Some observations about accessing games in this way:
- I was still able to use a VPN to view the games. This was done through a PC with Private Internet Access VPN installed.
- I was able to stream a game to my TV via a Chromecast connection from my laptop, but as my PC is connected to my television, I was able to watch games on the television via a direct login to the Watch AFL website on the PC connected to the television.
- The Watch AFL app is far better than the Global Pass that it replaces. It allows the user to select more gradations of stream quality. The old app only had three levels of quality to select - the new app has 5 or 6 levels to select from. This allows the user to get much closer to their streaming capacity.
- The 'liveness' and fidelity is also much better. I noticed a delay of only about 10-15 seconds when compared to the coverage on Pay-TV or Free-to-Air. And overall, the mid-range quality settings are eminently stable and watchable.
- Fox Sports coverage was in place during the live coverage of the half and quarter time breaks, but it seems to change back to Channel 7 coverage in the replays??? This includes commercials, which is the one drawback from last year. Last year, the Global Pass ran highlights packages in the breaks. I can only assume this is a licencing agreement.
- What was also disappointing was that I couldn't stream the Watch AFL app on my mobile devices, despite activating the VPN app as well on those devices. I would assume that this indicates the VPN on my mobile devices is inferior to the one on my laptop and PC, which worked seemlessley. So you get what you pay for - the mobile VPN is free, the PC and Laptop VPN is about $40 a year.
Post Script: I was able to get the Watch AFL app to stream on my Tablet after I changed to a better VPN app. Obviously not all VPN apps are the same! This app allows 500mb of free data before requiring a paid upgrade (the freemium model) but at least this demonstrates that a VPN can be used on mobile devices. One disappointment of the Watch AFL app is that there doesn't seem to be the ability to chromecast the vision to the television, even though I could do this when I was using the app on my Laptopb via Google chrome.
