FanVision puts NFL action in your hands

When National Football League announcers say, "There's a break in the action," they really mean it.

The first quarter of Sunday's game between the Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys featured the kind of stretch that can suck the ardor out of any stadium: Cowboys touchdown, followed by a lengthy officials discussion, extra point, TV timeout, kickoff that went out of bounds and another TV timeout. It was nearly 10 minutes without anyone running, throwing or catching the ball.

Savvy fans use this time for a trek to the bathroom or concession stand. But I stayed put -- and enjoyed every second of it, watching replays from the Vikings game, checking out statistics for other NFL contests and looking in on the telecasts of two other matchups.

A new handheld device called FanVision provides all this for fans in NFL stadiums. Given that the average NFL game lasts three to four hours and includes 11 to 15 minutes of actual action, a "toy" such as FanVision was inevitable.

And it's not exactly shocking that its creator was someone who has sat through a lot of these lulls: Miami Dolphins owner Stephen M. Ross.

"I knew that we needed to push the envelope on creating a better in-stadium experience," Ross said.

FanVision generally accomplishes that. The device -- about the size of a brick but considerably lighter -- is not cheap at $199. But for a fan attending every home game (exhibition and regular season) for two years, that amounts to $10 a game, not much more than the price of a beer.

The machines are nifty but not perfect. It takes a steady hand to maintain the correct angle to have the gamecasts approach high-def caliber, and the picture quality on the NFL "RedZone" telecast was spotty. And I couldn't figure out how to input a fantasy-team roster on that page.

But FanVision is one easy-to-use device, with some seriously cool features:

• You can follow the game at hand from any of several cameras. My favorite, by a long shot: the SkyCam, above and close to the action.

• You also can get replays from multiple angles, including the network feed (which also allows you to listen to the radio broadcast on earphones).

• Tracking Sunday's back-and-forth Packers and Bears games at the same time was a blast.

• There's also a bigger-picture "live analysis" feature displaying pass locations, run locations and a breakdown of the current drive.

• Fantasy football buffs can follow who's doing especially well -- or not -- around the league, and even set up fantasy alerts.

It's basically like having a radio, laptop, binoculars and even a printed program at the game. The hardest part can be remembering to watch the actual plays.