Welcome to Gaming.Fit! (Formerly Nutwiisystem.com)
Exploring the Past, Present and Future of Exergaming and Video Game Exercise
Back in 2009 before exergaming was "a thing" I started this site to prove to the world (and myself) that yes, you can lose weight using a combination of active video games and diet. A lot has changed since then, but one thing hasn't: if you have the desire to improve your fitness and health, video gaming can still be a key to helping you get motivated and to build good habits. I'll continue to update the blog from time to time with my latest thoughts. Welcome (or welcome back!)
I’m getting a kick out of Bob Costas’s introductions. Today he made a hurried introduction to the action, very quickly ratting through the day’s events and then getting a little obsessed with repeating the name “Aliya Mustafina”. I get the sense that the 3D intro is probably the last thing he does before he gets out for the night, so he gets a little punchy. I’m a big fan of his humor, so I definitely appreciate it.
One thing that NBC/Panasonic also did was add in what sounds like the BBC’s coverage of the action, which quite frankly I prefer to the American coverage at times. I get the sense that NBC’s announcers get paid by the word and get paid double for superlatives. The British announcers just seem a lot calmer and lets you draw your own excitement from the action itself.
I admit, there are still moments I see the 3D and gasp. I think so far in the first couple of days, the most spectacular shots have been of the gymnastics and the kayak/canoeing.
Here are some more 3D shots of the kayak.
And another 3D shots of gold medalist Gabby Douglas in her floor routine, popping right out of the screen at you. I have to say, I have a whole new appreciation of the sport, seeing the lengths, depths, and heights the gymnasts really have to go through that a 2D TV doesn’t quite give justice to.
Swimming is coming to a close. here’s Missy Franklin in the Woman’s 200M backstroke shattering the world record.
And finally, with the start of the track and field events we get a few new scenes to admire. Here’s the stunning Olympic stadium by night.
The track events also got underway. Again, 3D gave a really unique perspective on the events. Here’s a shot of runners lining up for one of the ladies’ races.
And Tomasz Majewski of Poland getting the first track and field medal with this shot put throw.
Overall, I’d say the 3D was effective in two ways. First, it really made you feel like you were there. Second, it really helped in understanding perspective that’s lost in 2D, such as the length of the track and the heights and distance of the shotput.
3D coverage continued on the NBC 3D channel. Looks like NBC may be waking up to the fact that people are watching this channel–they actually have Bob Costas starting the coverage at 5 AM explaining the events of the day that’ll be featured, instead of just throwing viewers into random coverage. They’ve also been better about putting announcers on.
On days 5 and 6, coverage continued to focus on swimming, diving, gymnastics, and canoeing. I’ve been enjoying NBC’s live streaming coverage during the daytime, and have started to watch sports like archery, volleyball, water polo, fencing, and table tennis, but for the 3D coverage it’s clear that they’ve selected only the most popular sports and the ones that translate to 3D the best.
I’ve gotten into my routine of watching the same-day coverage on regular TV and then tuning in to my favorite moments in 3D the next day. What’s cool is that I’m getting over the “whoa this is cool” factor of the 3D and just enjoying the coverage for what it is. I would much rather them have edited the footage down to the top moments instead of showing unedited action (after a while the swimming heats all start to look the same).
But hey, no complaints. I got to relive great US moments like the US Women’s Gymnastics team taking the all-around gold.
By now I’ve gotten a bit used to the raw and unedited stream of 3D content from NBC. At first I tried to watch the 3D action instead of regular Olympics coverage, but I found myself constantly seeing spoilers on random Web sites and social networking sites. So, I figured I’d watch the coverage live during the day, watch some of NBC’s primetime coverage, and then for any “special” moments I’ll tape the 3D action and watch it the next day.
Days 3 and 4 of the Olympics brought us some new sports in 3D. The first was women’s gymnastics. Here’s Gabby Douglas in the preliminaries on Team USA’s way…spoiler alert…to the team all-around gold.
The 3D really helps you appreciate how very narrow that balance beam is.
They also aired some canoeing. I normally don’t watch this sport at all, but watching the water splashing out from the TV made it fascinating television.
Finally, there was synchronized springboard diving. Again, fascinating to be able to watch the divers in sync in full 3D. You could see every twist and turn.
