Leatherneck Nation

The school has announced that they will be switching to sidearm sports for their new website. This will debut on July 1st and they have made a note to make sure everyone cancels their old rocky vision as it will no long apply at the new site. See article below.

http://www.goleathernecks.com/ViewArtic ... M_ID=12000

I gotta say, I'm pretty happy about this. The old site was pretty outdated (and overrun with ads). If you take a look around at their current clients it looks like, for the most part, the sites are much cleaner, easier to navigate around, less "obnoxious" looking, etc.

I'll probably have to redo some of my info on the front page (since a lot of it is being pulled from the goleathernecks.com rss feeds and stuff), but I'm ok with that.

For other sites that they've worked on in our region/conference/sphere of influence:
Eastern Illinois - coming soon
Illinois State - coming soon
IPFW
IUPUI
NDSU

There's also quite a few smaller schools in our area that use this company: U of I Springfield, Lewis University (Romeoville), McKendree University, Quincy University, Augustana College (in Rock Island...coming soon), Aurora University, Benedictine University (Lisle), Eureka College, Illinois College, Illinois Wesleyan, Knox College, Millikin University, Monmouth College, North Central College (Naperville), etc.

So it seems to be a pretty popular choice. After looking at some of the sites, I can see why.

It is a step up. For us out-of-towners who rely on video streaming access, is this going to mean a "higher def" than what we got with Rocky Vision or is that dependent on our own broadcast equipment?

Monmouth College uses "Game Central by Stretch Internet" for its video feeds. Is that the same service provider as Sidearm Sports ???

Monmouth College has live webcasts of all conference games (Home and Away) for football, volleyball, and basketball. Other selected contests and events may also be webcast. These webcasts are FREE.

sealhall74 wrote:It is a step up. For us out-of-towners who rely on video streaming access, is this going to mean a "higher def" than what we got with Rocky Vision or is that dependent on our own broadcast equipment?

That's hard to say at this point. I would guess that (provided we have the available upstream bandwidth) it was probably limited by the technology of the old web company. I think that the broadcasting department has all HD equipment now, so it's HD at that point. The video then has to be sent out from the control room (van) in HD, streamed to the web in HD (could be an issue with the university's bandwidth), the hosted and streamed out to the users in HD (could be limited by the bandwidth of the web hosting company).

Although, if you look at NDSU's page, the videos that they have available (the ones that I took a look at, at least) appear to be pretty good quality and fairly large. Not full 1080, but maybe 720, and definitely much better than what we had on Rocky Vision. So it looks like they're ready for HD video on that side of things if we can support sending HD video to them.

wiu712 wrote:Monmouth College uses "Game Central by Stretch Internet" for its video feeds. Is that the same service provider as Sidearm Sports ???

Monmouth College has live webcasts of all conference games (Home and Away) for football, volleyball, and basketball. Other selected contests and events may also be webcast. These webcasts are FREE.

It looks like Sidearm has their own streaming service, however, as evidenced by Monmouth College, it doesn't look like we have to sign up for it...it's probably an add-on that can be purchased. That's why you have to click through to what appears to be another site to get to their video streaming section. Just glancing at the technology they support for video streaming, it appears that Sidearm is probably well-equipped to handle HD video and newer streaming technologies.

I did note, however, that with the new system, there will be no monthly or yearly subscriptions, but rather only pay-per-view. I'm guessing that could get pretty pricey.

Tere North wrote:I did note, however, that with the new system, there will be no monthly or yearly subscriptions, but rather only pay-per-view. I'm guessing that could get pretty pricey.

My take on that article is that there will be no more freebies for us but they will be offering monthly and yearly subscription plans. If not, someone will be getting a letter from me. I watched the Summit softball tournament on a Bison Sidearm monthly subscription which was pretty reasonable. They also offered (or did offer) a yearly plan.

Tere North wrote:I did note, however, that with the new system, there will be no monthly or yearly subscriptions, but rather only pay-per-view.

I looked at the North Dakota State "All Access" powered by Sidearm Sports. They do offer both monthly and annual subscriptions as well as buying an individual event:

Single-Game Pass - $6.95

Monthly Recurring Subscription - $10.95

Annual Recurring Subscription - $89.95

That is great news. I had interpreted "all future live video events will be shown as a pay-per-view event" meaning one by one. But now that I look at it again, it says "subscriber packages will be announced."