I’ve had great difficulty in finding time to watch some tennis as we are in the middle of two big grand slams: the French Open (which is currently being played) and Wimbledon (which starts in a few weeks). I usually spend a great deal of time watching tennis this time of year, but as you know, I’ve been quite busy with other commitments (such as vacations and school). However, today I was able to watch some tennis before my class started online via ESPN 360. I was really excited at this, because not only did they have matches from yesterday and matches that had already taken place, but they had live streaming video of the matches currently happening. How cool is this? I mean, to think I could be anywhere watching tennis live… that’s just awesome. Unfortunately, it’s quite hard on your system and if you are on battery power on your laptop, this service will absolutely kill your system, especially if you are running the video in full screen as I was. Here is what the full screen video looks like:

I was quite impressed with the video quality for it to be streaming live. I did have a few issues with the player, with it switching videos randomly on me or not playing the video I had selected, but overall it was a pretty good experience. But here’s the scary part: how hard it taxes your system. Here is a screenshot of my Activity Monitor, showing how hard Safari was hitting the processor:

Although I’m quite happy with this service as I always like it when I can catch events that I want to watch anywhere, you definitely have to be careful with your system if it’s a laptop. This service absolutely drained my battery and caused my processor to work very hard (saw temperatures of around 80ºC, which is very warm for a processor). Overall though, check it out if you are a sports fan.