Oscars 2012 Live-Blog (with Contests)!

Here we go! The big Oscar show airs this Sunday, February 26th at 8:30 PM EST on ABC. Join us here starting with the official pre-show red carpet special at 7:00 PM. We’ll be live-blogging the entire event, and offering you the chance to win some free Blu-ray goodies. With each one of these live-blogs that we do, we refine the process a little more. We’ve made some improvements this time that should make the contests go much smoother and enhance your chances of winning.

Please read after the page break for the contest rules and information on how to claim a prize.

Viewing and Participating in the Live-Blog

We welcome and encourage your participation in the live-blog. These things are much more fun when you, our readers, comment along with us.

In our past live-blogs, the software we use required a lot of manual interaction from the site staff in order to allow readers to comment. This often resulted in delays before your comments would appear on screen. This time around, we have upgraded the software to alleviate that problem. Comments should appear as soon as you make them, with much less work from us. One big change, however, is that now you will be required to log into the event (using a Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or OpenID account) to make comments. Anyone viewing the page can read along with the live-blog whether you’re logged in or not, but you must log in if you wish to comment. You must also log in to participate in the Blu-ray giveaway contest.

Contest Rules

We plan to give away 10 Blu-ray discs during the live-blog. The way we’ll do this is much different (and much easier!) than ever before.

We’re not doing trivia this time. Your ability to win will not be based on your speed in responding (or Googling the answers). This time around, we’re doing a straightforward Oscar prediction contest. During the pre-show red carpet special, I will launch a series of betting polls for each category that the Academy gives prizes to. These will initially appear as pop-up windows when I launch them, but will then appear at the bottom of the main live-blog window, beneath comments. Scroll through the polls using the arrow buttons. You may vote at any time until the Oscar winner is named in each category, at which time voting will be turned off for that specific poll. At the end of the ceremony, the scores will be tallied, and the ten readers (excluding site staff, who may vote for fun but are not eligible for prizes) with the highest scores will each win a free Blu-ray disc!

Important Note: As the Oscar winners are announced, you will get one point for each correct guess that you make. However, you will lose a point for each incorrect guess. For example, if you vote in 5 polls and get 4 of them correct, you will score a total of 3 points (4 points for those you got right, minus 1 for the wrong answer). Another person who only votes in the 4 polls he’s sure of and skips the other could score more points than you do, even though you both answer the same 4 questions correctly. It’s also possible to end the evening with a negative score. Keep this in mind when voting. Some strategy may be required on your part.

We have set aside our rule that would normally prohibit someone who’s won a recent contest in the blog from winning again. We want everyone to participate. However, other standard contest rules continue to apply. The contests are only open to entrants from the domestic United States. We will not ship internationally (whether you’re a U.S. citizen or not). Employees of High-Def Digest or Internet Brands and their families are not eligible.

How to Claim a Prize

All scores for the Oscar prediction contest will be tallied and announced at the end of the Oscar show, after the Best Picture trophy has been given out. Winners will be contacted (using the information that you logged into the live-blog with) over the following few days. [See the Comments section below for updated instructions.]

We will have a pool of giveaway discs that each winner can select one title from. The person who scored highest in the contest will get first pick of one disc. We will then progress down through the rest of the ten winners in order of betting scores. In the event of any ties, each winner will be assigned a number and we’ll use a random number generator to determine the order that each gets to go in.

That’s it for the rules. We hope to see you here on Sunday. Have fun!

7 comments

  1. Josh Zyber
    Author

    Thanks to everyone for participating. Our top 10 contest winners as named at the end of the live-blog should please email hddbonusview @ gmail . com with your contact and shipping info, along with your top 5 choices from among the Blu-ray giveaway titles listed near the end of the live-blog event. Thanks!

  2. Josh Zyber
    Author

    Did anyone else experience an extreme slowdown in the live-blog as the show went on? I did, but I don’t know if that was the live-blog software having difficulty with the number of readers, my laptop overheating, or my internet connection throttling.

    I’d be interested to know if that was just on my end, or if everyone experienced the same problem.

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