Overall, not a bad selection of events to be shown in 3D. I’ll be DVRing the whole day tomorrow to watch…spoiler alert…the women’s gymnastics team and men’s relay swimming team take the gold 🙂
Well, since I’m officially obsessed with 3D Olympics coverage, I thought I’d give some more observations.
NBC started broadcasting again today (Sunday, July 29) right on time at 5 AM. They covered swimming (including Michael Phelps’ stunning loss), as well as men’s gymnastics. While the NBC 3D Schedule is now completely filled out until the closing ceremonies, it’s clear that there’s very little production that went into scheduling these events. You’ll basically see a block of several hours of one event, followed by several hours of another event, a few random rebroadcasts in between, and even some random 3D general interest segments. And of course the same commercials over and over and over again. What the advertisers don’t realize is that after watching the same commercial 50 times in a row, it puts a pretty bad taste in your mouth. Also, I kind of wish that NBC would have given more detail than “you’ll see swimming and gymnastics for 8 hours”, especially since we’re on 24 hour tape delay. But we’ve already covered why they don’t.
Once again the coverage started with no commentary, just the ambient noise from the arena, which I loved. It really made me feel like I was there. I’m also watching a lot of the streaming commentary-less events on the Web, and I’m really struck about how little I miss the commentary. Although I think some of the people at NBC are just realizing that their 3D coverage doesn’t have any commentary, as by the time 3D gymnastics started to be aired they started to superimpose the audio from regular announcers on the 3D footage. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.
The 3D, again, was stunning, adding a whole new dimension (no pun intended…okay pun intended) to the telecast. With swimming, being able to see all the lanes in perspective gave a much, much better feeling of being in the action and a much more precise view of how each swimmer was doing. Here’s a picture of the men on the starting blocks–notice how much difference seeing the perspective makes (again, use the “cross-eyed” method of viewing).
Similarly, the men’s gymnastics really came alive. It seems that they have fewer cameras than the 2D telecast, but they’re placed very strategically so you can see gymnasts from the best angles. On floor exercises, you can see them running right at you.
It’s funny, taking these screenshots is making me flash back to the 2004 Athens game, when NBC broadcast a special OTA channel of its HD footage, and I was frantically recording and taking screenshots of the amazing HD picture 🙂 Time will tell if eight years from now 3D will be relatively ubiquitous to the point where I’ll look back and think all these screenshots I’m taking are silly 🙂
I wish I could stay home and watch all the 3D footage, but of course I’ve got my day job tomorrow. So I set the Tivo for 13 hours, which should just about fill it up each night. I’ll check in from time to time over the next few weeks.
As I mentioned in my review of MiCoach, one thing they don’t mention very prominently on the game packaging or in online advertisements is that the game does require some extra equipment that doesn’t come bundled with it. You can still use the game without this equipment, but you’ll have to skip lots of exercises that use the equipment. You’ll know whether you have to use the additional equipment in any given exercises by looking at the icons next to each exercise. Also, your on-screen instructor will show you exactly how to use the equipment, either verbally or clearly in the demonstration of the exercise.
In order to have a full experience, you’ll need to invest into buying some additional equipment. I’ve put some of my suggestions below.
Towel – Any old hand towel should do here. In some games you’ll fold the towel and use it as a pad to make exercises more comfortable.
Bench – This is another piece of “equipment” mentioned. You’ll need this from time to time to rest a hand or foot on it for support. You should be okay with a folding chair or a kitchen chair here, just keep it handy near your workout area.
Stability Balls – The manual suggests you use an “Adidas Core Stability Gym Ball”, but as luck would have it that’s not available in the United States. You should be okay getting any brand of Exercise Balls. I just decided to go by the highest Amazon ratings and go for the one with the highest ratings, the Body Sport Exercise Ball. The Isokinetics Balance Ball Chairis a pricer option but also one I considered, as that could also double for your “bench”. To choose the right exercise ball for your height, use this as a guide:
34-inch (85 cm): For users 6′ 7″ in height and taller
30-inch (75 cm): For users between 6′ 2″ and 6′ 6″
26-inch (65 cm): For users between 5′ 8″ and 6′ 1″
22-inch (55 cm): For users between 5′ 1″ and 5′ 7″
18-inch (45 cm): For users between 4′ 6″ and 5′ 0″
Dumbbells – Dumbbells are used in some exercises to introduce resistance and help with strength and muscle conditioning. Again, brands of dumbbells will work, but I like these Valeo Hand Weights because of their rating and the ease of holding them with the PS3 Move controller. The game will advise you on what weight to get, so I’d suggest playing it a couple times without the weight to get a sense of what the exercise entails. One bit of advice–don’t go too high too fast in your weight selection. Even the lightest handweights get very, very heavy as you get longer into a workout.
