Testing, testing . . .
02/20/08 01:09 PM
By ED BARK
All four of D-FW's major TV news providers touted their live Webcasts of Barack Obama's campaign rally at Reunion Arena Wednesday afternoon.
Only one delivered -- but not without a few problems -- on my still state-of-the-art iMac desk top.
MyFoxdfw.com's live feed kicked in after a minute or so of clicking and tinkering. Its web cam initially had the backs of rally-goers -- and sometimes the backs of their heads, too -- before finally capturing the candidate in closeup at 1:06 p.m. That was my first sighting of him after multiple tries on all four Web sites. But at least it eventually worked on myfoxdfw.
Meanwhile, cbs11tv.com didn't deliver anything, other than "Video Loading." So I finally gave up after several attempts.
NBC5i.com had no video, but did have Obama's audio on what turned out to be a continuous loop. In other words, it wasn't live. But you could keep starting from ground zero if you left the site and came back.
WFAA.com repeatedly was a non-starter, too. Warmup music and the same old video from the rally played on and on, but Obama himself was a no-show during the several minutes I spent waiting for him.
The technology isn't perfect yet, but shouldn't we expect a bit better than this? Are others having similar experiences? Or is it just me?