Wimbledon 2008 starts today and runs to July 6 and I discovered that Wimbledon provides a two week ?Wimbledon Live? service. For a flat fee of $24.99 you can stream live matches to your PC or download up to 250 matches in .wmv format after the match is complete. Matches will be available until May 1, 2009. Day passes will also be available but so far I haven’t found pricing details.

As usual, my TiVos are queued to record as many matches as TSN and NBC air. But, all too often, matches that I want to watch are not broadcast. Or, too frequently, certain channels have exclusive rights to particular high profile matches with the result that they are not shown on the channels that my cable provider, Rogers, makes available to me!

All video is in 384 x 288 with a 4:3 aspect ratio. I took a quick look at the free streaming demo of the 2005 Federer vs. Roddick Wimbledon Final. The quality wasn?t great (see pic above), but it wasn?t bad either. Because the service only works with Windows Media Player, the it’s not available to Apple users and, presumably, not available through AppleTV.

Note: In addition to the free streaming demo, I tried the free downloadable version but it would not play without having to first sign up and give them my credit card. This kind-of defeats the ?free? part of the ?Download (FREE)? offer.

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