As you may have heard, the Tour de France is happening for the next
three weeks. Lance Armstrong is racing. HQ wrote Tour de France
commentary for FOXsports.com for a few Tours. This summer otherwise
occupied, catching Tour coverage via Versus network online
pay-per-view stream. Technical issues with the coverage abound. My
thoughts below in response to a mass email I received from Versus tech
support unsolicited regarding their tech difficulties.
Read their email below mine. They're having some fuckin issues!
Also, I am a Phil and Paul fan. I appreciate them, but come on.
And what's up with the bubbly candy girls on VeloCenter? If you're
going to throw some leg at your audience, the versions that come with
brains would be preferable for your knowledgeable audience. Dig the
commentary on VeloCenter generally but their Sports Center
presentation is a bit Guy Smiley office bro for me.
**************************************
To review the status of the request and add additional comments,
follow the link below. (REDACTED)
________________________________
Andrewvontz, Jul 05 21:00 (PDT):
Dear Versus:
Your online coverage is an abortion. I should be getting paid to watch
it. No live audio feed from road--Can you at least loop some
background noise or pipe in a radio stream? Maybe grab a backing track
off of an old porn? Something? I feel like I'm watching a silent movie
with the judges from the Muppets commentating. it would be great
coverage if I were 4 years old and deaf. You should refund everyone's
money and offer this atrocity for free. We're already being forced to
sit through a Radio Shack commercial. It would be nice if you told
your viewers Lance is only talking to you and having his publicist
give recorded soundbites to the rest of the press.
You have the world's most intriguing soap opera live in front of your
broadcasters every day and they make it sound like Mister Rogers'
neighborhood. They could look at a Lindsay Lohan upskirt and describe
her as a verbatim facsimile of a Little House on the Prairie character
wearing a burqa.
------Original Message------
From:
support@engagedsports.com
To: (REDACTED)
ReplyTo:
support@engagedsports.com
Subject: Tour Tracker Update
Sent: Jul 5, 2010 5:27 PM
Dear Tour Tracker user,
First of all apologies for the problems over the last few days with
the Tour Tracker service. We know that many of you have experienced
problems and have contacted us through our support email or posted
your feedback online. We've responded to many of you, but while we've
worked on fixing these problems we know many of you have not yet
received a response.
Due to the problems with the Autobahn plugin, after today's stage we
removed the video player and replaced it with one that does not
require Autobahn. Initial reaction is that this has fixed the
streaming problems. This was also why the On Demand video of todays
stage was delayed.
Another issue (particularly for the prologue) has been the start time
of the coverage. We start the coverage when the International TV
broadcast starts, some days this includes the start, some days it does
not - it depends on when the host broadcaster in France decides to
start the broadcast. The feed goes up on the Tracker at the same time
as anyone in the world gets a TV feed.
The daily schedule of broadcast times is now published on the FAQ
page:
http://tracker.versus.com/faq
The other issue that many of you have commented on is the audio feed
and the lack of background noise. We're frustrated with this as well.
We're working hard on a resolution to this with the host broadcaster
in France to correct the problem.
We're cycling fans too and understand that the problems over the past
few days have been extremely frustrating, we appreciate your
understanding and hope you will enjoy the rest of the tour without any
further streaming problems with the service.
Regards,
The Tour Tracker Team.
Typed by thumb, sent via ESP. Follow me at:
www.andrewvontz.com,
www.drillit.tv, @vontz
@vscycling @hornerakg
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