While watching varsity high-school baseball or softball games these days, take a second to look at what is attached about six feet high on the outside screened section of backstops behind home plate.
One or two, maybe as many as three, small cameras usually are fastened someplace that stream the games live on the Internet. It’s pretty standard these days for at least one streaming camera to be attached during a game, as advanced technology is becoming a bigger and bigger part of high-school sports.
Watching a streamcast game from one of those various cameras, especially at night, isn’t the greatest overall view. Sometimes balls hit deep into the outfield are hard to pick up, as are those hit into the outfield along the foul lines.
There is no zoom-in attachment yet on those cameras. So the depth perception, what you see is what you get. If there is any haze or nighttime fog in the area, that just adds to any of those visibility issues.
The infield camera coverage is pretty good, with, again, any balls hit right down the foul lines might be a challenge to see.
Obviously, daytime streams are much better in regard to seeing the entire field and action.
Occasionally one of the cameras will get hit by a foul ball and dislodged a bit. Once reattached, the streamcast usually continues just fine for the rest of a game, as the cameras are pretty durable. But the camera angle probably will need readjusting after it takes a hit.
So there are certainly challenges to watching.
Overall, it’s still much better – until the technology improves to make streamcast more enjoyable and more clear to view – to watch those high-school baseball and softball games in person, because so much more can be fully seen.