Its that time again. Every 4 years the largest soccer (or football if you’re living outside the US) event that features participants representing countries around the world. The World Cup, like the Olympics, is one of the most important international sporting events and provides tremendous amounts of following and interest. A lot of improvements in technology have been made since the last World Cup and we’re sure that individuals will be looking to take advantage of their iPhone, iPad, and Mac to keep up with the latest World Cup action and watch as much as possible. Below you’ll find out about ways to tune into the games, keep up with scores, and watch live matches.
Watch the World Cup 2010 Matches On your Mac
Like the NCAA March Madness events any iMac, Macbook Pro, Macbook, Macbook Air, or Mac Mini owner can catch many of the World Cup 2010 matches live on their computer. One of the best places to find the matches is ESPN3.com if its available in your area (If not, start calling your Internet Service Provider). ESPN3.com features a Flash player that will stream live events to your computer and let you keep up with many of the Matches each day over the next four months. Its unfortunate that ESPN3.com doesn’t provide the World Cup matches via HTML5 so that more viewers could watch the matches easily on their iPads and iPhones.
ESPN3.com is broadcasting the matches in many different languages so be sure to tune into the correct broadcast of the game you’re hoping to watch. For example, the Korea vs. Greece match Saturday will be broadcast in Arabic, German, Korean, Portuguese, and English. Each will be available to Mac owners to allow them to quickly and easily take in the matches.
Watch the World Cup 2010 On Your iPhone?
As we mentioned in the section above, ESPN3.com isn’t supporting HTML5 with their video broadcast. Since the iPhone doesn’t support flash tuning into ESPN3.com won’t help you much. Your best bet is to download the Justin.TV and/or the UStream apps for the iPhone and hope that someone is re-broadcasting the match you’ve been hoping for. Android Phone owners with the Froyo 2.2 update that includes Flash may be using their phone for World Cup streaming of these live events to their phone, but there is still a good chance that ESPN3.com won’t stream to those devices.
There are a number of iPhone applications available to help you keep up with the latest stats and events going on around the 2010 World Cup. We recommend the free ESPN World Cup App as well as EA World Cup 2010 game to fill those hours between matches.
Watch the World Cup 2010 on your iPad
If you’re looking to watch the World Cup on your iPad, your best bet is to do what you’ve already done on the iPhone. Get Justin.TV and/or UStream apps and find who ever maybe streaming the matches channel. You can utilize apps on the iPad to keep up with the latest scores and catch snippets of the matches but it will be a bit more difficult to watch the events on your iPad.
What it Will Be like to Watch the World Cup 2014 on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac
We expect that catching the World Cup in 2014 on your mobile devices will be a lot easier. Mobile networks will have 4 years to improve, new more powerful versions of the iPhone and iPad (if its still named that) will be available, and HTML 5 should be the new standard available to users for streaming video. Lets hope that we’re not in the same place struggling to find the latest highlights and live video on our mobile devices.
