Super Bowl XLII to be beamed to naval ships in Pacific Ocean

We already knew that pigskin fanatics in 223 countries would be able to catch Super Bowl XLII this Sunday, but thanks to Raytheon's Global Broadcasting Service (GBS), even sailors and Marines stationed aboard ships in the Pacific Ocean will be able to catch the Giants attempt to mar the Patriots' currently unblemished record. The aforementioned technology has been in use for over a decade delivering "high-speed, multimedia broadcasts of mission critical information to military and government decision makers," but this weekend, it'll be used to bring home entertainment to folks far, far away from home. Sadly, it doesn't sound like the broadcast will be in HD this go 'round, but we suppose any football is better than none at all, right?

[Via DailyWireless, image courtesy of ProJo]

[Peppie @ Feb 1st 2008 2:24PM]

I wonder what the delay will be like

Still, I think this is great. It'd be awesome if they could beam it to ground vehicles. Imagine rolling through Bhagdad in an Abrams watching the Superbowl...yeah.

[Brian @ Feb 1st 2008 2:32PM]

If it were my son or daughter, I'd rather they be watching out for IED's then watching the superbowl :/

[JC @ Feb 1st 2008 2:33PM]

Taxpayer dollars, hard at work.

[Heath Stahl @ Feb 1st 2008 2:35PM]

@ Brian

Not that many IED's aboard US Navy ships in the Pacific.

[Josh L @ Feb 1st 2008 2:46PM]

JC, I'd much rather see my tax money be used for something like this than, say, bailing out idiot sub-prime mortgage borrowers that don't understand simple economics.

[looseinthedeuce @ Feb 1st 2008 2:50PM]

...but where am I gonna watch it, I won't be on a naval ship in the Pacific on Sunday :(

@JC
Really? You're worried about tax dollars going to pay for them to watch the game? Really? Like that comes CLOSE to the amount of money spent on...everything else in the armed services? Take issue, by all means, but make sure it's the right issue.

[Josh @ Feb 1st 2008 2:57PM]

This is not new. I was aboard a US vessel during the 2000 Superbowl and the picture was beamed in from Satellites.

[JC @ Feb 1st 2008 3:00PM]

Like Josh says, why couldn't they have used the satellite TV technology they already have?

A drop in the bucket is still a drop in the bucket. Anyway, not MY dollars at work. I'm Canajun.

[Tomahawk @ Feb 1st 2008 3:01PM]

This really isn't anything new. I watch the twin towers fall down on September 11, live on CNN back in 2001 while sailing on a US Naval ship off the coast of Turkey. We had just pulled out of port a couple hours before the first plane hit, and we knew about it immediately, and were able to watch the progression as it occurred.

@Peppie - There is no delay, well at least not what your thinking of. Sometimes the audio didn't match up the lips of the people speaking, but it was fractions of a second off.

[chosen1 @ Feb 1st 2008 3:43PM]

got to love America!

let's hope there will be some major changes when Bush gets kicked out

[Glaeal @ Feb 1st 2008 3:47PM]

They aren't buying new bandwidth just to broadcast this to the ships. They're using already procured commercial bandwidth, and beaming it globally, not just in the Pacific. This is also how they're delivering it to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's for morale. If they weren't sending the Superbowl, they'd just be sending packaged websites or news channels.

[tunafish @ Feb 1st 2008 3:50PM]

@JC - Of all the mismanagement of wealth in the US gov, you take issue with something that will boost morale and make thousands of our nation's finest happy? Anyway, it'd be one thing if they were building new infrastructure for it, but the system to run this stuff has been in place for years and they may as well use it for something.

[JuggleNuts @ Feb 1st 2008 4:10PM]

The mental laziness of some of these posts is painful. Quick question - What is the marginal cost of beaming one set of info (superbowl) over a pre-existing infrastructure versus another set of info (mission briefing)? Answer: ZERO ... no taxpayer money spent.

Also, this wasn't Bush's idea - I guarantee it came from PACOM. Bush isn't getting "kicked out" of the White House - his term as president expires, per the constitution. This sort of thing (morale boost via media) is very common - probably didn't even warrant an article, but who cares?

Less emotion, more logic; ignorance is dangerous.

[jtc970 @ Feb 1st 2008 4:14PM]

JC and Chosen1
Are you really saying that the men and women out there should be working and sleeping and nothing else?
They should be mindless robots defending your right to hate the administration and state your opinions?
What does Bush have to do with this anyway?

Men and women, of many countries, have died for you and I to be able to post and say whatever we want, and I am going to take advantage of that by saying
Screw you JC and Chosen1, you are spoiled rotten and ignorant of how Americans and it's allies have fought for your rights to disagree with anything (and my rights to be disgusted by your opinions).

God Bless America and God Bless you people out their risking your lives, I hope you can find the time to enjoy the Superbowl.

[macdoc @ Feb 1st 2008 4:25PM]

JC do you live in Berkeley

[crscheid @ Feb 1st 2008 5:45PM]

@macdoc

Maybe if you took the time to read his posts you'd see that he's Canadian.

[01 @ Feb 1st 2008 6:59PM]

Just what I like to see my tax dollars wasted on...

