So it's been a while since my last HC 101 post, but with the upcoming Augusta Cutting Horse Futurity, I felt like it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce webcasting you.

HorseCity.com has been a pioneer in the live online broadcasting of various horse shows since our inception. We started out with just 3 or 4 major shows per year to more than 20 each year! We have been the sole live webcast provider for both the National Barrel Horse Association (NBHA) and the Augusta Cutting Horse Futurity since around 2000, and since then have expanded to include major shows for the American Paint Horse Association, National High School Rodeo Association, National Snaffle Bit Association, the Reichert Celebration and the Appaloosa Horse Association - just to name a few. 

So what is a live webcast? It is a live event broadcast over the internet as it happens. We generally broadcast both video and audio and our webcasts are intended for those of you who have high-speed internet connections (DSL or faster). Dial-up users generally cannot view our webcasts - sorry.

Some questions that come up frequently include:

Why is the picture so small? We broadcast at 320 px by 240 px - which is about 3 inches wide by 2.5 inches tall on most screens, depending on your screen size and resolution. You can make the picture larger by right-clicking on it and viewing it in Windows Media Player. The quality goes down the larger you make it, but you can make the picture large enough to watch from 10 or 15 feet away from your computer without too much distortion - depending on the quality of the stream itself.

Why isn't it TV quality? Because it's live streaming web video, not TV. Yes, you can watch video clips online and they can look like TV, but when streaming live, it is much more complicated than that and unless we were only providing the feed to one or two people who happened to have smoking-fast internet connections, it's just not possible. We do our best to provide the best live feed that we can to the majority of users. 

Is it really real-time? Pretty much. There is usually a 15-30 second lag time, but rarely more than that.

So - are you ready to watch? We have a live webcast of the Augusta Cutting Horse Futurity starting on Thursday, January 17, 2008. Go ahead and test your software ahead of time and make sure you're ready.

I bet you're wondering what all this Cutting Horse stuff is about, aren't you? Well, go check out the AugustaFuturity.com Web site for some history on the sport and this event.