Troy University Athletics
The Basics of Web Streaming
9/26/2008 5:00:00 AM | General
September 26
I have come to realize that there are more than a few questions about live streaming of events on our web site, TroyTrojans.com, so I thought I would try to answer a few of the primary concerns.
First a foremost, the only events that we here are Troy University have control of in terms of television or web streaming are our home events. So, when our teams play on the road, like the football team at Oklahoma State tomorrow, we are only able to provide a web stream if it is offered by that school.
I know that is not what Troy fans, hungry to watch the Trojans and the Cowboys on the gridiron Saturday night want to hear because, with no television this week, web streaming is the only possible option. Unfortunately, there will also be no web streaming of that game.
That basically means the only way for Troy fans not at the game to keep track of the Trojans this weekend is through Barry McKnight, Jerry Miller and Chris Blackshear on the Troy/ISP Radio Network.
We make every attempt to provide our subscribers with as many live events as possible. Unfortunately, the only events we have control over are our home games. When our teams go on the road, we are totally at the mercy of the host school to provide web streaming.
Often, this is not a problem. Most of our Sun Belt sister schools are members of the JumpTV network and will provide web streams of our games at their schools. The exceptions are Middle Tennessee and Florida Atlantic. MTSU hosts its own site on campus and is a member of the B2 Network for its web streaming. They were supposed to have shared the stream from our football game there in late August, but the stream did not feed as they had indicated.
Florida Atlantic is a member of the CBS College Sports network for its web site, and no sharing is available between our site and theirs.
Despite the fact that both Ohio State and Oklahoma State are members of JumpTV Network, neither web streams their football games because they are prohibited by their conference television contracts. That is obviously completely out of our control.
We did web stream our home game against Alcorn State and will web stream our other four games at Movie Gallery Stadium. We also expect to have our games at North Texas and ULM available. It is unlikely that the game at LSU will be streamed because they will be televising the game as a pay-per-view event.
The great thing about our web streaming efforts is that is makes Troy soccer, volleyball, basketball, baseball and softball games available to fans and parents who would not otherwise get to see them. The same rules, however, apply to those events on the road, in that we are at the mercy of the host schools to provide the web stream.
Live web streaming of events is still a very new technology. We are just in our second year of providing this service and there are sometimes glitches. We rely on students to provide the camera work as well as the announcers for many of the events. While they are not as polished as Barry McKnight, they make every effort to provide information as well as they can.
I am confident that as we continue down the web streaming path, we will continue to learn more about what works and doesn't work, and what technologies we need to make the web streaming better.
I also think that you will see more and more events being streamed in the future giving you, the Troy athletics fans, better access to the teams and players you love to support.
I hope that I have cleared some of the questions about the Troy Game Pass package and our web streaming efforts in general.
If you have any specific questions, please feel free to e-mail me and I'll do my best to answer them.
See you at the game. Go Trojans!
RH
