Goodbye i2sports; hello XMIevents

Looks like Cornell hockey webcasts have been moved from i2sports to XMIevents. Subscriptions are carried over.

[www.xmievents.com]

I especially like the website that's just a giant gif.
Isn't there anyone competent out there doing this stuff? Oh wait...

[Q]CowbellGuy Wrote:

I especially like the website that's just a giant gif.
Isn't there anyone competent out there doing this stuff? Oh wait...[/q]

Slightly more useful link:

[www.xmievents.com]

Where would one find competent programmers in upstate New York who know sports, thrive under deadline pressure, and handle bug fixes within an hour or two? Oh, wait.

Why don't you just do the Webcam thing yourself for Cornell? How hard could it be? How hard could Cornell be to work with? Oh, wait, don't answer that.

Requires 64MB RAM and really wants Windows Media Player 10. talk about setting the bar too low and a bit high.

Might some technically-competent person give me some advice how to hook up my laptop to a TV, so we can watch the game on the bigger screen and with the better resolution that folks have talked about? What sorts of plug or device would I need to send the signal out of the laptop and into the TV? The laptop's about 3 years old, and the TV about 13 (though it was top-notch in its day), so I"m not sure they'd be up to this.

Many thanks.

I paid my money and tried to log on, but the picture is blank. There's no rink, no Web feed, nothing, no Cornell - Yale pre-game show.

Oh, wait, it's an hour and a half before the game. I wonder if that's it.

Even a technical incompetent can help you.

Your laptop needs and probably has a video out connector. If not, you're hosed (unless you run to CompUSA and buy a VGA to TV adapter box for $75). It will be round and yellow and that's an RCA (NTSC) connector - the linga franca, base level common standard for TV video connections. All you need is a cable from your laptop to your TV set. (If you have one that has red or white connectors, that's going to work too.) Plug it in to the yellow jack (round circle) on the front of your TV or if ncessary the back. Press the TV/Video button until it gets to Video 2. (Usually the back is video 1, the front is video 2, and sometimes a second rear jack is video 3.) Radio Shack has these cables and if not, stop by my house. I must have a hundred of them.

Your laptop may have an SVideo out connector. That's round with a half-dozen pin-connectors. If your laptop has Svideo out, your TV if it's recent probably has SVideo in. And if not, your laptop probably came with an SVideo to RCA adapter cable. Which you probably can't find. Run an Svideo cable from laptop to TV. It's hard to make the pins orient correctly so be careful turning/twisting to make it fit. Odds are you'll bend a pin and then you're hosed again.

There's a key combination on your laptop to switch from internal to external video. Usually it's the Fn key and F5 or F7. Look for the function key that has a little monitor icon on it and press it a couple times.

If that doesn't work, reboot (restart) your laptop. Some come back to life and recognize the TV output is connected and make things happen automagically.

If that doesnt work, go the the Start button in the lower left corner, click that, click control panel, click Display or Monitor, and click around in there until you find Display Properties and the choice to output (send) to TV not the laptop display. You may need to right not left click. But first try the reboot scenario.

By the way most laptops let you output simultaneously to the laptop display and the TV set. Or you can have the TV video on the TV and if you have a broadband connection (I guess you do or you would not be able to watch Webcast) you can follow along in the Gametracker or follow the elynah chat. (Um, this assumes you have Windows. In most everything, the Mac is easier to use, but most of the world has chosen the PC, which is good, because I make my living explaining how bleeping PCs work, and if the world chose Mac, I would be on the bread line now.)

That's video. As for audio:

a) You can use the tinny PC speakers. b) You can connect a pair of multimedia speakers to the headphone jack on your laptop. It's the one that's green not pink (pink is the mike - did you want to do Karoake?). c) If you're smart and lucky, you've bought a cable that has a 1/8" headphone at one end (connects to your laptop) and two RCA audio jacks (white and red) at the other. Connect those to the Video 2, Video 1, or Video 3 column of connectors where you connected the video cable.

It's only an hour before gametime. I would strongly recommend sitting down now to make this work. It can be time consuming and frustrating.

If and when the game comes up, the picture quality is going to be okay. It is the proverbial dancing bear (not Big Red bear): You're so excited the bear can dance, you stop thinking about how poorly it dances. You can tell Cornell from Yale or Princeton and read each jersey number. You may or may not see the puck. There is no replay so don't doze off. You'll know a goal is scored because a red light comes on and five sticks go up in the air and two or three others are slammed on the ice in disgust. If it looks as if camera two is being shot through gauze netting or something, it is.

Good luck. If this doesn't work, send me private email and your phone #. - Good luck, Bill

Oh, one more thing: The SVideo connector looks a lot like the PS2 round keyboard jack but it isn't. Usually SVideo out is a box with the letter S inside it and an arrow pointing out, meaning video going out of not back into the laptop. Be really careful putting the plug in.

Other than someone thinking this is a Colgate-Yale game, it's up and running fine at 6:10.

