The commercials for AT&T and DirecTV have become enticing.
I was aware that AT&T had bought them, but I hadn't really thought about the possible implications of the deal.
What they're selling in the commercials is this: Now you can watch DirecTV on your cellphone. Presumably if and only if you use AT&T as your provider. However what's not clear is if I have to have DirecTV as my TV provider at home.
This is interesting for many reasons:
DirecTV has exclusives on a bunch of sporting events.
I've always wanted to be able to watch games on my phone. I have TWC and T-Mobile. TWC has an app for the phone that allows me to watch some programming when I'm out and about, but never the games I want to watch. For those I have to be at home, presumably watching on the big screen.
I might be willing to switch to AT&T over T-Mobile for this!
I'm certainly interested in knowing the terms. The fineprint on the ad offers some clues: "Requires qualifying device, TV plan, and data connection." In other words, it's almost certainly as limited as the TWC plan. Too bad.
The sports leagues may be too smart to let the cellphone providers have mobile distribution, it looks like they want that for themselves. I could be watching every MLB game, on my iPhone or Nexus, for $25 a month. NBA League pass costs about the same. Not sure about other leagues.
This is the convergence they were talking about at tech conferences in the early-mid 90s.
