| |
BGonline.org Forums
Some questions & comments re: USBGF MC t'cast
Posted By: Chuck Bower
Date: Friday, 22 July 2011, at 5:06 p.m.
I enjoyed watching parts of a few matches. Unfortunately for those of us in the Americas (specifically, those with jobs...) the time difference and fact that late rounds were during the week limited the viewing of many. What I did see was exciting and I'm sure things will only get (much) better in the future, with this experience under the belts. But here are some questions (directed at the bgonline community in general):
1) I believe there were actually three channels (virtual/real) -- audio, video, and texting. Either that or MCG is clairvoyant. (If the latter is the case, why doesn't he win every match?) Sometimes the video was frozen but I could hear dice shaking and rolling. I was wondering if the lag could have been at my end. I have the bottom end UVerse contract, but it's still advertised as 1 Mb/s download (of course those are usually MAX specs). Did those with faster connections have lag problems?
2) I could discern two resolution transmissions at different times, and there was a huge difference between the two for reading the dice (as in easy vs. sometimes impossible). I also noticed that when the hi-res vidio was transmitting that the audio was off. (Again, I didn't watch a huge amount so maybe this wasn't always the case.) Does turning off the audio telecast allow more efficient video transm?
3) I know that the tournament provides all boards and dicecups. I guess they want to err on the side of uniformity, but how bad would it be to use better quality equipment for the big late round matches? As far as viewability goes, it was not unusual to 'lose' a black checker on a black point (at least when low-res was transmitting). It's bad enough when you can't see the dice but nearly impossible (for me, anyway) to figure out what's going on when I can't find a checker. It's also true that the stacking checkers also hid them, but I know on several occasions that a single checker was on a point (at the base of the triangle) and practically invisible. In the future I hope it will be possible to transmit from boards which have better contrast between the point colors and the checker colors.
Finally, not USBGF's issue, but I'm always surprised when VERY IMPORTANT matches are conducted with less-than-proper dice rolling and checker handling technique. One thing the audio did reveal is that sometimes a player would shake his cup only two times. COME ON!! Shake the g-d dice! It's particularly bad practice with those lame, small racetrack cross section cups used at the MCWC. I guess it is the opponent's duty to call attention to such poor technique, but for a match of great importance, how out-of-line would it be for an official to intervene?
The other thing I noticed was the (simultaneous!) two handed checker moving of one of the players. Is this OK in Europe?
Thanks to Matt and Perry and all those who had a part in the set up and transmission. I'm sure most if not all of the problems were completely out of your hands. It's way better to have some erratic, low res images to view live than having to wait for after-the-fact reports. I'm sure you already have plans for improvements in the future.
| |
BGonline.org Forums is maintained by Stick with WebBBS 5.12.