The Blue Jays game against the Kansas City Royals is taking place at the dome right now, but it's not on Sportsnet. This game is a Facebook exclusive.
I thought I'd check it out, so I logged into Facebook and searched for "Blue Jays". Lo and behold, there was a link to watch the live feed from the game.
On my laptop, there are these icons that fly up from the bottom on the right side. There's also this live chat on the right that's super annoying. (Update: If you click the icon to go "fullscreen", the icons and chat disappear - and I just discovered "quiet mode" which seems to do the trick.) Here's how the game looked, with those aforementioned icons, when I wasn't "fullscreen" or in "quiet mode".
Luckily, I have Chromecast, and that's how I watch Netflix and CraveTV and YouTube and every other form of streaming video. So I put the game on my TV via Chromecast and the annoying chat and flying icons disappeared. Much better.
Not the most fluid stream, however. It's a little pixelated for my liking, and there's a slight lag now and then. I don't ask for much, but a clear HD image without buffering is rather important. I don't experience the lag when I watch on the laptop, just when I Chromecast it to the big screen.
The commenters aren't great, either. One guy just asked how it is we don't have an ice storm every winter "considering it's minus 100 every day". Of course, this may be because I'm not used to them. They don't really call the game, they just sort of chat while you watch the game. Change of this magnitude can be jarring.
When projected on my TV via Chromecast, the "LIVE 60K" overlay is right over the score chyron, which makes no sense at all. On my laptop, it was in the top left corner, where there's no interference.
It's not awful, but there are some wrinkles to iron out. I certainly wouldn't pay for this experience. Only one more Facebook exclusive game to go.
Go Jays Go!