Heart Rate monitors – The game integrates with heart rate monitors. Obviously, the one Adidas wants you to buy is the Adidas MiCoach Pacer Bundle Heart Rate Monitor. But I like the fact that they didn’t make it so that you had to use their own proprietary heart rate monitor (like EA Sports did), but will support any third party heart rate monitor or USB dongle that supports the ANT+ standard. Here’s a list of some at Amazon that range in price from $30 to $300. When you have this equipment set up, your heartrate will be displayed on screen throughout your workout.
At first, I wasn’t happy that I had to buy all this extra equipment to use this game. Then again, I figured these are all pieces of equipment you should have anyway in your home gym or when doing your workouts on and off the PS3. Plus, I’d rather choose my own equipment than have a flimsy resistance band or non-standard heart rate monitor like EA Sports did. Bottom line is, MiCoach is not just another game–it’s a system that will require a bit of an investment to get the full value out of. Shop around and try to find the highest quality, lowest price equipment to use.
An excellent new entrant into the world of Playstation fitness games but not without its faults.
miCoach by Adidas is the most promising PS3 Fitness Game to come on the scene for a while. It features excellent technical workout plans of the caliber that’s given to professional athletes, and also features instruction and master classes from some of those athletes themselves. Unfortunately, this title is marred by spotty motion detection and buggy integration with MiCoach’s other properties.
Rating by steve: 4.0 stars
I’ve been waiting with great anticipation for the release of miCoach by Adidas.Those who’ve been keeping up with this blog are familiar with the drama this game went through to get release. It was originally supposed to be released by THQ, who after going through financial difficulties decided to scrap the title. This didn’t sit well with Adidas, of course. Lawsuits ensued and at the end of the day 505 Games was chosen to publish the game.
The last really excellent workout game that was developed for any system was EA Sports Active 2, but it seems that EA has all but abandoned that franchise. The Wii U will be getting Wii U Fit in the fall, and the Xbox will be getting Nike+ Kinect, which means Adidas MiCoach is really the only serious player in the fitness game market for the PS3 in the foreseeable future.
The first thing to know about Adidas MiCoach is that it requires the Move controller. The game doesn’t even allow you to use a Dualshock or a Navigation controller to select menu items, which I found a little frustrating. After a lot of trial and error, I found that the best way to navigate menus is to point the Move controller up (or down), and then lightly tap the trigger button to move from option to option.
The game starts out with a video greeting from the athletes who’ll be “training” you. What’s very cool about this is that all of them are real athletes and stars in their respective sports, from Dwight Howard to Kaka to Tyson Gay, to Andrea Petrovic, to Eric Berry. The online trainers are rendered very well; with a few exceptions they look like their real selves and not some creepy computer-animated version of themselves (I’m talking to you, creepy Jenny McCarthy). One other useful thing I learned from this intro video is that the game is pronounced “My Coach” and not “Mee Coach”.
One thing that no one really bothered to tell me before I bought the game is that you do need to have additional equipment, namely a towel, a stability exercise ball, and dumbbells. You can use the game without these, but you’ll be limited in how many of the over 400 exercises you can do. The game also supports the use of any ANT+ compatible heart rate monitor; if you have this your heart rate will be displayed throughout the game.
Something else important to know before purchasing the game is that you need a LOT of space. You need a least 10-12 feet of space in front of your PS3 Eye camera, 10-12 feet from side to side, and the camera needs a full and unobstructed view of your whole body, as well as the floor. If you don’t have this the game will be terribly frustrating for you.
There are three basic options in the game: Training Plan, Training Games. and Conditioning.
TRAINING PLAN
I would call Training Plan the “hard core” portion of the game that literally lives up to the name “My Coach”. I would say that Training Plans are not suitable for somebody looking for casual fitness, but rather inteded for someone who wants to do some professional-caliber, in-depth training for a sport or an upcoming event like a marathon.
In fact, the first thing you do when you select Training Plan is to select a sport you’d like to train in. Your choices are basketball, football, running, soccer, and tennis. You can also choose from two generic options: men’s training or women’s training, and you can select “Getting Started” which will acclimate you to the system with some simple stretches.
