Columbia Valley webcams just got better

Based on website stats, our webcam pages are the most frequently visited pages on this website. So, we decided to focus more attention on making the webcam experience better for our viewers and have made a commitment to make this happen sooner than later. Throughout 2010 we are planning to install more cameras with bigger images, cleaner lenses and less spiders.

For those of you that haven’t already noticed, we started this process a couple of months ago and here’s where we’re at to date.

Lakeside Pub webcam

The long awaited upgrade to a better camera happened in early November when we switched to a 3 megapixel unit with a wide angle lens providing a much wider, clearer, high resolution picture. This camera can handle the direct sunlight much better than the previous one and we will install a weather station at this location when the snow is off the roof that will provide current temperature and humidity at that location. [Lakeside Pub webcam]

Downtown #2 webcam

Yes! We added another downtown camera – this time pointing south down main street. This 3 megapixel webcam is located on top of the High Country Properties building and features a great shot of main street. This view, in addition to the existing downtown cam pointing north down main street, will easily be able to give any visitor a good idea of what our small community is like in real-time. [Downtown webcam #2]

Panorama Mountain Village

This camera had been down for the summer and returned a few short weeks ago providing a bird’s eye view of the village. This camera features a weather station and provides the current temperature and humidity at that location. [Panorama webcam]

Subscription webcams

We have a solid base of regular webcam viewers that visit numerous times each day from around the globe to see what’s going on in their ‘home away from home’. And, since we now have 3 cameras that are capable of delivering a 3 megapixel image at 1024×768 resolution, we decided to offer up full-screen images as an option to those diehard fans that just can’t get enough of our views. Visit the demo page to test it out and make sure you follow the instruction at the bottom to activate full-screen mode. [demo slideshow]

But why make you pay? Simply put, to be able to offer these larger images, our bandwidth usage increases significantly which drives our costs up for streaming the images. We also hope to be able to speed up the refresh rate on the subscription cameras so that your experience will be more ‘alive’. We launched the subscription program about 2 weeks ago and are extremely happy with the number of signups so far. Visit our subscription page for more details and rates. [subscription details]

For now there are only 3 of our Columbia Valley webcams that are capable of providing the larger images but very soon we will be upgrading the Radium Hot Springs camera and will include that in the package as well. As subscription funds increase, we’ll add more cameras with better options – perhaps even add a couple of new cameras that are only available by subscription.

We welcome your input on our webcam program and await your comments and ideas on how we might make it even better. [contact form]