Mark Lewin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Also from the ECAC homepage, it looks as if they're going to
>broadcast the ECAC game of the week video over the net. For
>those with access to Roadrunner or a T1 line or faster, check it
>out and let the rest of us 28.8 dial up peasants know if the video
>feed on the net is viewable.
 
I did get a chance to check out part of Friday's Vermont-Yale game.
Since I have a TV tuner card in my PC (and receive Empire on cable),
along with having a RoadRunner (cable modem) connection, I have
an "ideal" setup for the comparison.
 
The good news is:  bandwidth isn't an issue.  The feed is 20KB/sec
(allocated as 15K for the video stream and 5K for audio).  There
shouldn't be any problem receiving it over a 28.8K (or faster)
modem.
 
That bad news is:  with that low of a bandwidth, the video is
small and "slow scan".  (The resolution is 160x120 pixels, i.e.,
1/4 of VGA resolution, and the frame rate averages about 2 frames
per second.)  It's a slight improvement over just audio, but not
a whole lot.  At that resolution, it's very difficult to even make out
the lettering on the screen when they put the scores up.
 
Also, the Internet feed is on about a 15 second delay.  (I'd
suspect that at least 5 seconds of that is the buffering that the
player does on the local computer to allow for retransmissions
of "missing" data.)
 
It's an interesting experiment, and my hats off to the ECAC,
ESN, and NESN for making it happen.  I would hope that
they could offer a higher-bandwidth option (with better
video) in the future, given that cable modems, ISDN, and
56KB phone modems are becoming more popular.
(For example, a 50KB feed would allow 3 times the frame
rate - 6 frames per second - which would start to approach
something that would be reasonable for being able to
follow a game.)
 
Garrett
 
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