The training provided can get very technical. I’m not a professional athlete, but I’d guess that the programs here are comparable to the types of programs that professional strength and conditioning coaches might use for their respective sports.
For each of the sports there are core exercises to 1) build strength, 2) increase speed, or 3) maintain a certain level of fitness during the season. Within each of these options are additional choices; for example, under “build strength” for basketball, the sub-options are 1) game shape, 2) build lean mass, 3) maximize strength, and 4) sky high, each focusing on a different area of strength training.
Once you choose one of these sub-options, you’ll get set up with a set number of workouts over a set number of weeks (for example, “sky high” consists of 12 workouts of 4 per week over a 3 week period). You’ll also be told what equipment you need, and your calendar in the game will be set for you.
Here’s a video of one of the workouts under Football. Those of you who follow the blog will recognize my ninja outfit; for those of you new to the blog, the reason I hide my identity is twofold: first, I’m bashful, and second, I have no intention of becoming the next Wii Fit Girl.
These are not easy workouts. Most of them last anywhere from 45 minutes to over an hour and have an intense number of exercises. As I said, the exercises get very technical, tailored towards working out parts of your body needed to excel in the sport you chose–there are floor exercises and stretches, cardio workouts, and drills. And with each sport, you’ll have actual professionals who’ll demonstrate the exercise to you and give “insider” tips during the training. The professionals include:
Tennis: Ana Ivanovic, Andrea Petkovic, and Fernando Verdasco
Football: CJ Spiller, Eric Berry, Jozy Altidore, Von Miller
As you progress through your workouts you can unlock video “master classes” from the athletes which give you further advice.
One thing to note is that you do NOT get intense cardio workouts with these exercises, which are aimed more at strength and flexibility training. See the “MiCoach Integration” section below for more about this.
TRAINING GAMES
This is the “lighter”, “more fun” portion of the game, and it is fantastic. It consists of simulations of actual sports.
Specifically, you can practice shooting baskets. You basically hold your Move controller in your hands while pressing the trigger and make a shooting motion like you’re holding a basketball. Release the trigger to shoot. The sensation is shockingly realistic. Like real basketball, it takes some trial and error to figure out how hard to make your throwing motion, and admittedly sometimes you’ll make a slight move and the basketball will go sailing over the backboard. But once you get used to the game, it’s an amazing simulation. What’s more amazing is that you can move to the left and right and the image on the screen will move with you. By far the most realistic basketball simulation I’ve played on any video game system.
You can also simulate being a soccer goalie blocking shots, again an excellent simulation that really requires you to move. As the ball comes toward you you have to time your leap and your hands to block the shot.
Finally, there’s a tennis game that has you returning serves and trying to hit blocks; not the most accurate simulation, but one that’s still a lot of fun.
The level of workout you get from these training games is not nearly what you’d get from playing the real thing, of course, but it’s a very well executed part of the game that provides some workout, and some very good fun and much needed distraction for the shorter-attention-spanned amongst us.
CONDITIONING
This is the part of the game I’d suggest for the more casual fitness gamer. Each conditioning routine consists of a certain amount of exercises, followed by recover periods, followed by training games. The conditioning workouts seem to be around 20 minutes, making them ideal for morning or evening exercise. Strangely, you can’t schedule conditioning by itself into your calendar, you can only add it on to an existing Training Plan (great if you have 2-3 hours a day to workout, but not great for the rest of us).
MOTION CONTROL
Now for the most important question in a PS3 Fitness game: how accurate were the motion controls?
Interestingly, not all exercises use the Move controller. The game attempts to be Kinect-like by use just the Playstation Eye camera to track certain exercises. This is a welcome development for those exercises where it’s just too unwieldy to try to hold a controller. As for how well it works, I’ll be honest, it’s hit or miss. There are times when I’d be adjusting my position to prepare myself for the exercise, and the system will have already counted my random movements as two or three reps.
For those exercises that use the Move controller, again, I found them hit or miss. I found that exercises where I had to lie on the floor were more “miss”, while exercises while standing or on the stability ball were more “hit”.
The biggest takeaway for me was not that the motion controls were horrible, but that your conditions need to be absolutely perfect for the system to recognize your motions correctly. It’ll take some trial and error to figure out the best positioning for you (both standing up and lying down) as well as for your PS3 Eye camera. One good thing that MiCoach does is allow you to skip an exercise if it realizes it’s not tracking you properly, instead of berating you mercilessly for your failure (I’m talking to you, creepy Jillian Michaels). But I would have much preferred for them to provide some better guidance on how to set up your system and your environment rather than just bail on you.
