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View Full Version : JASON'S TV RECAP UNCENSORED - Why Xtra Frame's WSoB Coverage Will Impress



onefrombills
07-16-2009, 05:52 PM
One thing you’ve heard us folks at the PBA barking about quite a bit lately is the new and improved Xtra Frame. Here's a little bit more insight as to why.

You’ve no doubt seen the new user interface (which, as Borat would say, is “veddy nice!”…wait Borat’s soooo 2006…what would Bruno say? “Fabulous?”) and you’ve heard all the promises about the 100-plus hours of coverage during the World Series of Bowling. You’ve probably seen our ads on bowlingdigital.com and Bowlers Journal International and in our PBA newsletters and on our home page and just about anywhere else there’s bowling or bowling content.

But the big question all of you former or non-subscribers out there certainly want to know before you shell out $39-$60 of your hard-earned disposable income is, “Will the product be decent?” Specifically, will the stream work? Will the site crash? Will the video be better quality than a batch of $100 junkyard surveillance cameras? As much as I hate to overpromise on anything (especially my bowling…especially these days), I have to answer capital Y-E-S to each.

First off, let me just say that the PBA hired me back not just for my snarky writing and incredible good looks, but also because I happen to own my own set of professional video production equipment (that third one is probably the real reason after a few quick seconds pondering my own writing ability and bald head).

This equipment will be used…yep, you guessed it!...to film all of our coverage at the 2009 World Series of Bowling. My three cameras are 3CCD 1080i Sony HDR-FX1’s (click here to check one out) equipped with LANC adjustable-speed zoom/focus remotes and each will be fully manned on two fluid head tripods and a 12-foot jib crane. What this means is that instead of watching your live tournament action from a tiny pinhole through the back wall of the bowling center, we’re going to get right up in the players’ and the pindecks’ grilles to bring you action that’s waaaaay closer to what you get on the Sunday ESPN show (although not quite all the way there…those folks are pretty incredible at what they do contrary to what you might read on the message boards) than what you’ve seen on Xtra Frame at any time in the past.

We’ll also have the ability to mic the players and do a proper sound mix, so the crash and roar of the pins (and PA’s weirdly fascinating self-talk and exclusively alien language) will be heard as crystal clear as Mike J. and Jeff Mark’s commentary. We’ll also be bringing along five “1K” adjustable flood lights so, instead of trying to make out whether that’s Brad Angelo or Amleto Monacelli throwing the ball (not usually a very difficult task) it will be as obvious as Lisa Rinna’s collagen lip injections.

But that’s not all folks. Not by a longshot. One of the biggest issues we’ve had with Xtra Frame in the past is that we’re often at the mercy of a single (sometimes weak) DSL or cable line that is supplying all of the PBA’s administrative, personal, broadcasting and tournament software’s bandwidth capabilities not to mention with very little setup time as we breeze in and out of cities like a presidential candidate in an election year. For the World Series, we’ve brought in four separate dedicated lines to handle each and every one of our company’s IT needs, so Xtra Frame will have its own “pipe” to bring you the action every day (plus a wireless connection to the other pipes as a failsafe in the event that the hard line happens to go down for any reason).

We also just completed a server update for pba.com and Xtra Frame that will increase the speed of the site and the amount of traffic it can handle by a significant factor, also diminishing the likelihood of site crashes to an almost negligible level. Although, if we do get enough traffic to crash the site, that will be a very good problem to have considering just how many visitors we now expect to be able to handle. But we’ve definitely taken great care in ensuring that these problems are a thing of the past.

I also want to let you know how personally invested I am in this endeavor. Those of you who have followed my writing probably know how important it is to me to spend time with my family, especially my three children, who are eight, five, and five months. The PBA was hesitant to even ask me to go to Detroit, because, knowing this, they assumed that five weeks away from my family would be out of the question. It will be incredibly difficult (especially missing such a big portion of my little girl’s early development and also my five-year-old son’s 6th birthday party and both the boys first day of school) but that is how important I believe it is to our fans, and also how confident I am that we can put out an excellent product to make the sacrifice. OK, end of clichéd violin music but, given that, you can be rest assured that I’ll break out my best Gordon Ramsay impression should anyone or anything even attempt to screw this up for you fans.

I’ll also be bringing along my cohort and former Let’s Go Bowling show director Ian Petrella to help out with our live productions and with Mike J.’s new “PBA: 39x60” nightly highlight show (I may even make a few guest appearances myself…although I’m not entirely sure that will really have much impact on bringing in more subscribers). Ian is a veteran of film and TV (you might know him as the little brother in the film “A Christmas Story”) and he knows his way around a production like Jason Belmonte’s hands know a 15-pound Storm bowling ball.

So, am I coming off as desperate to please here? I sure as heck hope so! Because I’m dying for the chance to win back your trust and your loyalty and your patronage as Xtra Frame subscribers, and I can only hope to bust my tail off starting in three weeks to give you the quality and viewing experience you deserve. In the meantime, you still have until July 21 to sign up for a FREE 7-day trial of Xtra Frame to test it out before the World Series coverage begins. Click here for that and enjoy the recent Japan Cup footage (and Rhino Page’s awesome 300 game and $100,000 bonus) we’ve recently added to the site!

Until then, feel free to email any questions or suggestions to: jason.thomas@pba.com