Yesterday was all about two things for me: the Tour de France and Live 8.
Regarding the former: David Zabriskie is a Utah native, and it’s great that he edged out Lance Armstrong. That means at least one day in yellow for a Utah rider.
And Live 8 had some great performances. Annie Lennox was superb, Coldplay rocked the house, The Who looked old but still play a mean song, and Pink Floyd were simply incredible. It was so great to see Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright sharing the stage, playing well, and bringing back the magic, if only for one night.
The frustration came with trying to actually watch the show. See, I don’t have cable, dish or anything else like that. I do have high-speed internet at home, though, and AOLmusic was streaming the video. Unfortunately, the site was sponsored by Microsoft, so the sub-standard Windows Media Player was the medium of choice. Thanks to WMP, I encountered the following issues:
- Oft-interrupted audio when the video kept playing
- Simultaneous, overlapping streams from multiple venues
- An eventual shutoff of Safari browser support
Fortunately, BBC was streaming the whole event on Radio 1, which had its frustrations, too (the announcers often spoke over whole songs by some of the artists). However, the stream was solid.
I got to watch most of the Floyd’s set on VH1 at a friend’s house, where sprite and I had gone for a Tour de France watching party and BBQ. And I also got to see the McCartney-U2 duet on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which was campy fun.
lee
4 July 2005 — 18:33
Funny, we listened to and watched without any hassle whatsoever using aol music and windows media player. On our PC, inferior boxes that they are(n’t). Switching between concerts was effortless. Maybe if Steve Jobs would’ve sunk some dinero into supporting the effot, as Gates/Microsoft did, he could have ensured that it would have done as well for Apple users. But he didn’t — doesn’t have enough money, I guess. (running and ducking)
What was really nasty was trying to watch in on VH1 or MTV — the most inane crap spewing out of the so-called veejays — like people really give a rat’s ass what they have to say. We stuck to the webcast.