INTEGRATION WITH MICOACH
MiCoach for PS3 was designed to integrate with MiCoach.com (and by extension with their iPhone app). MiCoach.com was designed to give you the ability to set up both cardio workouts and strength/flexibility workouts for different sports, and to track your progress–using high priced MiCoach accessories, of course, but also allowing you to enter on the Web site any exercise you did (say, if you played in a softball game or a tag football game). What the PS3 version of MiCoach does is replace the “strength/flexibility” workouts on the Web site with interactive versions of the same workouts.
Again, it’s up to you to supplement your workouts with the cardio workouts on the Web (most of which are interval training). For example, I’ve decided to do the “Men’s Training – Get Lean” program on the PS3, while using my iPhone to track the cardio of me walking 20 minutes a day from my office to the train station.
As I mentioned before, the game does communicate with MiCoach.com. I already had a MiCoach account, so all I had to do was enter my Playstation ID and a personalized six-digit code under “Settings > Sharing/Connections”. If you don’t have a MiCoach.com account yet, you can set up a new one for free (you’ll be prompted to do so when you first set up the game) and you can enter your console ID when you sign up.
The integration isn’t perfect. There are times I’d set up plans on the PS3, and the Web calendar wouldn’t be updated (for example, when adding conditioning exercises to Training Plans). Similarly, there are times I’d make adjustments to the calendar on the Web (such as adjusting the date for a specific workout) and the PS3 version wouldn’t be updated. The Web version had a pretty good overview of all the activity I do, but the PS3 version was lacking everything I did on the iPhone. You’re very much limited in what you can do on the PS3–you can change the days of the week you work out or “catch up” on missed workouts by picking up your plan from today, but you can’t delete workouts or move them around. There also seem to be a lot of bugs with data on the PS3; according to the stats, last week I travelled 31,726 miles in one workout (in case you’re wondering, the right answer is 2.12). One wonders how much the THQ/505 Games snafu contributed to the sloppiness here.
Overall I give their integration efforts an A for effort, but a D for execution. They have a lot of work to do here.
CONCLUSION
Overall, MiCoach for PS3 is a game that shows a lot of promise. If you are already an active user of MiCoach; already own the required equipment such as an exercise ball and hand weights; or are actively training for any of the supported sports, I’d highly recommend it. If you’re more of a casual gamer I’d still recommend it for the training games and the conditioning exercises, but the full training plans may be overkill for you.
I give the concept, the graphics, and the attention to detail in the individual exercises a 5 of 5, but the motion control issues and the snafus with integration are enough to push it back down to a 4 of 5. Still, I’d say the game easily surpasses games like Fit in Six, UFC Personal Trainer, and EA Sports Active 2–and is on par with Get Fit for Mel B–to jump into the echelons of the Best PS3 Fitness Games. Hopefully they will continue to work on these things and send updates to both the Web site and the PS3. This thing has a ton of potential, but it just falls a little bit short of perfection at the moment.
Right now I’m watching the London 2012 Opening Ceremonies on FIOS Channel 1003 (if you have Comcast, AT&T, Cablevision, etc. you’ll find it on different channels).
It took me a while to get it to work right. I had component cables going from my Tivo to my PS3 Display, but the Display annoyingly wouldn’t allow me to switch into 3D mode–the 3D option was completely greyed out on the Display. After a bit of fiddling, I realized that I needed to connect my Tivo via HDMI.
Now on Friday night, I’d watched the NBC coverage “live” (actually, no one in the US could watch it live because NBC blocked access to everything except its tape delayed coverage). I watched about 10 minutes of it before I had to shut the sound off. I have nothing against Matt Lauer or Mededith Viera, but I found their constant need to provide non-stop commentary to be utterly annoying to the point of my wanting to throw something at the TV. It was impossible to enjoy the beautiful music and the wonderful sounds of the Opening Ceremonies because they felt a need to constantly explain to the viewers what was going on. The worst of many bad moments of the night, when Matt Lauer saw a scene of British nurses and children recreating classic English storybook scenes and decided to interject “while the healthcare debate is going on in the US, Britain is proud of its universal healthcare and wanted to proudly display it to the world”. Uh, thanks Matt.
