Oliver Haslam·

ESPN Updates Its Apple TV App With Support For Watching Up To Four Multiple, Simultaneous Live Streams

ESPN has released an updated version of its Apple TV app that will allow users to watch up to four multiple streams simultaneously, with the new MultiCast feature coming to the Apple TV for the first time.

This will allow users to watch multiple games at a time, reducing the need for the constant switching and flipping between games that big sports fans are all too familiar with.

Once updated to support MultiCast, the ESPN Apple TV app will have five viewing modes: 2-Up for side-by-side viewing, PIP for picture-in-picture, 3-Up for one large and two small screens, 4-Up for one large and three smaller screens, and Grid for four equal-sized screens. According to a report by Variety, ESPN is also likely to offer content other than video via MultiCast, allowing stats and the like to be available at a glance and at all times.

Down the road, too, ESPN is thinking of using the other tiles in the MultiCast for content aside from video. For example, those could be playing in-game highlights, fantasy sports updates, alerts, scoreboards or social-media posts.

With a rumored Apple TV update set to bring support for 4K viewing, ESPN will be very well placed once MultiCast is out, something that may lend more credence to the suggestion a new Apple TV is indeed on the way.

While MultiCast immediately sounds like a great way to watch sport, some may wonder just how useful it will be in the long run. As the folks at Recode point out though, you need look no further than College Football to find the answer to that.

First question: Other than demoing it to reporters or your friends, why would you want to watch four screens of ESPN simultaneously?

Answer: During Saturdays in the fall, when ESPN has paid a ton of money to show you college football and when it will air up to 55 games in a day, says Ryan Spoon, who runs digital for ESPN.

The updated ESPN app with MutliCast can be downloaded from the App Store now.

(Via: Variety, Recode)

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