Would you buy a recording of a FIRST competition?
 

As a follow-up to my question on the "SOAP Videos of UTC.... ", I'd like to make a formal poll ;)

How many of you would be willing to buy a recording of one of the competitions - either for yourself or for one of your teammates, and why or why not?

I have two main reasons why I'd like to see recordings of the events on sale:

First, it would be pretty cool to see how your robot did. Much like football coaches are stereotyped to spend any time not with their players reviewing tapes of their games, I'd like a recording of the matches that we participated in to see how we performed, where we could have improved, etc. Sure, we can do this on the webcasts, but those are low resolution, usually hard to see, pause/rewind not really efficient, etc. Having the actual file (or cassette) would make this much easier.

Second, and most important, suppose your team did some kind of community promotional event - carwash, display, sale, etc. It's one thing to say how the game is played, show a few diagrams, all that. It's a completely other ballpark to actually SHOW non-FIRST poeple how the game is played, how OTHER schools solve the engineering problems, how the competitions are run, all that fun stuff.

How do you guys feel about this?

You should change the poll a bit. I would like to get both CD and DVD formats. CD so that in school or on my own PC I can view different matches, DVD so i can display the footage at a promotional event (and it looks nicer than CD). I'm not sure if i would pay much for it (seeing as florida robbed me of all my money) but i'd probably pay a little. It's definitly a good idea though.

Question to think about:
What DO they do with what they record, from what i've seen they have 3-6 tape decks recording

- Who do they give it to?
- How would you get one?
- If they don't give them out (or sell them) why record?

there must be some way :confused:

I know at some events, you can bring your own VCR and hook it up to the video feed. That's probably what all those VCRs you saw were.

Sure, you can bring your own vcr to record, but thats a lot of work for some teams. Some teams might have trouble bringing a VCR (i.e. if they're traveling a long way, would feel uncomfortable bringing a VCR, don't have enough people to constantly moniter it and see when you need a new tape, etc). For some teams thats just too much hassle, and unfortionatly, would prefer to go the American way and spend $20 or so to buy a recording. Now that I know about these VCR's, I'm going to try and bring one to nationals, but again, I might not be able to get a VCR with me to take down to Florida, so it would be pretty cool if we could buy recordings of the whole event.

Quality is another concern. Lets face it - VHS doesn't offer a lot of it. Personally, if I could get the equipment to get a video stream digitalized without going through VHS, I'd do it. Problem is, that probably costs a bit more and requires a bit more space than the average laptop has. However, if FIRST could spend a few hundred bucks getting such a piece of equipment that they could use several times a year, year after year, and selling the profits, I'd think they could make some money in the long run. I mean, look at the results so far. Out of 20 votes, not one has said they don't want a recording of the competitons.

uh dan, coudl that be because that's not an option on the poll? :p

Ian, what are you talking about? Has the bio book gotten to you again? Four options - 3 yes where you specify the media, and 1 no. And what did you mean before when you said, "You should change the poll a bit. I would like to get both CD and DVD formats"? You CAN vote for more than one option - I voted for both CD and DVD.

I know where those are, but at the booth with the edit board the guy is taping the event with his stuff, where do these tapes go?

Oh, i thought by webcast you meant that you'd be happy with recording that or something. And how do you vote for two things? After I voted once, it just displays the results, and there's no check boxes for me to vote again.

You can't :( , I guess it keeps people from voting for one thing over and over again.

wait
 

what's wrong with the live video feed on the NASA channel?(nationals), and simply use a video capture board to burn them to a DVD?

AND why would you want the whole competition, if someone were to just record the ceremonies and the matches themselves it would eliminate the need for 7 VHS tapes!(regionals)

Re: wait
 

No good, the nats feed is split into 1/4 on the screen with each field shown and no sound either.

besides, how many people have nasa? exactly. anyways, i'd want video of my robot doing things so i could show that to people. having another awesome robot doesn't help sell your team as much as having your robot on tv.

YEA and selling our team is a hard job!
seeing that, like most FIRST teams, we are worth a pretty pennie!:D