The one bright spot of the evening was Bob Costas, from whom we heard painfully little compared to the always-on Viera and Lauer. It was touching to hear his “audible” where he called for a moment of silence for the 40th anniversary of the 1972 Munich massacre, an event for some strange reason the Olympic committee decided to put on the back burner.
Overall, I give London’s Opening Ceremonies an “A” and NBC’s Friday night prime-time coverage a solid “F”. I hate to break the news to NBC, but the reason the Today Show’s ratings are plummeting was not because of Ann Curry. It’s because no one wants to wake up in the morning and hear the painful and endless drivel the likes of which we heard Friday night.
Okay, this is a blog to talk about 3D coverage, so I’ll talk about NBC’s coverage of the same event on the NBC 3D Olympics channel.
The coverage stated at 5 AM sharp. After a montage of videos of Olympic athletes, we cut to Bob Costas, who gave a brief, one-minute introduction to the Olympic coverage. Then, the Opening Ceremonies began.
I braced myself for the annoying commentary. But it never came. Instead, I heard the beautiful voices of children singing. I heard the rich sounds of the orchestra. And I could see the most stunningly beautiful images that have ever come out of my Playstation 3D display, in glorious and deep 3D.
It turns out that NBC decided to air Panasonic’s raw footage untouched. From their point of view, they probably knew that very few people would be tuning in, so it wasn’t worth their time to get on-air “talent” to provide running commentary. For me, this was the most brilliant decision the boneheads at NBC made yet. Because even though it was 24 hours later, I thoroughly and immensely enjoyed this coverage from start to finish.
NBC did find ways to ruin even this experience. Every 10 minutes, and in some cases during pivotal moments in the action, NBC abruptly cut to commercials right in the middle of the action, making us miss key moments. For example, during the point in the festivities when the ironworkers forged the beautiful Olympic rings, we jump from the scene where the red-hot rings are being lifted to the ceiling, cut to commercial, and come back to see that the rings are lit up, presumably as part of an impressive pyrotechnics display that happened when we were enduring the 50th airing of Matthew Perry’s new show on NBC this fall (which I will boldly predict will not last the season). Still, what they did show was stunning (use the “cross-eyed” method to view these and other 3D images).
The one saving grace was that most of the commercials themselves were for movies and Blu-Rays in 3D from the Avengers to Finding Nemo in 3D, but of course NBC put in 2D commercials for its own shows.
Another very annoying thing is that it seems every three minutes they’d superimpose an animation of The Lorax with silly sound effects, sometimes during the most dramatic or emotional moments.
You’d think that they’d get a college intern to putting commercials in the right places, and to make sure that their annoying animations didn’t interfere with the show. But the message from NBC was clear. We don’t care about 3D viewers, and we’re going to milk as much as we can out of them. Thanks NBC.
Still, that couldn’t put a damper on the excellent quality of Panasonic’s 3D. Colors were vibrant, the camera angles really maximized the quality of the 3D and made you really feel “part of the action” in a way that traditional 2D never could. Watching the Parade of Nations (again, thankfully without constant commentary) was a really fun experience. Here’s a still of the US team entering the stadium:
Scenes like the fireworks displays over the stadium were truly jaw-dropping (unfortunately, the one thing NBC decided to do was to cut into the fireworks to splice in a montage of scenes from past Olympics, ruining perhaps the single most impressive 3D images of the evening).
The Opening Ceremonies went from 5:00 AM to about 10:00 AM, at which point NBC started looping the coverage again through the day. Tough to tell if they’ll be doing that for the other Olympic action, or if they will be providing commentary for the sporting events. But I have to say, the great anticipation I had for the Opening Ceremonies (as you can see from all my posts leading up to it) was well warranted. Even though I know it was out of laziness and an utter lack of concern for its 3D viewers that NBC decided to not invest any production costs into its 3D coverage, for me that turned out to be a positive. I grade their 3D coverage of the Opening Ceremonies an A+ for the way it let me experience the Opening Ceremonies in an unprecedented way. It just makes me wish there were a mute button that should shut up some of their on-air “talent” on their regular 2D coverage.
If you have a 3D display and FIOS, tune to 1003 and check it out for yourself over the next few days. If you don’t have FIOS, sign up here with referral code IWANTFIOS to get it now with a nice gift card to boot! And if want to experience beautiful 3D for yourself at the cheapest price possible, Best Buy has the PlayStation 3D Display Bundle for only $199–that’s $400 less than suckers like me paid for it!