[Nex @ Feb 1st 2008 7:13PM]

thank you jtc970

I, as a soldier in the U.S. Army have been there. I spent a year in Afghanistan, although I do not fully agree with our current administration, I signed a contract swearing to uphold our constitution, defend my country and lawfully follow the orders of my chain of command, The President, whomever that may be, is the Commander In Chief.. I volunteered.. so did every one else in the Armed services.
Further more JC seriously have you ever had a job that you worked between 12-16 hours a day, every day, with no weekends off? if you have I am sure that the time you did have not working you would want to relax, watch TV, play video games, post lame comments on a web forum. Now how is being a soldier strip those basic rights away from me. just because I am a soldier does that mean that when I have finished my 12 hour shift that I go and sit in a corner Awaiting further orders. Just so you, a hypocritical person who knows nothing of "A day in the life In combat boots" to post stupid comments, so that you may feel more acceptable of the American tax dollar.. To You I say.. Screw off

[Christien @ Feb 1st 2008 8:19PM]

It seems like engadget is a little late on this one....i'm in the navy and was deployed last year during the super bowl and i watched it on my ship the same time it was being broadcasted in the U.S.....i was very happy to see my colts win, especially being the only fan on the entire ship...

[BrokenFERN @ Feb 1st 2008 8:25PM]

Hopefully by this time next year those same soldiers can see the SuperBowl game in the comfort of their own homes.

Support Our Troops… SEND THEM HOME!

[the other steve jobs @ Feb 1st 2008 8:54PM]

This is ancient news - GBS were the first to broadcast the NBA Finals live to ships at sea... in 1996!

And by "we", i mean me and that guys that built the GBS testbed, back in 1996 in the DC area.

It was _very_ cool because and the heart of the system - the part that made it actually go - was the old-skool Sony DirecTV receiver with serial output port. Its so old, i can't even find it after googling for 15 minutes.

The serial port went into a Cisco box and translated the serial stream to one-way IP. The fly-away suite all fit into two 19" roller half-racks. How it worked was cool - if you wanted to watch CNN, you'd choose channel 101, for example and turn on the TV (duh). A prescheduled thing like the NBA Finals would be on 102, and "The IP Channel" was like channel 105. You'd turn on the Sun box, and then the Cisco box, and you'd get UDP IP packets and we'd FTP stuff to you. W00t! It was done so hacker like - it was great.

I'm being obtuse like "cisco box" because i have no desire to give out any specific details and give away something that could compromise the system (even though i'm sure its way past the bubble-gum and duct-tape stage at this point)

The hacker-culture of the project was just so great... i was soooo lucky to get in on it. The worst part was that my two navy ensign co-workers were fscking retards and treated the enlisted like total shit and really had no idea how cool this thing was. Dipshit Navy officers think that they're the greatest thing ever, while the truth is that they're alive mostly because of great enlisted folks. The enlisted guys BEGGED me to be their shift OIC.

Before we went live, we started to call it "The SDP... Sleep Deprivation Program" because we'd wake up in the hotel in Alexandria, drive to work, work until we were still *just* awake enough to drive back to the hotel so as not to be a danger to others, sleep, and when we woke up, we'd go back to work. And i mean, if you started to get droopy around 8am, it was because you'd been there since noon the previous day. Coming in to work at 9 PM was as common as 6am. The guy i worked for pulled a program-record 35 hour day.... i think it was the 20-oz big-round coffee cup that he drank at all hours of the day and night.

Guys there were so willing to show me how satcom modems worked, multiplexers, routers, spec ans, and the machine that goes "PING!"... it was a tremendous learning experience and i've never quite gotten to that level of nerds+unlimited funds+mission accomplishment at all costs program ever since...

The best times were working late into the morning, and going up on the roof to smoke pipes and drink coffee so we could just clear our heads and we'd just be amazed at how much we'd done in so short of a time.

Suffice to say, its been a loooong time, and i don't recall _all_ of the details any more other than to say to my coffee-swilling boss "Hey, Rocketman!" Maybe if he reads this, he'll remember me... maybe not. regardless, he's probably a colonel now, if not a general.. so... he's probably not.

[wesg @ Feb 1st 2008 11:37PM]

I think Engadget needs to fix the "reply" comment button.

The comment I had thought of for one particular poster just doesn't make sense after dozens of other ones.

[Joe @ Feb 2nd 2008 1:04AM]

This technology has been in place for a while, but not on every ship. Currently I am in Okinawa, Japan and we have the luxury of watching the super bowl live at 7am on Monday morning our time. The Armed Forces Network does have one drawback versus watching it at home though. There are no funny commercials. Just rousing propaganda that reminds us to change our smoke detectors and keep our stairwells free of clutter. We might occasionally get lucky and find one entertaining such as when a cartoon chicken suggests you can avoid avian flu be simply washing your hands more often.

The plus side to having to watch the Super Bowl on base? We get to watch it with the Denver Bronco's cheerleaders. HD doesn't really matter at that point. It's still fun.

[IndiaTech @ Feb 2nd 2008 4:03AM]

@Nex

I just wanted to say... THANK YOU!

[Seadog @ Feb 2nd 2008 5:04AM]

I remember watching numerous football, baseball and basketball games out at sea. And this is back in 1997 up to 2000. And guess who's the sitting POTUS then? UH OH... It's Bill Clinton!!! WHAT?!? A DEMOCRAT was the sitting POTUS when this morale booster was approved for the military? No kidding. Who would've thought right?

[Alex @ Feb 2nd 2008 10:27AM]

Superbowl? Who cares?

[Nex @ Feb 3rd 2008 11:08PM]

YW