Spark Sport: Rugby World Cup 2019

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#2325029 26-Sep-2019 09:19

Yogi02:

tdgeek:

Given what we know, that the issue is now fixed, and it wasnt NZ broadband capability, and assume its all good from here, what are the opinions on how Spark Sport will come out of this?

The media has had a wide range, from failure, they will never recover, to a more positive note for the future

Of the pool games, The AB's v SA was the only one I would likely have watched.

Combined with a decent SA population in NZ I cant see it being tested to that level until the Quarter Finals.

I am predicting no issues at all for the next 2 AB games.

this.

there are only a few games I'd like to watch in the pool. usually on saturdays or sundays luckily.

tdgeek

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#2325084 26-Sep-2019 09:33

networkn:

I'd say it has far less to do with opinion and a lot more to do with economic viability. Spark shareholders won't be impressed that the flagship product wasn't recieved that well and took what looks to be a pretty significant loss. Appetite for risk is going to play the biggest part. Do they invest considerably more (on rights) on an uncertain uptake? Sky has said they will go to the mat to purchase rights for sport, which means Spark will have to match or beat them, whilst being able to convince rights holders they can deliver it in the first place. Spark Sport has very little I'm interested in past the RWC, and so my subscription will lapse immediately afterward. I'd imagine a lot of people will be the same. It's also a matter of who has the sports I want to watch. Rugby for me is number one, after that, it's Squash which no-one in NZ does decent coverage of, but even then, it's touch and go that I would pay $20 a month (and I believe that it's introductory prices that will increase) when I can pay $100 a year to PSA Squash for what is likely to be more compherehensive coverage.

So far I'd rate the delivery a C+ at best. The app lacks basic functionality like search, sort, account management and I can only jump around in a stream from my couch in 30 second increments.

They could easily improve all of this pretty quickly, but it's whether they have the sports that will attract paying customers and if investors will support a decision to spend MANY millions in obtaining those rights.

To give credit where it's due, the picture is comparable to Sky, better in some ways, worse in others. The key benefit to me, is the seamless way I can move from room to room and device to device.

I think a lot more people decided they could live without live broadcast and accepted an hours delay to watch for free. I don't have numbers to compare to the previous world cup.

Don't forget, they also have to overcome the infrastructure challenges that caused them to hand the commerical rights to Sky. Without some seriously big sports, businesses will not commit the money to put in infrastructure. Spark stuffed that up royally by underestimating the costs to businesses for it and didn't get themselves commercially ready in time to allow businesses to implement. Credit to them for handing the rights to Sky or things could have been so much worse.

Good points. I'm not sure many punters care about viability. RWC wasnt viable for Sky, I doubt Spark saw it as a moneymaker, and other sports dont command the rights costs at that level.

You are subbed to SSW? Why? You don't need that for RWC , you just need to be registered

I can see other sports being added and it being viable in time. This need for many to get up to speed will be sorted

I can only jump around in a stream from my couch in 30 second increments. I use the +10 and - 10 and i can use the scroll bar for small and big moves. Thumbnails would help thou

networkn

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#2325087 26-Sep-2019 09:41

tdgeek:

Good points. I'm not sure many punters care about viability. RWC wasnt viable for Sky, I doubt Spark saw it as a moneymaker, and other sports dont command the rights costs at that level.

You are subbed to SSW? Why? You don't need that for RWC , you just need to be registered

I can see other sports being added and it being viable in time. This need for many to get up to speed will be sorted

I can only jump around in a stream from my couch in 30 second increments. I use the +10 and - 10 and i can use the scroll bar for small and big moves. Thumbnails would help thou

Punters don't give a toss about a companies viability in a general sense, they want to watch what they watch for as little as possible.

RWC was viable for Sky, they had the money but decided against spending it, as it was "only one tournament". Martin Stewart has in my opinion, rightly lambasted that decision and the guy(s) who recommended it is gone. They are on record saying they will be the home of Rugby going forward, and I feel as a results the rights will be more expensive next time around if there are two determined bidders.

I am not sure what device you are using? If I chromecast I have a +10 but from my Shield or Sony TV I can only move in 30 second increments. This using the right "dpad" button. (Which if I press for Kayo gives me 10 seconds).

