Enhanced
TV? Who Knows?
AQB
Finds ABC/ESPN Technology Inaccessible
By
Randy Williams
Tennessee
and Florida State provided an exciting Fiesta Bowl. Unfortunately,
ABC/ESPN failed to live up to their end of the bargain as
millions of would-be visitors to "Enhanced
Television" were unable to access the new technology.
I started trying to log on about 30 minutes before the game began
and, despite owning a high-speed cable modem and an upgraded browser,
was unable to get in. (If you didn't upgrade your browser, you
didn't have a shot as Enhanced TV is designed for use only with
browser versions of 4.0 or higher -Microsoft Internet Explorer
and America Online - or 4.07 - Netscape).
My first failure to reach Enhanced TV resulted in an error message
which read: "We're very sorry but the Enhanced Television
application has reached full capacity at this time. Please close
your browser and try us again in a few minutes."
Obviously ABC knew of this problem as, with 10:30 left in
the second quarter, announcer Keith Jackson apologized for
the inaccessability and said "When you have too much
success, you don't know how to handle it."
Later, when I actually made it through to register (who runs this
thing, the Pentagon?), I was again denied. "Go registration
is temporarily unavailable. The interrupted service is due to
an inordinate number of users attempting to log-in at the same
time. Please try back in a few minutes."
Inordinate number of users? Didn't ABC and ESPN expect
massive viewer response after hyping Enhanced TV constantly for
the past week? ESPN knows it has a popular web site, so it's
really unfathomable to me that they weren't ready for a lot of
traffic.
I doubt the technology is something I would want to use during
a contest of this magnitude because I'd probably wind up paying
less attention to the game but I guess I'll never know. Trying
to access the technology for three hours definitely hindered my
ability to watch the contest and enjoy Jackson's finale. Better
luck next year, ESPN/ABC.
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Back to the college football
page
Click here
to see a preview and a prediction on the Fiesta Bowl.
Click here for
a review of Keith Jackson's final broadcast.
Click here
for AQB's preview of Enhanced TV.
What do you think of Enhanced TV? Tell everybody on the
Speak Out page.
