Sky outbid for EPL rights (Premier League Pass discussion)

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71 posts

Master Geek

#896225 16-Sep-2013 10:42

martyyn: I've watched a couple of games on this now and I'm still disappointed.

The first and second games were blocky, jittery and it wouldn't stick to the 3000kbps I set it at. Wouldnt even stay at 1600. Auto saw it regularly drop to 800.

I saw it mentioned elsewhere that IE was better. I used that for the third game and it sat at 3000kbps as requested and although the picture quality wasn't great it was still jittery but at least it was a constant stream.

I still had a headache after watching though.

Then yesterday I watched the Sunderland - Arsenal game, again in IE but this time I tried turning the hardware acceleration off in the flash window (as I had read elsewhere). But it was back to all the original problems. It wouldn't stick to 3000kbps, the jerkiness was more often that not and I almost gave up half way through.

I've tried to keep up with this thread but I doubt I've read everything. Is there are definitive answer on which browser to use etc ? Or will nothing change because the initial unrest has died down ?

Is your experience bad for wathcing live games? Or on Demand games?

I am happy with my experience thus far(although there is always room for improvement), but that is I have watch 2 liverpool games on demand, and was happy with this service.

Having said that, I did watch the ireland game LIVE and this was good 50% of the time, the other 50% was okay but I would not be happy to pay for this. For the 50% experience that was not good, I'm sure there would have been an alternative source out there for free, which is wat I would be used to doing before PLP.

I have been using Firefox and on ADSL with Orcon. And I don't have a HDTV in the house so I suppose I am not that fussy as some here on the quality.

Kopkiwi

2617 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#896234 16-Sep-2013 10:54

The quality of this service is starting to get on my nerves. I have UFB connection and still regularly drop to below 1600. Unacceptable.

martyyn

1961 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Subscriber

#896274 16-Sep-2013 11:20

hattrick123:
Is your experience bad for wathcing live games? Or on Demand games?

On Demand. Whether its at 8am on a Sunday morning or 2pm on a weekday afternoon.

hattrick123:
And I don't have a HDTV in the house so I suppose I am not that fussy as some here on the quality.

This puts it in a nutshell for me. Given the quality available elsewhere I think people expected more. I can stream iplayer with no problems and at a much better quality.

deltasigma

14 posts

Geek

#896412 16-Sep-2013 16:42

The quality is very bad.

I watched Sunderland v Arsenal on Sunday morning. The picture froze three times, and I had to leave the TV, get back to my PC in another room, close the window in Firefox, start from the beginning all over, drag the watching bar forward to an estimated viewing point, then the same thing would happen a few minutes later. Refreshing did not work.

When it was going, it would miss some play with say a 6 second gap frequently, but that affected the video more than the audio. I could tell because the feed shows the clock and you can see it jump. At least I didn't miss the Arsenal goals!

I wonder if it is particularly bad on a Sunday morning when more people are watching?

If I had known Sky would show all Arsenal, Spurs, City and ManU games I wouldn't have subscribed. Plus the free game on TV1, and Chelsea on Sommet.

I wonder if subscribers have any comeback over the shocking quality? I don't feel I am getting what I have paid for ....

Nicko19

9 posts

Wannabe Geek

#896423 16-Sep-2013 17:06

i was equally dissapointed wih the quality. However I am fortunate enough to have an ipad, iphone and Apple TV.

The quality is good using the IOS app and there is absolutely no jittery, stop start, headache inducing element that is on the website version.

i suppose i am now happy with the service because it is being delivered at an accpetable quality now, and it is handy being able to watch on the move via 3g etc.

i would be seriously unhappy if the app did not work though, and they really need to get the quality right across all mediums if they expect to succed

dwl

371 posts

Ultimate Geek

#896427 16-Sep-2013 17:11

deltasigma: The quality is very bad.

I watched Sunderland v Arsenal on Sunday morning. The picture froze three times, and I had to leave the TV, get back to my PC in another room, close the window in Firefox, start from the beginning all over, drag the watching bar forward to an estimated viewing point, then the same thing would happen a few minutes later. Refreshing did not work.

