You mentioned your dreams and ideas for Level Up TV, if you were given a carte blanche, how would you shape the future and in what ways would you differ from those such as QuadV or ESL-TV?
How much time do I have to answer that question? My ideas relate to building the brand horizontally, rather than vertically; i.e. there's so much more that can be achieved with our current infrastructure, and to just ignore that if given the right time and opportunity, albeit unlikely, would be silly. There were a few things I had planned to do in order to enhance our DreamHack coverage next month, perhaps not more so for us but what we could offer other people and organisations at the venue with the assets and people we already have. But as I'm no longer going those ideas will have to stay quiet for a little longer. I won't say we have "e-sports changing" ideas, because that would be silly, but the title "level up" was developed to be integrated in more ways than just "levelupyourgame.net".
Could you perhaps explain why it is possible for you to stream at such a high quality compared to perhaps the most known broadcasting company, ESL TV? Because it is all done by volunteers, in your case, is it not?
Well that can be a hard thing to answer as it's a combination of things, many of which I do not have definite or direct answers too. I do know that they have a model in place of which requires its viewers to pay for a higher quality stream, this is all done through an Octoshape licence which costs ESL money and works via peer to peer. Whilst our streamer is uploading at close to 2Mb, their HQ stream is half of that. I'm not entirely as to if they could match our quality tomorrow if they wanted, and with that I'm not certain as to the reasons why they couldn't or do not already do so. Effectively I could debate on the subject for hours and hours and we'd never know for certain without just asking them directly.
 with cap, preparing for i40 Quake Live shootouts
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If you could have your pick, which shoutcaster would you prefer to have on board the most? Would you bring back the Joe & 2GD tag team?
Who else but Marcus "DJ Wheat" Graham and James "2GD" Harding, who is actually already involved with us at Level Up TV. Myself and Slasher tried to set that up for ESWC a few months ago, unfortunately Wheat was on a business trip and would return 30minutes into the final match, so close. We did however see a Day9 and DJWheat combo at MLG Dallas a few weeks ago and that was pretty damn awesome! However, If we were to talk strictly Europeans though it would have to be the lone Stuart "TosspoT" Saw and Enemy Territory, I've always enjoyed tuning in during the Crossfire events that Stuart holds.
Why are you, yourself, unable to attend the DreamHack Winter 2010 event? Were you not eager to attend or is something hindering your trip?
Well it wasn't originally 100% certain that I wouldn't attend, I was signed up for the last edition of both the MSI and Kaspersky qualifiers for the Dreamhack event. If I would've qualified for at least one of them then the organisation that I was representing could've financed my trip and therefore I could have also helped out my guys covering it. I've always wanted to attend the event as a player first, and something else second, that's also the ethic of our team - after all we're players too. However I was knocked out early by an opponent I usually beat, for a tournament that he was not able to attend anyway. Unfortunately I’m not currently in a position where I can afford to take what would effectively be considered as a holiday to cover the event with Level Up TV. If things change within the next 2-3 weeks then there is still a possibility I could go, but it's still unlikely. That said, I've full confidence in Christian (Trance) to make the weekend a success.
