SoonerSports.com: O-Zone to CSTV???

[ouflak]

Anybody have any details about this change? I will try to call Soonersports.com on Monday. But it would be nice to find out a few details now, most importantly, will I be able to watch the video from previous seasons available on O-Zone? Right now just about any link on the new site that might lead to somewhere informative goes to an Under-Construction-like page. This worries me as it indicates that this move was relatively sudden and unplanned.

I think this could be a positive move though. It might actually mean that finally I can go to (and pay) one site for guaranteed access to streaming video, audio, and updates to all OU sports, instead of paying four or more different sites (Yahoo, Ozone, ESPN, CSTV, NASN) for just the mere hope that one of them will actually have the broadcast available. I sure hope that if this is indeed the case, it includes all post-season stuff as well.

[goingoneight]

Must be tough being in England during the REAL football season, huh? :(

[ouflak]

Must be tough being in England during the REAL football season, huh? :(

Well the real frustration is not being able to see sports from America even though I'm perfectly willing and capable to pay to watch these sports. To say that the technology exists would be a silly understatement. The technology existed ten years ago! Yet I have to just hope that maybe, just maybe, whoever came into Castigilione's office with the largest suitcase full of money was one of the people who I'm signed up with, or someone I can find quickly, so I have a chance to see the broadcast. Otherwise I just miss the event. It's also frustrating, because you would think that of all the places you would be able to go to see OU sports in particular, Soonersports.com would be the place. But they (they being the OU athletic department and highest-bid broadcaster) have legal arrangements in place so that there can only be one live video broadcast of a game, even if the other broadcast is strictly available on a pay-to-view (not pay-per-view, which is often excepted) basis. It's like these corporate executives are scared of the internet or something.

Anyway, last year was much better as I actually got 4 OU games live here on NASN. That's luck, as we have little influence (suggestive emails) on what they show here, and they were going to show the Big XII championship game and the BCS game no matter who was playing. But it made being so far away a lot more bearable.

They have finally got a nice little bit of information on the website to answer several of my basic questions. For one thing, the former OZone accounts roll over into the new CSTV accounts. We will apparently at some point still have access to archival footage of games, and we will apparently now get live audio of all the football games. Their words. We'll see. Unfortunately, I still don't know about the post-season games. Also, it would be nice to know if my account will become of CSTV's 'XXL' accounts, which means I would not only get access to OU stuff, but to all the other sports on there (excluding ofcourse the PPV content). That would be sweet. If that isn't the case, I'd like to go ahead and make that the case, as this would be paid for by closing my Yahoo account.

I just hope that this is all true as they are stating it now. I was originally sort of sucked into OZone by thinking that I would get audio to the games, and that didn't happen, something I just can't quite get over. If things do indeed happen with the audio as they say they will, I hope video is soon to follow. I can tell you that I've paid a nice little chunk of change over the years to several companies with absolutely no guarantee that I would get to see or hear even one game. Maybe some of that will finally start to pay off.