<p>Dad works for the Corps of Engineers. Has one son, Jethro. Dad gets deployed to Iraq. Jethro’s a star football player. Son’s team makes the playoffs as they often do, but this time instead of their usual early exit to the roundball they get on a roll of epic proportions. </p>
<p>In the 5th round they revenge their only loss of the season to a district, cross-town rival. In the 6th round they easily defeat a perennial state power and lo and behold - this Saturday they play for the State Championship for the first time in 29 years. </p>
<p>Dad says he gets every 3rd word of a “KBW internet broadcast”, whatever that is (maybe he left out a letter and that is the station’s call sign) . A radio broadcast, I assume. We have a local station, low power, that carries the games- maybe that’s the broadcast he is “hearing” on the net. </p>
<p>He has access to a computer (as this is in the middle of the night in Iraq). </p>
<p>Any thoughts Oh wizards of the 'net?</p>
<p>This is a good guy, but not a friend of mine. He’s just a dad doing a thankless job in a thankless place. Any communication ideas that could help the guy out , remembering he has little to no access to buy parts or software? Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>I’m afraid I can’t help, but I sure hope someone can. For a less-than-immediate solution, though, maybe somone could audiotape the broadcast and send it to him? Not live, but better than nothing.</p>
<p>Are there any local radio stations that webstream? If so, somebody there knows how to do it, and maybe can set it up for the low-power station.</p>
<p>Or even set up a webcam! Doesn’t every teenager in the world know how to shoot a video and put it on youtube? That could be an approach – do it in 10-minute segments, and he’ll have the game on 10-minute delay.</p>
<p>Would you take a digital recorder, “record” a short-ish snip, hand the media to someone with a laptop, start “filming” again while the laptop uplinked to youtube and keep repeating that process? Would something that simple work? Hey, not simultaneous but ten minute delay for video sounds pretty good. I wonder how good his internet connection is in Iraq? I’ll ask.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what the issue is. If the radio station is streaming their broadcast over the internet but it is being garbled for some reason, I don’t know what the cause might be - unless its a bandwidth issue.</p>
<p>The simplest approach would be to set up a microphone of the texas-side computer next to the radio broadcasting the game. However, there may be a better way (from an audio perspective) if the radio has an audio out capability and the sound card has an audio in jack. I’m not sure about audio levels with this latter approach but it may provide a cleaner signal.</p>
<p>Note, I have never done this nor even used Skype, but it may be worth considering. Of course, if lack of bandwidth is the root cause of the current problem, I would think that Skype would also suffer.</p>
<p>There may be an intentional blockage or restriction. Skype often doesn’t work in that area of the world, either because Skype is specifically blocked, or, there are other types of restrictions in play. But it’s not a predictable situation - sometimes stuff works, sometimes it doesn’t.</p>
<p>If there’s internet connection where the game is; any service such as earthcam, webcam, etc… will allow you to stream a web cam. That’s what they do. It’s done every day and is as simple as logging in and pointing the camera. The ONLY question is the ISP. Whether or not the ISP has a bandwidth limit. But with a laptop and web cam; given an internet connection at the game, it can be up and running in less than 5 minutes. Again, only the ISP is the issue here. The only nearby ISP to the game might be the school’s connection. They obviously aren’t going to allow it. However; a cellular EVDO connection might be available. You might be forced to disconnect and reconnect after each quarter or major time out, so it doesn’t appear to be one continuous stream. But, with it only happening 1 day for a couple of hours, most ISP’s wouldn’t know much about the bandwidth usage until it was all over and not done again anyway. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>You know, you could also try calling the station. If they have an easy way to do this, I bet they’d love to, and would make a bit of a fuss over it during the game. A pretty special way to support the troops.</p>
<p>Curmudge - here in Ala, they ran the champ games on al.com, which is a semi-official state website, supported by the major newspapers and to some extent by the city and state governments. My D “watched” the game on the web while at Dart, although i think it was a play by play with some still pictures, not streaming video. All you needed for that is an Internet connection and a reasonable laptop, don’t know about the time diff to Iraq - could the state of Texas have a similar website that shows the games live??
Is he “on base”? My BIL was deployed out in the boonies in Iraq, but I think he always had Internet at their permanent camp, and was able to watch some of his son’s wrestling matches and graduation.</p>
<p>Oh good luck, is this your D’s old HS? We won state - first state football champ ever! It was an awesome game.</p>
<p>I’m late to the party, cangel. I have next to zero data. The kid is a friend of my D’s. I’ll be checking out what is available for him. Dad is U.S. Army Corps of Engineers . I have no idea what his conditions are. I believe he is someplace where he has to get in line for a “server” and sometimes things are clear, sometimes they are not present at all. I think it may be insurmountable - from this end anyway.</p>
<p>I told his wife there is probably an Iraqi 17 year old that could hook him up to a better internet connection. The problem would be to find him. ;)</p>
<p>I’m sure he already knows tsrnsports.com may be carrying a radio broadcast, but if he has server issues, I don’t know if there is a solution. Have no ideas for live video unfortunately. But, will ask my retired Army fil for ideas when we speak this evening.</p>
<p>Curm,
DS has set up some video feeds for an online newspaper – will ask him when he gets home in about an hour if he any ideas. I think the idea of calling the radio station is great.</p>
<p>Following up on the Skype idea (which is only for “medium geeks” like moi, I think, and may be bested by some of the really super geeky ideas to follow ), I would have him download Skype to his computer right now (the Iraq dad, that is). He can then know in advance whether he “gets it” and how good it is. It’s idiot-proof imho (I did it!), has a “Skype test call” function and then he can call someone/anyone to double check the quality of the connection. If son also downloads Skype, they could do a test run of setting up the laptop next to the given radio station and see how well it comes through.</p>
<p>Because if the cc troops don’t come up with a better workable idea, I think fundingfather’s suggestion could work pretty darn good.</p>
<p>And if the Skype-near-radio doesn’t come through, I don’t see why you, curmudgeon, can’t go to the game with your Skype-y laptop and do the play-by-play yourself. Who better? :D</p>
<p>I know you’re in Texas and so am assuming the guy is from our grand state as well. If you PM me (or post here) which game it is, maybe I can help. Texas Football does some stuff like live blogging --better than nothing. Here’s what they did for last week’s 4A Div. 1 game:</p>
<p>don’t know what game you are talking about, but if it’s 5A or even 4A, be careful about posting here about ways around network TV… (youtube etc) because of network/license stuff. Do it, just don’t tell the world where to also watch.
My vote is to have a kid on Skype online giving delayed play by play after watching each quarter… it would add a good bit of drama as well.
That said, PM me if you know more about his exact infrastructure - I know someone who works on that.</p>
), I would have him download Skype to his computer right now (the Iraq dad, that is). He can then know in advance whether he “gets it” and how good it is. It’s idiot-proof imho (I did it!), has a “Skype test call” function and then he can call someone/anyone to double check the quality of the connection. If son also downloads Skype, they could do a test run of setting up the laptop next to the given radio station and see how well it comes through.</p>