audience for MMOD actually peaks at the beginning of the tournament as games happen during the day and people catch up during work, and dwindles as the tournament progresses and the remaining games are played at night.

Previously, CBS Sports had used a “waiting room” to throttle the number of concurrent people watching, but the site doesn’t plan to do that this year. Additionally, Joost will not be carrying the March Madness live stream this year.

A little disappointing are the social features CBS Sports has lined up for the tournament. While the video player will be integrated into the Facebook bracket, only those members of the CBSSports.com community will be able to chat while the games happen.

CBS Sports certainly doesn’t sit on the bench when it comes to streaming sports online. Last year the network served up the Masters, the U.S. Open Tennis Finals, SEC Football and SEC Basketball.

The NCAA Tournament begins March 15.

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Topic: Distribution, Hitlines, Networks & Studios

Comments (5)

Why not watch on your TV? PCTVCables.com

march madness on tv — 7:32 AM on February 16, 2009 Reply
Awesome, thanks for the head’s up.

Greg C. — 8:02 AM on February 17, 2009 Reply
Se incarca foarte greu pagina..:(

zuma — 4:24 AM on February 19, 2009 Reply
WOW. I never thought that I would read something like this. Thanks a lot. If you find anything else out like this please email me…sbecker25@live.com. Thanks again.

Scott Becker — 2:09 PM on March 28, 2009 Reply
This was a good technological decision. As the editor of Macworld magazine said, Silverlight is much better than Flash:-

http://www.timacheson.com/Blog/2009/sep/macworld_editor_says_silverlight_is_better_than_flash_for_video

No wonder they saw such a big increase in traffic:

http://www.contentinople.com/author.asp?section_id=603&doc_id=181846

Unfortunately, often those arguing the business case have more clout than those arguing the technical case. Surely CBS is missing an opportunity to take advantage of technological advancement, for the sake of a trivial impact on user experience? At worst, all the user needs to do is click on an “install Silverlight” button on the page.

I think it’s right to place user experience at the very top of the agenda, but wrong to obsess over it to such an extent that trivial UED arguments override significant arguments about technology, innovation and features.

Tim Acheson — 9:54 AM on September 21, 2009 Reply

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