Bill's Blog: The Week that Wasn't

Hurricane Ike changed this week, and the Razorback schedule. Our prayers and concerns go out to those in the Texas and Louisiana gulf basins that are battling through the Hurricane.

Along with Razorback football, the soccer and women’s cross country teams had their plans changed by weather. The impact of course for football fans today is there is no game in 20 minutes reviving that great Hogs-Horns rivalry. That waits for another two weeks.

In the meantime, I’ll take this somewhat quiet Saturday afternoon to do a little website housekeeping, and to remind you that Game Day isn’t just football.

GAME DAY VOLLEYBALL: Coach Robert Pulliza’s volleyball Razorbacks close out their home tournament tonight at 7 p.m. at Barnhill Arena. If you can’t make it to Barnhill, you can watch the stream live from the game. That would be an excellent way to support the volleyball team, AND . . .

TEST YOUR CONNECTIONS: A lot of the feedback from the first two weeks of the season centered around difficulties by our fans using ArkansasRazorbacks.com and RazorVision for streaming media. Since next week we will have the pregame video once again, and the game audio, this is a perfect chance to make sure your drivers are up-to-date and you can see and hear our content. Some common items we’ve discovered:

FIREFOX BROWSERS: Firefox rolled out the 3.0 version of its browser about a month ago, but from the mid-2.0 editions forward, you need to have a specific plug-in from Firefox for Windows Media Player. We saw a lot of folks tripped up by this software change.

CHECK YOUR FLASH PLUG-INS: Part of the video viewer uses the Flash plug-in from Adobe, so double-check that it is current.

LOG-INS: One of the two most common problems with the pay-per-view football video from the ULM game were fans who were already RazorVision members that accidentally ordered a second RazorVision account rather than the PPV. That led to two log-in accounts and some confusion.

WRONG AREAS TO ORDER FROM: The second common problem was folks ordering PPV through the website, then realizing they really wanted it through the cable television system; or folks that were not eligible ordering the PPV. We will be the first ones to tell you we wish we could make the PPV football events available to the entire world, but we are limited by existing contracts to only have the PPV available to persons with Arkansas billing addresses (in-state viewers) and persons from the state of the opponent. That applies to over the internet or over cable/satellite. We also realize that sometimes — like the ULM game — when ESPN picks up an institutional PPV and makes it available on GamePlan that also opens up other states and areas. Again, that’s something out of our control, and we appreciate all the feedback we received about the out-of-market situation.

ASK FOR TECHNICAL SUPPORT: At the bottom of every page of the website, there is a "Contact Us" button. That’s your key to tech support, but you’ve got to make sure you are asking the right person the right question. On the feedback form, there is a drop down menu and it is SUPER important that you pick the area that applies to what is happening to you. If you can’t log-in or have password problems, pick Billing and Registration. If you can log in, but you get messages that say your package doesn’t include this content, that’s also Billing and Registration. If the video is not playing at all, you might opt for Technical Support; but if the video or audio is choppy or buffering excessively, that’s the time to choose Streaming Support.

Let me say I enjoy talking to everyone — by phone or by email — and don’t have a problem helping you with a technical problem (to the best of my ability, which can often be limited). But believe me, when it’s crunch time at kick off, the fastest way to get the tech support you need is to hit that Contact Us button. Those tech questions go straight to the JumpTV support team, and get there the quickest when you’ve picked the right area that fits your problem.

There is plenty of good news on the website this week. Thank you to all our faithful followers of the game day live blog. The numbers are growing each week. We also received a lot of kudos from fans who enjoyed getting to watch the pregame warmups against Western Illinois. We plan to continue that event for our RazorVision members. Remember — the streaming video is ONLY for pregame. It will stop at kickoff because the game is on commercial television — again, we can’t stream that. When the pregame video ends, click over to the audio stream to stay with the contest, or depending on who presents the game, you may be able to change over to their video stream.

Speaking of video streams, CBS starts this week streaming the SEC game of the week. Keep that in mind if Arkansas is selected for CBS — that means anyone who can hit the CBSSports.com website will be able to see the game. More and more, the networks are opening up their telecasts to streaming.

Finally, speaking of the game day blog, thanks to the couple of folks that sent comments or pictures from your tailgate party in the past two weeks. Remember to bring the cell camera to the tailgate next Saturday, and send those pictures in to bismith@uark.edu. We’ll use some of the better ones on the blog next week.

The wind’s picking up outside, and it’s starting to get a little gray. Time to go, and look forward to being with your next week on Game Day.