Sports Views

I also use ESPN’s video service, called “ESPN Motion” almost daily. Upon launch, the red and grey window offers you a variety of “sections” to head to, including “Top Video”, “Sports Highlights & News”, “Dot Comedy” and more. Selecting a video launches it to the left side of the window, and a 30 second commercial always comes first… the advertising to real content ratio on this site is very high, but generally the ads are ones you’d be seeing on ESPN’s TV stations anyways. Windows Media Player is also used here, and ESPN seems to be pretty proud of the fact. Often, your navigation area will become a Microsoft ad. If you survive the commercials, you’ll find fast loading, high quality video… it often looks like it is simply spliced from SportsCenter, but that is hardly reason to complain. Updates are not as frequent as you might hope in the “highlights” area, and you can’t expect to find video of, say, a typical MLB game. You will, of course, see lots of content centered around the big name teams / players (think NY Yankees, Cubs, ATL Braves, Lakers, Shaq, Lebron James, Detroit Red Wi… oh wait… never mind). You’ll also find plenty of clips grabbed from ESPN shows like Baseball Tonight, OTL, PTI and the like. Obviously, because I use it daily, I love ESPN’s Motion, although I’d take CNN’s banner ad over the 30 second commercials before every clip any day.