Disappointed by Kickoff webcast quality

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Psychoflood

God is an apple product?

Actually, I think it is the other way around - Apple is a product of the Heavens. And since everyone knows that Bill Gates is Satan, it would make sense...

-dave

[Stuart]

"Actually, I think it is the other way around - Apple is a product of the Heavens. And since everyone knows that Bill Gates is Satan, it would make sense.."

I always thought DNA looked to proprietary to be open source, yet to simple to be Microsoft.

[ADP456]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Actually, I think it is the other way around - Apple is a product of the Heavens. And since everyone knows that Bill Gates is Satan, it would make sense...

-dave

Amen to that brother

If I remember right NASA began webcasting in 1999 with the SV Regional, and has webcast every kickoff and every championship plus several regional events every year. This is before anyone else had even heard of webcasting and most connectivity was over 28kbaud dial ups. NASA provides this service to FIRST at no cost to FIRST - it would be many 100Ks to purchase this service commercially. I know Dave and others have to sweat blood to get these events to work. If It wasn't for the webcasting/broadcasting of the kickoff there is no way FIRST would have grown from 7 to 37 regional and from 300 to 1300 teams in 8 years. I happened to be able to get both the cable and webcast at my home, and other than the 45 second buffering delay, I though the webcast was peachy keen.

So if you were really serious about unsung heros, talk about the NASA Contractors and Civil servants that bust their chops making sure you get media.

[Alekat]

I think most annoying was when the decryption key was displayed for only a few seconds at a time. A flyby of the field was cool, but we just wanted that key!

[dangerousdave]

Originally Posted by KelliV

As for the game decryption code, I do agree that it should have been a centered title instead of a subtitle, or at least left on there long enough to type into your computers.

Originally Posted by Alekat

I think most annoying was when the decryption key was displayed for only a few seconds at a time. A flyby of the field was cool, but we just wanted that key!

I don't know if you watched the NASA TV telecast after the video from Manchester went away. The code was displayed in larger text on a blue background for at least 2 minutes giving anyone plenty of time to write it down. Perhaps you were speaking about the webcast which I did not watch.

The NASA telecast had some problems but I was glad to be able to view it.

Thanks to dlavery for his description about how the broadcast problems will not reoccur next year.

Dave

[KelliV]

Originally Posted by dangerousdave

The code was displayed in larger text on a blue background for at least 2 minutes giving anyone plenty of time to write it down.

I saw the two minute one which was good, but was talking about the first time it came on and was only a subtitle under Dave. Sorry for the confusion.

[Team_2220]

yeah at the University of Minnesota it was blacking out every now and then right when they pulled the curtin and befor and after it was hard to stay along with what the were saying

[3DWolf]

I concur. The quality could have been better. With that rather larg skip right as they were opening the curtain, the ENTIRE room I was in either gasped or screamed "NO!"

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Dr.Bot

So if you were really serious about unsung heros, talk about the NASA Contractors and Civil servants that bust their chops making sure you get media.

I think the original poster in this thread was referring to issues caused by the production of the show rather than the webcast itself. For example, as mentioned previously, having that moving, cloud background with the FIRST logo behind it caused the webcast encoder to have to waste a lot of bits encoding this movement. A static image would have allowed more of the bandwidth to be dedicated to encoding the faces and movement of the speakers rather than the background. The other problem was that all of the overlay text (which showed people's names and, more importantly, provided the password for the manual) was way too small and unreadable after it was encoded.

These issues are no one's fault, however in the future it would improve the webcast greatly if the production of the kickoff event took the webcast into account for things like this.

[Tetraman]

The kickoff at RIT in the room I was in was rather fun to enjoy the small problems. It was also raining and stuff at Rochester, but what happened in the room was great.

Before Dean got to his speach, the volume somehow went down. So a mentor from a team tried to up the volume, but it didn't work. So we got the RIT FIRST guys and they were working with the remote, and the video turned off.

Finally they got it back on, and it worked well. The skips at the curtian reveal was kinda funny to get through too. kudos to the RIT FIRST members for getting it all straightend out.

[KelliV]

I personally enjoyed the kickoff I liked the placement of the screens and actually liked the moving clouds and FIRST logo.
Yes, I understand that many were watching via the webcast, but the kickoff was shown on National TV. The original format was for Television, and if you had the chance to view it that way you would be able to see why they used the backgrounds that they did. Webcasts are great, but as you know they have less quality than TV. To prevent possible problems prior to the iGod percipitation response, next year find someone with NASA TV and watch it with them.

As for the game decryption code, I do agree that it should have been a centered title instead of a subtitle, or at least left on there long enough to type into your computers.