GOMTV.net Starcraft Tournaments

GOMTV.net: Catch Up With the Latest Starcraft Tournaments

Have you ever wanted to watch competitive gaming matches from Korea streaming live online without paying for premium satellite service with the few channels that air them? Enter GOMTV. GOMTV is operated by GRETECH, the people who created the GOM Player (the media player suggested by Shay).

GOMTV.net is the English version of its Korean counterpart (GOMTV.com), and is one of the many growing Korean YouTube-esque sites on the web to serve Video-on-Demand programs, ala Hulu. GOMTV.net covers gaming tournaments surrounding World of Warcraft, Warcraft III and the game that started the e-Sports phenomenon, Starcraft.

SLayerS_BoxeR from 'The Best of BoxeR'

GOM TV archives the biggest Starcraft tournaments in South Korea, including the very first tournament to be streamed on GOM TV, the Star Invitational sponsored by LG Electronics and Intel (dating back to 2007). The website has every single match (in full) featuring Korea’s best players, from the exclusive interviews of the players, to the final match.

Commentary from the matches are also translated by in English by their respective translator. Currently, they are using actual English speaking commentators for the Averatec-Intel Classic: Season 2, which began on September 18th and will last 18 weeks.

On November 13th (Korean Standard Time), GOMTV.net will stream the IeSF Invitational which will be the first multi-gaming event that represents players from Europe and Asia. But it appears to only cater to Warcraft III and Sudden Attack (a popular FPS game in Korea) gaming. Using the GOM Player, the event can be viewed live as it happens.

The Korean version of GOMTV carries more Starcraft events, such as MSL (StarLeague) games than the English version, and it also carries many promotional K-Pop videos. The only K-Pop related video on the English site is Mnet’s Music Festival 2008 that will be streamed live on November 15 KST. I’m not sure if the Korean website will work for everybody [as I tried viewing the videos using Firefox]. Either way, GOMTV.net is awesome enough as it is. ^_^

Pros:

The availability of Starcraft matches On Demand in English!

Cons:

Not every Starcraft tournaments are on GOMTV.net; GOMTV.com may work for some with some knowledge of the Korean language, and a “mainstream” web browser (i.e.: Internet Explorer).