Mine is constantly buffering

[Q]Mike Hedrick 01 Wrote:

Mine is constantly buffering[/q]

Same here. Their egress bandwidth probably sucks.

Kyle

Thanks, Bill. I found the Svideo connectors on the laptop and TV, but no cable. Also found instructions on my laptop for dealing with settings. Since the video's doing all that buffering, though, I'm not going to go nutty tonight running out to Radio Shack for the cable between periods. (By the way, they say it'll be $15 for a basic one or $25 for a fancy one -- does that sound right? Not sure if it's worth it.)

Many thanks. If I end up getting the cable, I'll be careful with aligning those pins.

Louise

Detzer, Detweilver. Sorry, Sue. I've been living on half nights of sleep.

Re IBM selling the computer business (allegedly). IBM made rock solid desktops that performed no faster or slower than anyone else's. Oh, well. But notebooks.

IBM made the only business laptops worth owning. Go to an airport club and there are three kinds of laptops: Everybody else; Apple portables for creative people and Hollywood; and ThinkPad. IBM was ahead of everyone else in the notebook business and it was IBM and Apple who were doing the lion's share of innovation. OK, HP came out with dual headphone jacks so both kids could watch a DVD at the same time and Dell sells at great prices at least for the initial bid. The fear of many users is that without IBM Corp.'s support of what is now the IBM notebooks group, in a year or three years, ThinkPad will be just another brand. In notebooks, IBM could make make a difference well into the future using the smart marketing guys in Raleigh and the smart researchers in RTP and Yamato, Japan. Amazing for a company that was the laughingstock of the industry in 1991 and almost packed it in.

That said, it's possible that in 5 years there'll be not enough differentiation for even IBM to make a difference and, if so, IBM was smart to get out now while its ThinkPad stock was riding high. From IBM's point of view,it doesn't need to sell laptops to be successful.

Delll can pick up some of the slack. HP is getting way better. Fujitsu builds rock solid notebooks but doesn't have much market share. Toshiba is a company in transitition. Gateway and Micron have varying issues. But it's not a guaranteed better world without IBM-controlled ThinkPads.

Bill, I am very disappointed that IBM is considering selling its PC arm for the very reason you describe.

I am now on my second Thinkpad (a 240, now a T40) and both of them have been rock-solid. I have used laptops from many vendors, and IBM's are the best built laptops I've ever encountered. I know friends with Apples whose displays have given them problems (e.g., non-uniform backlighting); and I personally consider Dell laptops to be utter shyte from the experiences I've had with two of them.

The Thinkpads have given me no problems at all. My only complaint about the T40 is the slow video chipset in it (a Radeon 7500) that doesn't allow me to play any modern 3D games; but since I bought the thing primarily to play DVD's on the airplane, that is a non-issue. Furthermore, most of the new ones are shipping with Radeon 9x00's, which are more than fast enough to play anything short of Doom 3.

This is the source of my discontent. IBM, say it ain't so: I don't want to have to find another vendor the next time I go to upgrade my laptop.

Kyle

Thinkpads also have three-button mice; nice for us GNU/Linux folks.

Yes, predictable, but I need to come to the defense of Apple. I had a Titanium PowerBook that had a flickering screen issue. Sent it in to apple (they send you a box to overnight to them, then usually turn it around the same day they get it) and got a new screen with no problems. However, the TiBooks were a bit rickety. My current aluminum PB is built as solidly as any laptop I've seen and I haven't heard of any screen problems. There was a large batch of iBooks that had screen problems and Apple did a recall on all of them. So yes, there were some bad iBooks but Apple took care of it, and there are no more such issues. ThinkPads are very solid, but the current PowerBooks are better IMO.

Apple mobile does have as good or better unit reliability than IBM. Fujitsu is also quite good but with pretty small market share. Dell had a horror show about three years ago when they took their eyes off QC.

Wonder what to make of this? See last paragraph. After tonight's hockey webcast fiasco...

[cornellbigred.collegesports.com]

I was also shocked by IBM's move to sell its PC line. As a lifetime desktop user buying my 1st laptop this summer I spent way too much time doing product research and ended up with a Thinkpad T42. The 1 problem I had was resolved by IBM support in less than 24 hours after spending a total of 3 mins on the phone. I have a friend who had her 5 month old Dell laptop "expire" this week, leaving behind frustration and a 6lb doorstop.

[Q]Al DeFlorio Wrote:

Wonder what to make of this? See last paragraph. After tonight's hockey webcast fiasco...[/q]

"There will be an opportunity for up to 50 viewers at a time to watch the 2 p.m. contest from Newman Arena at no charge."

That may be consistent with tonight's experience.

My iBook is only now having screen problems after three solid years of reliability - but then, I never heard about a recall. Maybe I'll drop it by the SoHo Apple Store this week, and see if they can take care of it quickly enough that it's not disastrous to my final exam preparations.

Beeeej