I have to say I’m really excited about watching the Olympics in 3D on FIOS channel 1003. I got my PS3 display too late to enjoy the US Open tennis, so this will be the first time I’ll watch broadcast signal on the PS3 Display.
If you haven’t done it yet, make sure you have an HDMI cable going from your cable box or Tivo to the PS3 monitor. Then, change the settings to “side by side”. Charge up your glasses, and enjoy the festivities.
I noticed a few days ago that the satellite feed changed from a test pattern to a graphic of the Olympics Logo, in 3D no less. I’m looking forward to the next 16 days.
Charge up those 3D glasses! The NBC 3D Channel has released its 3D broadcast schedule. While Verizon and Cablevision have been strangely quiet about it, the announcement was officially made that AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, Time Warner, and Verizon FIOS will be carrying the Olympics in 3D.
While it’s unclear whether some cable providers will be charging extra for the privilege, it’s virtually certain, if the past is any indication, that coverage will be completely free for users of Verizon FIOS. The test pattern you’re seeing on 1003 is the same pattern that preceded free coverage of the US Open Tennis Tournament. Come Saturday morning, that test pattern should be replaced on Saturday morning by full and free 3D telecasts of the Olympics.
If you’ve got a Playstation 3D display, make sure you have an HDMI cable going from your cable box or TiVo. On Saturday, you should see two images next to each other. Turn 3D mode on and switch to “Side By Side” format. Then, put on your glasses and enjoy the 3D. If you don’t have FIOS yet, sign up here with referral code IWANTFIOS to get it now with a free gift card no less! 🙂
All of the competition will be on next-day delay (meaning you can watch the Opening Ceremony Friday night and then Saturday at 5 AM watch the rebroadcast in 3D). They claim that there will be a full 12 hours of coverage each day, for a total of about 242 hours over the 16 days. For some reason, they seem to have divided their listings into two portions of the day: one from about 5 AM to 9 AM, and the other from about 9 AM to 6 PM. Hard to tell if it’ll be all original coverage throughout the day, or if they’ll loop the broadcasts, but we’ll see.
Here’s the schedule that’s been released for the first few days. I’ll keep updating this as they do:
Saturday 7/28/2012
5:00 AM – 5:00 PM – Opening Ceremony – London, the first city to host the Olympics thee times, welcomes the world and Queen Elizabeth II officially opens the games.
Sunday 7/29/2012
4:00 AM – 6:15 PM – Gymnastics: men’s team competition; Swimming: qualifying and finals.
Monday 7/30/2012
5:00 AM – 7:30 PM – Gymnastics: women’s team competition; Swimming: finals; Diving: women’s synchronized springboard finals
Tuesday 7/31/2012
5:00 AM – 7:45 PM – Gymnastics: men’s team final; Swimming: finals; Diving: men’s synchronized platform final; Canoeing: whitewater qualifying
Wednesday 8/1/2012
5:00 AM – 7:15 PM – Gymnastics: women’s team final; Swimming: finals; Diving: women’s synchronized platform final; Canoeing: whitewater final.
Stability Balls – The manual suggests you use an “Adidas Core Stability Gym Ball”, but as luck would have it that’s not available in the United States. You should be okay getting any brand of 
. I just decided to go by the highest Amazon ratings and go for the one with the highest ratings, the 
is a pricer option but also one I considered, as that could also double for your “bench”. To choose the right exercise ball for your height, use this as a guide:
because of their rating and the ease of holding them with the PS3 Move controller. The game will advise you on what weight to get, so I’d suggest playing it a couple times without the weight to get a sense of what the exercise entails. One bit of advice–don’t go too high too fast in your weight selection. Even the lightest handweights get very, very heavy as you get longer into a workout.
. But I like the fact that they didn’t make it so that you had to use their own proprietary heart rate monitor (like EA Sports did), but will support any third party heart rate monitor or USB dongle that supports the ANT+ standard. 
is the most promising PS3 Fitness Game to come on the scene for a while. It features excellent technical workout plans of the caliber that’s given to professional athletes, and also features instruction and master classes from some of those athletes themselves. Unfortunately, this title is marred by spotty motion detection and buggy integration with MiCoach’s other properties.
is selling for only $9.99.