I was supposed to go to the Penn vs. Princeton basketball game last night. I had the time off from work to make the trip. My dad dropped off the ticket to get in this weekend. But I was way too sick to attend. Apparenlty I had caught the bug that is going around my office and I was out of commission for about 5 days (as were most of my coworkers).

But all is not lost! CN8 in Philadelphia broadcasts the game and they have a streaming feed! So Margaret and I sat down in front of the laptop and watched the game. How exciting! (nothing like seeing the good guys come back from a 18 point deficit to win in overtime). But it was difficult to watch. And not because the computer couldn’t decode the video fast enough (it was a 3Ghz P4 that had CPU cycles to spare). And not because the screen was small (17″ LCD). And not because I couldn’t get enough bandwidth to stream the video to me (at least 3Mbps on Comcast Cable). But because CN8 streams their broadcast at such a small size and bitrate. Sigh.

It’s hard to be a fan of a small market college team like any of the Ivy League teams. It is hard to get a mention on SportsCenter, much less a full televised game. I really wish Comcast would make CN8 content available out of market, even for a fee! I would pay extra to get weekly coverage of Penn sporting events. I would even pay for a better streaming service where I would actually be able to figure out who on the court has the ball without having to guess. But so far, there isn’t much of a market in it.

Penn used to offer all the streaming content on-line for a fee, but they stopped that last year. They weren’t making any money off it, so they stopped charging for it. I’ll admit that I never tried it when they were charging for it. But if it was only as good as what I saw last night, then I am glad I saved my money