Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is now offering downloads of all 2007 Playoff games . You can download games individually for $2.99, a series for $12.99, or the entire playoffs for $79.99. The NBA is following in Fox’s footsteps of offering downloads for all the BCS Bowl games for college football. From the NBA Store:

You can download and own each and every game of the 2007 NBA Playoffs right through The Finals. Check for the games by your favorite team or pick a current series to get all the action direct to your PC! Games are available hours after they are completed.

If you are a fan of one of the teams in the playoffs, this might be a good deal, especially if you want to archive games for viewing years later. The download service is compatible with Windows Media-compatible PCs and portable devices using:

• Windows Media 9 or higher,
• Windows XP OS
• Internet Explorer 5.5 and above

Buried in the Terms and Conditions is the following statement:

In order to enable viewing of your Downloaded Content on PCs other than the one to which it was initially delivered, you will have to obtain a new license by connecting each such computer to the Services via an Internet connection, logging in to your account and downloading a new license. Any back-up copy of the Downloaded Content on a DVD will not be playable on a traditional DVD player.

Each download can be stored on up to 3 computers and the games cannot be placed on a DVD. Whatever.

In order to test out the site, I ordered the Golden State versus Utah game from a couple of nights ago. I was disappointed to see that you had to install security software from Entriq in order to view the files. Each game is 1.2 GB in size, which is pretty big. One good thing though is that you can start watching the game almost immediately. The download store is suffering from two things: the video is standard definition (and not widescreen) and you have to play it through the Media Manager software installed through Internet Explorer. The audio is also not very good.

I think the download store is a good idea not implemented very well. The DRM is annoying enough to deter me from buying another game and the quality of the video is just not worth the $2.99.