Webcam on for Princeton game?

Folks, I'd appreciate if someone can ping me privately in the event that the webcam is ON tonight. Merci.

Me too.

I could be wrong, but I think the fact that it's a road game severely decreases the odds of there being a Webcam, does it not?

From what I know there is ZERO chance of having web cam this week-end. It was only ever for home games and this one is on the road. Furthermore, Mark Anbinder was responsible for it last week and he has already said that there wasn't going to be any this week.

Right you are. That, and the fact that Mark (who was largely responsible for it running last weekend I would guess) said that there would not be one.

[elf.hockey.cornell.edu]

Melissa, you (barely) beat me to it... I was still typing at the time of your post.

As far as I am concerned, if they can provide a digital audio feed for away games, then they should be able to provide a video feed.

Right, road game...forgot about that.
Still, it would be nice for Athletics to let us have the audio feed...

Uh, not necessarily. It depends on the facilities at each particular arena. Audio already exists due to the usual radio broadcasts, so you can stream that wherever you have a receiver, in theory. Video at Lynah was only possible due an ethernet cable set up ahead of time. The video webcast at Colgate was possible because the campus TV was already broadcasting the game. Since the Princeton game doesn't have a video broadcast, you'd have to somehow get access to a pressbox camera, and get that signal to an external server. Perhaps Age or Mark can do a better job at explaining it. But my point is that I doubt that the Princeton Athletic Dept. is that willing to do any infrastructure work at venerable Hobey Baker Rink or dedicate any servers for this game so a few dozen Cornell fans can see it online. Heck, they don't even provide a free webcast of their audio. Oh wait...

In time, perhaps our model will become more common. But for now, to expect our hosts to be that facilitating to our obsession, especially when there probably isn't a whole lot of clamoring for the same product from their alumni base, is a little demanding.

how 'bout wireless?

I don't claim to know much about how networks and/or wireless technology works...I'm sure others on this board are much more knowlegable than I am. But I would guess wireless would still require a good amount of resources from Princeton. Assuming that they had a wireless network that (1) could handle the bandwidth required for a video feed and (2) extended inside the walls of the rink, you'd still need a server from (or near) Princeton to stream.

I'd be willling to bet that newer arenas have/will have wired press boxes.

The audio feed from the booth is handled with hardware that, I believe, compresses the audio and is still sent over analog phone lines, then decoded on the other end with more hardware. The audio webcast audio source is the radio station. I believe the only rinks with ethernet in the press box are RPI (at least on the catwalk) and Harvard, but Adam would know more.

Yup, the online audio feed is just the radio feed, digitized. The radio feed is coming back to Ithaca by telephone, using Comrex equipment that does a little digital compression so the sound quality can be better than raw phone audio. It's simple, portable gear, and it can be hooked to any ol' phone line, which almost every college sports facility has. (Exceptions include Hoy Field and Niemand-Robison Field at Cornell. )

The radio feed is digitized through a simple telephone coupler at the radio station; RealNetworks calls WHCU and gets the audio over a phone line, which is then digitized and sent out to SportsPass subscribers.

Where the streaming video server is really doesn't matter. The server we used last weekend was not at Lynah. What's needed at the rink would be:

* A video source, such as the team camera
* Someone with a laptop set up to create a video stream
* High speed network connection

The last item is the hardest. Yep, I was pleasantly surprised to find a high speed connection at RPI, and they generously shared it with me. That, Harvard, and now Lynah, may be it. Wireless would work (though it wouldn't be as stable as a wired connection), but it only carries a couple hundred feet, so there'd still need to be a network connection nearby. We started that way in Lynah, with a wireless access point hooked up at Sue Detzer's desk. From that corner of the building, the press box was at the edge of the useful range.

In theory, I could stream the ECAC Game of the Week TV broadcast from home, where I'm watching it on NESN, but no arrangements have been made for a) permission to do that, or b) a streaming server to bounce it off of.