Wow, I gave you ALL a WARNING this was going to happen but what did you say -
http://tentenths.com/forum/showthread.php?t=124171
I told you ALMS was greasing your booty up for expanded docu-drama format races. No outrage and this is what you get.
ESPN3 is high quality streaming with no lag time and plenty of bandwith, it was proven very reliable during the World Cup. To get the highest quality stream you need something other than the slowest DSL connection.
They should make the docu-dramas available for downloading as well by torrent, Itunes or any of many streaming/downloading legal content sites, even RacefansTV.
Long Beach being in Docu-Drama format makes no sense. Its the shortest race of the year and Versus is already there with a TV compound/trucks, it would cost them nothing extra to do the ALMS race on Saturday after Indy Car qualifying.
However it might be cheaper than to tape-delay it and maybe stream it.
But I thought before that streaming would become a bigger part of getting the races to the fans. As I said before, the ALMS touts its upper-income fan base, unless you could care less about the internet (I highly doubt that if you'e posting here) then you have broadband internet in your home. Are their fringe fans affected by such decisions? Absolutely! But are they the majority of the fan base, no.
I also believe Hindy's eyes were opened by him doing the FIA GT3 races from Zolder and he said as much. As being the voice of the ALMS on-site and on Radio Le Mans. This can be a bare-bones operation, with all the announcing and pit reporting handled by Radio Show Limited (Radio Le Mans) and the streaming handled by onsite infrastructure.
As I have said before, FIA GT1 Championship is not hard to find, but not properly reported to the services that handle programing the electronic guides in your TV system. This means for time-shifting or recording it can't be set by the guide listings, it has to be done manually. But its streamed on Bloomberg.com as well as FIA GT1/GT3 web site.
I also don't mind the move to Versus if they'll coddle it and promote it. I think they will to a nauseating level. They do it with the NFL and NCAA College Football. They also do it with Tour De France and Indy Car as well.
If the rumor is true the races on Versus are -
- Lime Rock
- Mosport
- Mid-Ohio
- Baltimore
The Docu-dramas will be all the longer events 4-12 hours all on ABC, save for Long Beach but as I said that makes little sense unless they are going to tie-it into the build up to Le Mans.
Speaking of Le Mans and I'm surprised nobody else even bought this up, but there's no concern about where Le Mans is going to be shown? For Fox (Speed) they did it as affordable as they could with live flag to flag coverage, six hours of it streaming online. Even making the commentators do it from North Carolina and not on-site.
I have a feeling Versus will be handling this with Radio Le Mans doing the audio track side and the ALMS will not hire an additional team to do the races.
Frankly, I can't stand the docu-dramas terrible idea. As long as its streamed flag to flag, I don't care.
For those less tech savvy have basically one of two choices -
Google TV or buying a affordable laptop with HDMI out. Cost for either is about the same ($299) I paid $299 for this HP Laptop I'm typing on last BF (Black Friday 2010) and it has HDMI out and 15.6 16:9 display.
Either way it will put a Browser on your TV, don't knock it, especially Google TV.