Huober | Even from Far East, PSN far from good

Behold, the wonders of modern technology!

I spent my winter break halfway around the world in China, and thanks to the live streaming video service provided by PennAthletics.com, the basketball teams' mid-vacation action made the trip with me. But as the feed stuttered and the audio came and went at its own whim, it became clear that a new limiting factor had replaced distance: technical kinks.

The Penn Athletic Department joined a slew of other schools last year by launching the Penn Sports Network to broadcast Quakers sporting events from its Web site. Finally, displaced fans around the world- even in remote Tianjin- would be able to watch all Penn men's and women's basketball games not preempted by television broadcasts, as well as wrestling matches. That is, provided they pay $59.95 for a year of access, or $7.95 for one month.

At each of these events, video is taped and put together by a partnership of Penn Athletics and the student-run UTV-13. Jump TV- the Web host that runs PennAthletics.com- also hosts the bandwidth for the streaming video, which subscribers can watch live as the games take place.

Now, a year after its release, the PSN is still very much a work in progress. The Penn faithful who originally lauded the arrival of streaming video have been quick to turn on it, levelling a fair share of criticism towards the Athletic Department and its fledgling service.

The Penn basketball forum on basketball-u.com, the unofficial headquarters of Quakers hoops, has entire threads dedicated to disgruntled complaints with the PSN. Subscribers are unhappy with what one poster deems a "completely atrocious" service where the video feed often comes through choppy or dim and unclear. The audio, critics say, has hardly worked properly all season.

This frustration is understandable. Fans shelling out $60 a year expect a professional product that they are evidently not getting. In a way, this tantalizing pseudo-availability of a remedy for starved Red and Blue fans is worse than if the service did not exist at all. It's like seeing an invitingly empty foosball table in a bar, only to find that there is no ball.

But none of this is news to the Athletic Department.

"We are aware of the problems and we are making strides to correct them," says Brian Head, Coordinator of Marketing, Promotions and Community Affairs for Penn Athletics. "One of our base issues is dealing within the framework of the Palestra. It's a building that's not exactly set up to do what we want to do."

And after a year of the service's existence, these efforts may be paying dividends. According to PSN subscribers on the basketball forum, the broadcast of Tuesday's game against La Salle went much better.

Head says the department still has big plans for the PSN. He and his staff intend to begin covering other sports, as well as providing original content like coaches' shows and interviews.

So as Penn keeps pace with its peers and rides the wave of the future, fans hope that good things lie on the horizon. But until then, they'll have to pay $60 a year for static.

Ilario Huober is a senior international relations major from Syracuse, N.Y. , and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His email address is ihuober@sas.upenn.edu.

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