FRC Blog - 2014 Championship Pros & Cons

[blockhead]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

I'm not criticising your app at all, but the fact that it's not controlled by FIRST means you're at their mercy if they change any of the sources you're scraping from.

Also, you're not personally going out and making sure every event has high quality video all the time.

The solve this problem 100%, it really has to come from FIRST.

I know your not criticizing...

Yes at the mercy of FIRST however even at CMP they had issues that were out of my control! Frank was just on game sense and basically said they are making strides towards providing an API tool (or equivalent) for these third party applications. Which seems to me that they won't be stepping up to the plate with applications like ATC, FRCmega, TBA etc. And to be totally honest and I think those who develop these sites can agree, we put many manhours (unpaid remember) into building and promoting our apps that if FIRST came out and basically said hey were not going to allow these sites to be around because we are releasing our own, there would be a lot of angry people. I'm also sure they won't because it would cost a lot to hire people to develop these apps that already exist and have an existing user base... Not every thing is going to come out of FIRST.

I agree that I'm not going to be going out to make sure that the video at each event is high quality... FIRST doesn't handle webcasting though its really up to each regional. At the Wisconsin regional they almost didn't have a stream because they lost sponsorships and couldn't pay for two highspeed internet links.