Thankfully the Kodi plugin has given me functionality of +10 for 1 press, +30 for 2 presses quickly and +1 minute for multiple presses after this. This is how I feel Spark Sport should work out of the box. It's little things like this that should have been in place by now, that takes the polish off the product.

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#2325093 26-Sep-2019 09:53

networkn:

tdgeek:

Good points. I'm not sure many punters care about viability. RWC wasnt viable for Sky, I doubt Spark saw it as a moneymaker, and other sports dont command the rights costs at that level.

You are subbed to SSW? Why? You don't need that for RWC , you just need to be registered

I can see other sports being added and it being viable in time. This need for many to get up to speed will be sorted

I can only jump around in a stream from my couch in 30 second increments. I use the +10 and - 10 and i can use the scroll bar for small and big moves. Thumbnails would help thou

Punters don't give a toss about a companies viability in a general sense, they want to watch what they watch for as little as possible.

RWC was viable for Sky, they had the money but decided against spending it, as it was "only one tournament". Martin Stewart has in my opinion, rightly lambasted that decision and the guy(s) who recommended it is gone. They are on record saying they will be the home of Rugby going forward, and I feel as a results the rights will be more expensive next time around if there are two determined bidders.

I am not sure what device you are using? If I chromecast I have a +10 but from my Shield or Sony TV I can only move in 30 second increments. This using the right "dpad" button. (Which if I press for Kayo gives me 10 seconds).

Thankfully the Kodi plugin has given me functionality of +10 for 1 press, +30 for 2 presses quickly and +1 minute for multiple presses after this. This is how I feel Spark Sport should work out of the box. It's little things like this that should have been in place by now, that takes the polish off the product.

RWC was never viable. Pay millions and millions to get a few subbing for 6 months on a deal (that probably also lost money as its a deal for a short time) and they all cancelled. Sky is the sports provider so they buy sports from the budget and RWC, they wear it. Its a loss maker but their business is all sports

I use Apple TV4, the remote trackpad does the 10 sec and scroll. I prefer this to 30 sec FFW/RW by a long way

outdoorsnz

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#2325102 26-Sep-2019 10:10

hio77:

Dial111:

freitasm:

Also, being in the ISP world you would know WiFi can be utter garbage on any ISP - the ISP can control the connection but has no oversight of how WiFi is configured, interference, other networks, etc.

And you make a valid point. And I wouldn't be surprised if a good portion of those complaining on social media about SS coverage is down to people streaming over wifi to like a garage/man cave that is impacting their signal because the router is a good distance away but its still sparks fault that their stream is choppy and buffering

Which is exactly why spark sport have been urging folk to try early.

I have a good example of that. 3 weeks back. Booked chorus to come out and do a master splitter install to an existing connection for friends I know despite ISP saying nothing wrong with connection. Wifi was all over the place and speed would drop off. Turns out there was a short in house wiring and now connection speed shot up and more stable! Tech guy said it would cause speed to slowly drop off.

richardgnz

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#2325594 26-Sep-2019 21:23

I am watching the ita vs can stream at the moment via pc with chrome and a projector on 100" screen.

The picture tonight is flawless. I have been complaining about the "motion" of the image for weeks but tonight I have absolutely no complaints.

During the all blacks match I had major issues with quality and buffering...

They seem to have sorted their issues out. Hopefully during the quarter final I will continue to see the same. I was planning on watching the semis and final on free to air. But if they can maintain the picture I am watching right now I might just stream it.

Credit where credits due... They have improved a lot.

kiwiharry

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#2325634 26-Sep-2019 22:18

kiwiharry:
I cancelled my RWC Tournament pass on Sept 12. I'm still waiting to see the refund appear on my CC. I'm sure they said 3-5 businesses days, but am giving them 10 business days.

Contacted Spark Sport again today, as refund still not showing. Got told there was a transaction error, so need to wait another 3-5 business days.

Original request for refund was made via email support on 28 August and I responded to their request for ID and credit card verification the same day. I had no further response so I responded again on Sept 9.

No reponse or refund received and account was still active on Sep 12 so used online chat to cancel.

This shouldn't be this hard.

If you can't laugh at yourself then you probably shouldn't laugh at others.

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bfginger

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#2325645 26-Sep-2019 22:51

Are all the streams in MPEG-4? HEVC's lower bandwidth requirements would solve many client side problems on supporting devices.

