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The voting clickers were not the only technology experiencing problems at the May 20 Special Town Meeting. SudburyTV had a brief interruption to its streaming coverage and reception issues for viewers watching on Comcast cable channels.
SudburyTV’s streaming service available on cellphones and computers was interrupted for a short time Wednesday night when viewership exceeded its monthly data allowance. Castus, SudburyTV’s streaming and video-on-demand provider, noticed the issue and immediately increased capacity. SudburyTV appreciated their quick action, but the change momentarily reset the system, causing viewers to have to reconnect to the system after receiving an error message.
Lynn Puorro, SudburyTV’s Executive Director, noted SudburyTV had never before come close to exceeding its monthly data allowance. The three nights of annual town meeting earlier in the month had fewer than 100 viewers each night. The high number of people—nearly 400—viewing the Special Town Meeting May 20 pushed the data usage close to its limit, leading Castus to increase SudburyTV capacity. Puorro is making arrangements to proactively increase the data allowance as needed in the future.
Also during the Special Town Meeting, Comcast cable subscribers were unable to get useful reception on cable channels 8 and 1074. The afternoon before the meeting, Comcast did a routine update of the software in the equipment that transfers the SudburyTV signal to the Comcast cable system. SudburyTV staff was not, and usually is not, notified of such updates, and until now these updates have never caused any problems. However, this update caused the uplink to transmit poorly.
Puorro noted that, because the SudburyTV staff needed all day Wednesday to set up the equipment and systems for the Special Town Meeting in the Lincoln-Sudbury gymnasium, they did not immediately notice the issue on the Comcast channel, and no viewers emailed them about the problem. After the meeting started and the staff became aware of the issue, they could not fix it immediately. Comcast was able to resolve the issue later that week.
Jeff Winston, president of the SudburyTV board of directors, praised Puorro and the SudburyTV staff for their efforts in covering the Special Town Meeting from the gymnasium. “Our staff spent hours in planning sessions, and more than a day getting everything set up.”
He apologized for the unexpected technical glitches, but noted, “our recording of the entire event came out great, and has been uploaded to our website.”
Nancy Brumback is a freelance reporter and is also on the Sudbury TV board.