When it was going, it would miss some play with say a 6 second gap frequently, but that affected the video more than the audio. I could tell because the feed shows the clock and you can see it jump. At least I didn't miss the Arsenal goals!

I wonder if it is particularly bad on a Sunday morning when more people are watching?

If I had known Sky would show all Arsenal, Spurs, City and ManU games I wouldn't have subscribed. Plus the free game on TV1, and Chelsea on Sommet.

I wonder if subscribers have any comeback over the shocking quality? I don't feel I am getting what I have paid for ....

I briefly checked the streams about 1030 Sunday morning and they were going ok for me on Telecom ADSL except for FUL-WBA which was struggling a bit, just coping at 1600 on iPad, but each person will have different experiences depending on their ISP, location, access type, other activity in the house and so on.

Did you raise it with the help desk? Was your broadband working well for other services? This sounds unusable and I would hope they have some solutions (technical or otherwise).

raspygold

12 posts

Geek

#896428 16-Sep-2013 17:15

I've been following this thread for a long time as I'm very interested in the service, but hadn't actually trialled it yet.

Well, on Saturday night/Sunday morning that changed. I had a few friends over to watch the games and subscribed for 24hr access to trial it. I've got UFB with Orcon and I've never had any issues streaming any HD content previously, so my hopes were high I would be one of the lucky ones with a good quality stream!

The quality started off pretty good before the first game during the brief intro, but a few minutes before kick off the stream quality dropped dramatically and it never recovered. We managed to get through the game, but were unimpressed and ended up losing interest not long into the second game when the stream quality didn't improve as we had hoped. To me that signals that there's something wrong with their CDN or that they just aren't willing/able to offer enough capacity for the numbers of subscribers they have. I was hoping to stay up through the night and catch the Everton vs Chelsea game at 4.30am, but to be honest I was getting a bit of a headache from watching a juddering all night and we called it early

I was hoping that after the trial I'd be able to justify shelling out for a season's subscription to PLP, but unfortunately its a resounding no.

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deltasigma

14 posts

Geek

#896499 16-Sep-2013 19:13

raspygold: I've been following this thread for a long time as I'm very interested in the service, but hadn't actually trialled it yet.

Well, on Saturday night/Sunday morning that changed. I had a few friends over to watch the games and subscribed for 24hr access to trial it. I've got UFB with Orcon and I've never had any issues streaming any HD content previously, so my hopes were high I would be one of the lucky ones with a good quality stream!

The quality started off pretty good before the first game during the brief intro, but a few minutes before kick off the stream quality dropped dramatically and it never recovered. We managed to get through the game, but were unimpressed and ended up losing interest not long into the second game when the stream quality didn't improve as we had hoped. To me that signals that there's something wrong with their CDN or that they just aren't willing/able to offer enough capacity for the numbers of subscribers they have. I was hoping to stay up through the night and catch the Everton vs Chelsea game at 4.30am, but to be honest I was getting a bit of a headache from watching a juddering all night and we called it early

I was hoping that after the trial I'd be able to justify shelling out for a season's subscription to PLP, but unfortunately its a resounding no.

deltasigma

14 posts

Geek

#896500 16-Sep-2013 19:18

dwl:
I briefly checked the streams about 1030 Sunday morning and they were going ok for me on Telecom ADSL except for FUL-WBA which was struggling a bit, just coping at 1600 on iPad, but each person will have different experiences depending on their ISP, location, access type, other activity in the house and so on.

Did you raise it with the help desk? Was your broadband working well for other services? This sounds unusable and I would hope they have some solutions (technical or otherwise).

This was around 7 am - before the America's Cup.

So no-one else in the house using the broadband.

