Trial and Error

Still Not a Fan of High School Sports

September 5, 2007 2:17 PM

I promised a week ago that I’d go check out Hearst’s new online high school sports project, highschoolplaybook.com.

So I am finally getting around to it. For starters, I love the simplicity of the site. With just a gray background and minimal graphics, finding and playing the video is easy. Plus, kudos to Hearst for eschewing the link for “full-screen” and just calling it “big.” (That’s the button you click on to make the video full-screen.)

However, when I visited the introduction video—a peppy sort of music video number—it stuttered several times for about two seconds each time before it played again.

I am ready to be DONE with stuttering video.

Anyway, once I clicked through on links for local markets, the videos all played fine and I didn’t encounter any more buffering trouble.

Still, I think the site needs better organization. After I left the home page, I was never really sure what I was viewing or how to get around easily.