Batman

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#2325657 27-Sep-2019 06:10

Maybe not all devices can decode hevc?

tdgeek

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#2325672 27-Sep-2019 07:34

richardgnz: I am watching the ita vs can stream at the moment via pc with chrome and a projector on 100" screen.

The picture tonight is flawless. I have been complaining about the "motion" of the image for weeks but tonight I have absolutely no complaints.

During the all blacks match I had major issues with quality and buffering...

They seem to have sorted their issues out. Hopefully during the quarter final I will continue to see the same. I was planning on watching the semis and final on free to air. But if they can maintain the picture I am watching right now I might just stream it.

Credit where credits due... They have improved a lot.

The AB's game was a problem so ignore that for now. Im not aware of any improvements over and above the 60fps issue, whuch was resolve dbefore kickoff of the RWC. Did you use the same gear and settings all through the tourney? I believe motion varies from TV to TV

tanivula

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#2325754 27-Sep-2019 09:54

bfginger: Are all the streams in MPEG-4? HEVC's lower bandwidth requirements would solve many client side problems on supporting devices.

This would limit a whole lot of older devices (eg chromecast 1 & 2) - generally anything that's not 4k. I dont think x265 decodes using hw from a browser (basing this on my Plex exprience apart from in edge) so it would affect a lot of users by limiting to x265.

Would also require much more powerful hardware to encode in realtime.

Saying that, picture quiality would be epic - it will happen a few years down the track.

richardgnz

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#2326096 27-Sep-2019 15:42

tdgeek:
richardgnz: I am watching the ita vs can stream at the moment via pc with chrome and a projector on 100" screen.

The picture tonight is flawless. I have been complaining about the "motion" of the image for weeks but tonight I have absolutely no complaints.

During the all blacks match I had major issues with quality and buffering...

They seem to have sorted their issues out. Hopefully during the quarter final I will continue to see the same. I was planning on watching the semis and final on free to air. But if they can maintain the picture I am watching right now I might just stream it.

Credit where credits due... They have improved a lot.

The AB's game was a problem so ignore that for now. Im not aware of any improvements over and above the 60fps issue, whuch was resolve dbefore kickoff of the RWC. Did you use the same gear and settings all through the tourney? I believe motion varies from TV to TV

Yes, I am using exactly the same gear. I did not see any juddeing motion last night and that had been my major complaint with the service.

Maybe the encoding has been improved?

The only change from my end was moving from a spark fibre 200mbps broadband to a 800mbps Max service.

This should not make a difference though as 200mbps fibre is fast...

JarrodM

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#2326140 27-Sep-2019 17:29

A friend is having an issue with casting from a new iPhone 11 to a chromecast (unsure on version, don’t believe it’s an ultra though) wondering if there are some compatibility issues with the new devices and/or iOS 13??

tanivula

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#2326309 28-Sep-2019 13:00

Uh, getting errors today streaming OD content.
An episode of 1014 stopped mid stream and said the content was only available on NZ...

Then tried opening the video again which worked, but skipping forward to where I got to and the audio would play and video would not (based on where I was the 2 were not in sync to begin with).

Cleared data, logged back in, same deal with the 1014 episode. Decided to watch the 5 best tries in week 1, Midway through try #4 (2nd to last) the stream stopped and said content having connection issues. Gah.

This is on my phone connected to 100/20 2deg fibre. Wifi of 5ghz at 433mbps.

/Edit app updated to 1.5.5 but no difference with av sync

LH44

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#2326334 28-Sep-2019 16:36

tanivula: Uh, getting errors today streaming OD content.
An episode of 1014 stopped mid stream and said the content was only available on NZ...

Then tried opening the video again which worked, but skipping forward to where I got to and the audio would play and video would not (based on where I was the 2 were not in sync to begin with).

Cleared data, logged back in, same deal with the 1014 episode. Decided to watch the 5 best tries in week 1, Midway through try #4 (2nd to last) the stream stopped and said content having connection issues. Gah.

This is on my phone connected to 100/20 2deg fibre. Wifi of 5ghz at 433mbps.

/Edit app updated to 1.5.5 but no difference with av sync

Contact the support team, they should be able to manually sort this out for you. There have been a few reports of this. It should be resolve by version 1.5.5.3, but not sure about deployment yet :)

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