New Technology TV

For those that like to immerse themselves in sports, and you know who you are, there is a new service, just hitting the streets that will help fill those sports cravings at odd moments. ESPN is going wireless! Perhaps you noticed during the rather pedestrian Super Bowl commercials, an advertisement that showed an oblivious guy walking down the block, staring into his cell phone while all kinds of sports activities were happening around him. That was an ad for ESPN Mobile, the service from ESPN, which delivers a stadium-sized helping of sports content and information to your 3G-enabled mobile phone. With the service, you can get sports, stats, news, video, headlines, and more. The phone and service are very close to having the online version of ESPN in the palm of your hand, along with some of the same content as ESPN, the television network.

The ESPN phone is a “Sanyo MVP” model that comes with a 1.3 Megapixel camera with a flash, a built in Camcorder, MP3 Music Player, Speakerphone, and a 2.1-inch LCD screen with 240 x 320 pixels giving an impressive 260,000 colors. The 3-D graphics will make the downloadable games compelling entertainment. The screen is large enough to allow for serious reading and watching video. The service from ESPN will allow you to get scores as they happen, read breaking sports news and more. They let you personalize the phone with your 5 favorite teams and 15 of your favorite players, so you can keep up with them on an almost personal level. Read all of your favorite columnists that your know from the online ESPN website. It also has something they call the “E button” that takes you directly to your personalized sports page. The phone sells for around $200 and plans start at $34.99 a month.

This phone could keep you busy with looking up stats, watching video moments from Baseball Tonight; Pardon the Interruption, Speaking Frankly, and ESPN Hollywood. A search function will allow you to look up any stats, old box scores, and news stories. I believe this technology will help settle arguments in minutes or even seconds, as the amount of facts and stats is rather large. It even has a smaller screen on the front of the flip phone that allows you keep up on all the scores, even when the phone is closed. The phone alone, without the sports subscription is impressive. With the larger Mini SD card, you can capture up to two hours of your own sports video. All of the usual amenities come with the phone as well: the ESPN Stereo headset, a USB data cable and a 16 MB Mini SD card. To get ESPN Mobile, you have to get the phone (Sanyo MVP) and the service. It is not available otherwise. Oh yes, it is a phone too with unlimited minutes on nights and weekends.