The Have and the Have Not's of Live Internet Broadcasts

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by: catwomanseven
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Word Count: 444
Date: Sun, 2 May 2010 Time: 7:31 PM
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I'll start out this article by saying I'm not proud of what I'm about to admit. This isn't the type of thing that I like putting out there in the open, but it serves a purpose. Ok, here it goes: I spent most of this weekend on my high speed satellite internet connection watching the live podcast of the Coachella Music and Arts Festival. Over fifteen hours online watching a lot of my favorite bands play live music. Ok, after writing it I guess it doesn't sound that bad, but trust me, if you saw me sitting in front the computer all weekend while the world passed buy outside you wouldn't think I was that cool.

I bring this up mostly because it got me to thinking how far we've gone with live broadcasts online. As a fan of internet broadcasts for music and sports, the livecast of the Coachella Festival was the best I've ever seen. It had the clearest video, the quickest load-up time and the least amount of buffering delays I've ever encounter for an online event (even my somewhat spotty internet was held at bay for the festivities). It was sponsored by 5 Gum so you had to go to their Facebook page to get access, but wow, if they need to barrage me with that many ads to make sure the broadcast is buffering free then they can strap me into a chair "Clockwork Orange" style and force feed me their gum as long as I can see the coverage.

But, umm, anyway, this got me thinking about why some live streaming internet events are better than others. Granted, as I brought up before, livecasts are typically much better than they were five years ago, but some still either only work well with the fastest internet speeds or have to refresh every couple of minutes. I recently watched another multi-day concert festival online and ended up giving up after about ten minutes because I couldn't get clear feed. Now, I'm not anywhere near a computer expert. Actually, I'm probably as far away as you could get from being a computer expert. But even I can see that if certain festivals want to put a webcast product out there they might as well put out something good.

Look at what the Canadian Channel CTV did during the Olympics. They had coverage of every single Olympic event available on livecast and from what I hear it was immaculate (it wasn't available in the US). They obviously put some money in as did Coachella. Why can't everyone else?

About the Author

Author Kim Green loves to keep up on the latest technological trends concerning cell phones and high speed satellite internet.