Bryson City –
Greetings Maroon Devil Fans. We here at the Maroon Devils Network strive to provide you with the absolute best quality broadcast possible, but sometimes the technology lets us down. There are several major factors that directly affect the quality of your viewing experience. The largest is the speed and bandwidth of our connection. While we are home at Swain Memorial Stadium, we have enough speed and bandwidth to comfortably broadcast in High Definition without interruption but when we travel to away stadiums, the internet connections available to us are spotty at best. With a slow or narrow connection, you the viewer may experience a dropped signal or the picture freezing on your screen. If this happens, try to pause the playback and then click “play” a few seconds later. If that fails to return the live video playback, try to refresh the page. This will establish a new connection with the server and should resume your playback. Usually when our stream drops on our end due to a poor connection, it is only for a few seconds but your device may not automatically resume playback when the signal returns. Refreshing your page or pausing and restarting playback may get it back sooner.
Another factor may be the speed and bandwidth of your internet connection. You can test your speed by going to http://www.speedtest.net/ and running the speed test. You will want a minimum download speed of 3M for a standard definition broadcast and 6M for a high definition broadcast. Speeds can also fluctuate. You may have a nice 6M connection and suddenly drop to less than 3M which will greatly effect your viewing experience if you are watching in HD. Try changing your viewer to a lower resolution such as 480 or 320 to see if playback smooths out. I recommend testing your speed several times if you are experiencing inconsistent playback.
A modern computer with up to date software and operating system will also improve your viewing experience. Be sure you do not have any spyware or other malicious programs running in the background using up precious RAM that is needed for smooth video playback. If you experience sluggish computer performance when doing other tasks on your device, there is a good chance you have one or more of these programs running in the background.
Try to limit the number of users on your network while watching a streaming broadcast. Having multiple users downloading data rich content such as YouTube videos, Netflix programs or online gaming will put a drag on your data flow and cause unsatisfactory playback.
I hope these suggestions will help you enjoy our broadcasts a little more and perhaps alleviate some of the frustration associated with using this new technology.
Another important factor is that we are totally at the discretion of the home team when we travel. There are schools who will not allow us to broadcast live, which of course is their privilege. We must respect their wishes, and are subject to their rules and regulations, as well as whatever they want to charge us to broadcast.
When the playoffs begin for any and all sports the NCHSAA controls ALL of the venues, including ours, and as such we are not allowed to broadcast live events without paying a hefty fee, which in most cases we simply cannot afford.
We will compile a DVD (actually it’s a Blue Ray) season collection, which we will sell at the end of the season.
Please know that your patronage and financial support goes directly to our athletic program and/or making our broadcasts better. We greatly appreciate and count on your continued support.
Feel free to contact us with any comments at [email protected]