No - I didn't contact the help desk. If I had have, it would have been to let them know it was horrible - I doubt it was technically feasible to fix it. Even when UFB comes to our suburb, I suspect there isn't the bandwidth to provide an acceptable feed if they have several hundreds (thousands?) in NZ all watching at the same time but different games at different stages.

dwl

371 posts

Ultimate Geek

#897329 18-Sep-2013 08:41

deltasigma:
dwl: Did you raise it with the help desk? Was your broadband working well for other services? This sounds unusable and I would hope they have some solutions (technical or otherwise).

This was around 7 am - before the America's Cup.

So no-one else in the house using the broadband.

No - I didn't contact the help desk. If I had have, it would have been to let them know it was horrible - I doubt it was technically feasible to fix it. Even when UFB comes to our suburb, I suspect there isn't the bandwidth to provide an acceptable feed if they have several hundreds (thousands?) in NZ all watching at the same time but different games at different stages.

One technical aspect that can impact anyone on this service is DNS. If it isn't set to your ISP, for example perhaps to 8.8.8.8, then a much more distant CDN cache can get used.

For @raspygold on UFB it is surprising the service was that bad so either Orcon doesn't have enough Akamai capacity (hopefully unlikely) or the service was being dragged from elsewhere. There was an issue with Orcon DNS Sunday morning discussed here http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=82&topicid=129419. For example, for me:

dig nlds1.cdnak.lon.neulion.com @8.8.8.8 (this DNS server seems to be in Sydney)
a90.g2.akamai.net. 19 IN A 125.56.218.88
the second to last hop seems to be in Japan - ae-0.akamai.tokyjp03.jp.bb.gin.ntt.net (61.120.145.202) 285.384 ms 287.186 ms 285.738 ms

dig nlds1.cdnak.lon.neulion.com @dnsc1.xtra.co.nz
a90.g2.akamai.net. 20 IN A 219.88.186.104
this is very local and usually quite fast

EDIT: Having trouble with URLs - looks ok when trying to edit but fails to format - hope it is clear

Bushmaster

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#897349 18-Sep-2013 09:02

Strange that from work I get the same resolved address when DNS servers at the following providers are used:

1. Vodafone
2. Telecom
3. Telstra
4. Google

(Orcon failed to connect)

Name: nlds1.cdnak.lon.neulion.com
Address: 182.16.154.20

Lust

85 posts

Master Geek

#897356 18-Sep-2013 09:05

As I now gather that games can't be watched by delayed start? It's either live or after full time can anyone advise how soon after the final whistle the replay is available?

dwl

371 posts

Ultimate Geek

#897389 18-Sep-2013 09:22

Bushmaster: Strange that from work I get the same resolved address when DNS servers at the following providers are used:

1. Vodafone
2. Telecom
3. Telstra
4. Google

(Orcon failed to connect)

Name: nlds1.cdnak.lon.neulion.com
Address: 182.16.154.20

Perhaps there is some local interception of known DNS servers. For me using just a Vodafone example and then another from Telecom to also show how they change over time:

dig nlds1.cdnak.lon.neulion.com @203.109.129.67
a90.g2.akamai.net. 60 IN A 203.109.179.32
a90.g2.akamai.net. 60 IN A 203.109.179.27

dig nlds1.cdnak.lon.neulion.com @dnsc1.xtra.co.nz
a90.g2.akamai.net. 20 IN A 219.88.187.122
a90.g2.akamai.net. 20 IN A 219.88.187.8

Benoire

2777 posts

Uber Geek

#897517 18-Sep-2013 11:23

Lust: As I now gather that games can't be watched by delayed start? It's either live or after full time can anyone advise how soon after the final whistle the replay is available?

What a load of crap that is! I know that Al Jazeera is 'live' or sometime after, but at least the live function has a 13 hour timeskip buffer!

JarrodM

969 posts

Ultimate Geek

#897596 18-Sep-2013 12:30

Lust: As I now gather that games can't be watched by delayed start? It's either live or after full time can anyone advise how soon after the final whistle the replay is available?

You can drag it back to the start of the game while the game is on. It just goes straight to live when you click on it so you'd have to avert your eyes from the score if you don't want to see it.

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