March 9, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- TV network giant CBS (cbs.com) announced on Thursday it will be doubling the amount of bandwidth for viewing NCAA (ncaasports.com) basketball tournament video streams online this year, but will have to restrict the number of viewers to keep the system running smoothly.
According to reports, because the video streams were very popular last year, CBS decided to boost the image quality for the video and create a larger online video player, which the company says will take up some of the bandwidth.
Joe Ferreira, VP of programming at CBS SportsLine, says the site is aiming to accommodate up to 300,000 viewers at any given time, up from around 175,000 simultaneous viewers last year. Once that limit is reached, fans will be diverted to online "waiting rooms" until enough other users leave to allow new ones in.
CBS says only the first three rounds of play are being offered online, with many of the games concentrated during the afternoons of March 15 and 16. Subscribers will also be able to view the games online for free, as opposed to previous years when fans had to pay for a subscription to view the games.
