Watching the action on USOpen.com
Cory Bergman June 14th, 2007
Those of us on the West Coast had the first five minutes or so of the 8 a.m. Today Show interrupted with the U.S. Open. (On the East Coast, it interrupted 11 a.m. programming.) Matt Lauer called it “an unprecedented broadcast” to kick off the event, and the announcers plugged USOpen.com to continue to follow the Woods-Ogilvy-Ramsay group live. So I punched up USOpen.com — which loaded slowly at first — and played the live “HD” stream. It started off with four pre-roll ads in a row, but it was worth the wait. The quality is terrific. During TV programming periods, users will also be able to watch a simulcast of the broadcast. Screen grab…
Meanwhile, NBCSports.com will stream live coverage from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. ET today and tomorrow. Also, golf fans will be able to watch live coverage on their cell phones on NBCU’s new sports channel on MobiTV.
Updates Terry in comments below: “Cory: I don’t know whether they read your post or just came to their senses, but there’s only one preroll ad now when you access the HD feed. You’re right - quality is very good, but the loading time (even with a lot of bandwidth) is awfully long.”
5 Comments Add your own
1. Terry | June 14th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Cory: I don;t know whether they read your post or just came to their senses, but there’s only one preroll ad now when you access the HD feed. You’re right - quality is very good, but the loading time (even with a lot of bandwidth) is awfully long.
2. Matt Scherer | June 14th, 2007 at 9:49 am
It’s five minutes later, and the video is still loading on the U.S. Open. Hopefully, the USGA will find a different vendor or more bandwidth for next year.
3. Golf Guy | June 14th, 2007 at 10:17 am
For those who can’t load the USopen site, click my name on this post for a direct link to the Windows Media stream, which is on a different server.
4. Rob | June 14th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Stream is up and running and the HD quality is great. Only one pre-roll that I saw. I did notice the disclaimer about who could watch it online:
Note: These channels will only be viewable in the United States, its territories, military bases and other government installations.
Why would they restrict broadcasting over the web to just the United States and its territories?
5. Paul Kaliciak | June 14th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Rob - because some of us have paid for the rights in other countries (in my case, Canada
We’re showing all the ESPN and NBC coverage on our website at the same time as on-air in HD. (Note we are *not* streaming in any form of HD/wide-screen; we still don’t believe most peoples’ pipes can keep up with a bitrate over 600-700kb/s)
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