Detroit News Labs

Live Webcams: We're working to get it right

I wanted to take a minute to thank those of you who tried our online video webcast of the Steve Yzerman/Ken Holland event on Tuesday. I’m very sorry that many of you had trouble viewing our stream.

Live online video webcasts can be a tricky thing, especially for a newspaper. We’re not equipped with the microwave relays or satellite trucks employed by our media cousins in television. They have the ability to instantly zap full, high-def pictures back to their studios where they can encode them for the web and make them available via wired broadband connections.

We’re still experimenting with the media – and without such facilities. At present, we’re limited to attempting to live-stream over Verizon’s wireless broadband network. Sometimes, as with the Tigers opening day webcast, it works almost flawlessly. On that day, we were on an open rooftop where our Verizon signal was a full four bars. On Tuesday, we were tucked in the back of the Hockeytown Café with barely two bars. I’m sure you know what that can be like with a voice call. It can be far more disruptive to a data stream.

We’ve chosen to continue to attempt to do these streams because we think they are of value to our readers. And each time we try, we seem to learn something new – or at least discover something to do better or different. Sometimes it will work. Sometimes it might not.

We have another live stream set for noon on Thursday from Joe Louis Arena. It’s to be a 1-hour playoff preview roundtable with a few of our Detroit News sports columnists, including Bob Wojnowski, John Niyo and Ted Kulfan, and maybe a guest or two from the Wings. We hope to be attempt some different technical tricks to get it right. We hope you might tune in again to give us another chance, or at least give us you feedback – something that’s always welcome, whether positive or negative.

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