Sane decision: CBS doubles 'March Madness' video bandwidth

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 11 March 2007 13:47

Your IT - Entertainment

Last year’s decision to now broadcast of CBS Sportsline NCAA’s men’s basketball matches free (but with advertising) was so successful they are doubling the video bandwidth – but still can’t guarantee everyone will be able to watch.

The NCAA men’s basketball matches are popular to watch, both on television and live on the Internet through CBS Sportsline’s website. Although they were charging users to watch the matches between 2003 and 2005, last year CBS decided to make advertising revenues pay for the content, allowing web users to watch free of charge in the MMOD or ‘March Madness On Demand’ video player.

This year, to cope with the demand (which in 2006 soared to an astounding 19m streams and 5m visits) and to avoid ‘March Madness’ becoming a metaphor for users being unable to get a video stream, CBS has doubled the bandwidth for video streaming from 80Gbps to 160Gbps, but this is still not expected to be enough to cover what should be an even greater demand this year, with users missing out on a stream taken to a ‘waiting room’ until a stream becomes available.

This is also despite CBS using one of the online ‘content delivery network services’ to balance the load across the country, as the Internet, which was initially designed as a text-only medium, makes the somewhat painful transition to a network that will one day be able to handle billions of high-definition streams on demand to any corner of the globe.

Basketball in enormously popular in the US, with the March Madness games on the event’s peak, during March 15 and 16, expected to see huge numbers trying to watch basketball matches, many likely at work, instead of doing the work they’re supposed to be doing.

To that end, companies who wish to prevent employees from viewing the games during business hours, or to simply safeguard business bandwidth from the enormous drain that video streaming entails are able to visit the CBS Sportsline FAQ, where they can block HTTP traffic to www.ncaasports.com/mmod/player.

Despite this, CBS knows some businesses won’t block the streams, at least until they realize their staff members are not working. So, in a show of solidarity with workers who are able to watch the games, CBS has decided to bring back the “Boss Button”, which in an emergency mutes the sound, and replaces the live video stream with a spreadsheet, making it look like you’re hard at work, when really, you’re not!
 
Pre-registration for MMOD is encouraged NOW, so users who have done so can gain ‘VIP’ status, letting them jump any queues that will inevitably form to watch the matches. Already pre-registration spots are filling up fast, meaning anyone who is truly interested had best get to CBS Sportsline’s website immediately or they may face missing out and having to wait in the ‘virtual waiting rooms’ for a stream to become available.

The MMOD video player has also had an upgrade of its own, with a doubling of the screen size from 320x240 pixels in 2006 to 480 by 360 pixels this year, delivering higher quality video. This fact alone will chew up some of the additional bandwidth, and is part of the reason why a doubling of bandwidth does not equate to a doubling of viewers, as 300,000 viewers are expected to be able to watch simultaneously compared with 175,000 last year.

The MMOD player and selected archived matches and highlights packages will remain available until April 10. The sports site will also make available archived footage of each full game of the first three rounds.

Greg Shaheen, Senior VP for basketball and business strategies at the NCAA said that “March Madness on Demand is one of the most successful initiatives that the NCAA and the CBS Corp. has implemented when you couple evolving technology and the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship. March Madness on Demand allows the NCAA and CBS to deliver the championship to a new technologically-savvy audience that previously may not have had the opportunity to view the championship."