Watchdog

I promised earlier I'd write about Verizon's broadband coverage of NFL Network games, seeing as how it was kind enough to set me up with a password Thursday night.

(I ended up missing much of the game because I couldn't pull my morbid curiosity away from the Knicks on TNT.)

The quality of the picture was excellent. It was far less so when I switched to a full screen, but that's standard for live video.

The service also offers a spiffy drive chart in which every advance of the ball is updated soon after it happens, allowing a fan to follow the progress of possessions as they unfold.

The featured gimmick is the ability to switch the view from the main TV shot to a sideline camera, an end zone camera, the cable-cam camera or a screen that shows all four shots at once.

The novelty of watching different angles is interesting for a while but wears off quickly. It turns out there's a reason networks have been paying directors for decades to make these decisions for us.

As for the "quad'' screen that has four angles at once, it was more disorienting than insightful.

Watching a player travel in four different directions at the same time was cool for a few minutes. Then I got dizzy. Maybe it's just because I'm old.