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June 2006 Stanford Streams NCAA 2006 Tennis Championships with StreamZ
www.gostanford.com
“I was ecstatic to see how well the systems worked…This is great for the sport.”
Stanford University’s athletics department used Digital Rapids StreamZ real-time media encoding servers to provide live streaming video coverage of the NCAA 2006 Division I Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships on the web. The video was accessible during matches through the Stanford Cardinal Official Athletics Website, at www.gostanford.com.
 Stanford hosted the first-ever combined men’s and women’s NCAA Tennis Championships from May 18 through May 29, 2006. This event also marked the first time live streaming video has been used to present the NCAA tennis tournament. Individual tennis matches had been streamed in the past from other venues, but never a tournament of this magnitude. More than half of the men’s and women’s singles, doubles, and team matches were streamed live throughout the tournament, with the exception of the Team Finals to which ESPN 2 held exclusive coverage rights.
Stanford had existing cameras at the Taube Tennis Center to record practices for review and analysis, and began considering web distribution of these video feeds as a next step. Members of Stanford’s in-house audio/visual staff were familiar with Digital Rapids, and chose Digital Rapids StreamZ as their encoding platform. Three dual-channel Digital Rapids StreamZ servers were used to encode live 320x240 Windows Media 9 streams from up to six of the twelve tournament courts. The streams included scoreboard overlays driven by Daktronics, who also provide the real-time scoring available on Stanford’s web site.
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