Sky outbid for EPL rights (Premier League Pass discussion)

Forums › Online streaming services › Sky outbid for EPL rights (Premier League Pass discussion)

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Reply # 901198 23-Sep-2013 13:18

djrm:
langers1972:
djrm:

Simply not good enough.

Are you talking about ManUre??

When are lot coming back up to the premier league? Has not been quite the same without you.

If only I knew, seems like a distant memory.......................oh wait it is, very distant!

martyyn

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Reply # 901218 23-Sep-2013 13:40

It was so bad with the Arsenal - Stoke game this morning I had to stop watching after 35 minutes.

The picture quality was much better than it has been previously but it wasn't just stuttering this morning it was as if they were only showing every 100th frame or something (you know what I mean - there was a noticeable absence of frames rather than just a slight stutter).

I want this platform to succeed more than anything but so far it's just been woeful.

hattrick123

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Reply # 901233 23-Sep-2013 13:56

Corsten:
Corsten: Is PLP's stream quality actually worse that was yesterday? Picture was stuttering with every recap i tested. Live game (Chelsea) was good tough.

Heres the sample: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uif2rd8qv5xr85l/PLP_Recap_Stuttering_picture_with_100mb_internet_connection2.avi

Anyone has similar problem with the quality?

@Corsten - What do you use to record the streaming?

dwl

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Reply # 901234 23-Sep-2013 13:56

martyyn: It was so bad with the Arsenal - Stoke game this morning I had to stop watching after 35 minutes.

The picture quality was much better than it has been previously but it wasn't just stuttering this morning it was as if they were only showing every 100th frame or something (you know what I mean - there was a noticeable absence of frames rather than just a slight stutter).

I want this platform to succeed more than anything but so far it's just been woeful.

What platform are you using? I don't know what the PC streams are doing but if I look at what I think is the correct iPad manifest file, it seems the bit rates available are currently being severely limited to only 1200, 240 and 64 kbps. There was a brief period before midday when all rates were advertised.

I would hope that the PLP help desk might have some answers as this specific game seems much more limited than the others although tottenhamhotspur-cardiffcity also seem to be missing 3000 and 1600.

dwl

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Reply # 901464 23-Sep-2013 20:37

Corsten:
Corsten: Is PLP's stream quality actually worse that was yesterday? Picture was stuttering with every recap i tested. Live game (Chelsea) was good tough.

Heres the sample: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uif2rd8qv5xr85l/PLP_Recap_Stuttering_picture_with_100mb_internet_connection2.avi

Anyone has similar problem with the quality?

While I see some stuttering that seems to be due to the re-encode on this sample, the same game and time on an untouched stream for iPad format has multiple gaps every second (left graphic, zoomed in to cover 1.5 seconds) which aren't seen on other games (right graphic):

It seems to me this particular game may have suffered a conversion problem but I doubt we would get any official confirmation. While earlier games in the season seemed to be 30 fps, the ones I have checked are now 25 fps which is probably a good thing for motion with these relatively low frame rates (more bits per frame).

Corsten

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Reply # 901614 24-Sep-2013 07:13

Ok, i used Fraps for recording. 27fps was the number that Fraps gave me during recording, but Fraps did record with 30fps setting.

insane

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Reply # 903420 26-Sep-2013 23:32

And the service looks to have crashed, no go on the PC or the tablet at the moment. 'server not found'.

Even their website won't load.

dwl

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Reply # 904285 28-Sep-2013 19:18

An extended interview with Tim Martin in the Herald today - www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11131172' target='_blank'>www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11131172. One key item relevant to recent observations:

So, what will change this weekend?
We've definitely noticed problems with the wide shots - when the ball is hoofed upfield the picture goes jittery. Sport is the hardest thing to do on the internet because of the ball speed. We think we've got to the bottom of our problem, though. The issue was encoding compatibility between the EPL and NeuLion, our tech provider in New York. It's been frustrating, no question. We've been working on it since the season kicked off and it's smoother, much improved, and shouldn't have that jittery look.

Hopefully any transcoding issues will now be in the past.

EDIT - sorry, having trouble with getting URL to work - you might need to click the second version

expression

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Reply # 904414 29-Sep-2013 10:23

Well I'm not noticing any improvements at the moment, watching the Arsenal game but having issues trying to get onto the 3000 stream. Despite being on VDSL, its shifting between bitrates and even at one stage said the network was to slow.

Presume they're experiencing network congestion.

dwl

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Reply # 904459 29-Sep-2013 12:51

expression: Well I'm not noticing any improvements at the moment, watching the Arsenal game but having issues trying to get onto the 3000 stream. Despite being on VDSL, its shifting between bitrates and even at one stage said the network was to slow.

Presume they're experiencing network congestion.

Some strange stuff happening. I'm looking from a stream delivery perspective across games on what I believe are the iPad stream, and from the manifest files, as available to me from my local Akamai servers (i.e. might be different for others):

I assume the player uses the manifest file in which case it would have limited choices on some games. I don't know what is happening with other streams (e.g. for PC) but this suggests there are capacity issues the provider is trying to manage, perhaps even trouble with getting the initial streams into the caches?

Benoire

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Reply # 904462 29-Sep-2013 12:57

DWL, awesome insight. Are you letting PLP know your findings? I say this as they seem fairly confident the quality is fine and all games are ok, but if for example NeuLion is not providing the 3mbps stream for all games then that is quite poor...

expression

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Reply # 904463 29-Sep-2013 13:02

Reading through the NZ Herald article posted above, a few interesting points:

- "We know 85 per cent of our customers use the highest rate of 3000Kpbs, accounting for 70 per cent of all hours watched That shows people can take a higher-quality feed. We always said if the demand was there, we would do it. There are challenges but we are working closely with Telecom ... to have a 4500Kpbs rate available this season. It's a big cost but we won't pass that on to customers."

- "Is the English Premier League happy with you? We report to MP & Silva, the rights holders, every month. They are very tight with the EPL. The scrutiny is massive. We have to give sales, feedback, quality of service. They haven't voiced any concerns and are really excited. Compared to the figures supplied by Sky, viewership is up slightly."

dwl

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Reply # 904486 29-Sep-2013 14:06

Benoire: DWL, awesome insight. Are you letting PLP know your findings? I say this as they seem fairly confident the quality is fine and all games are ok, but if for example NeuLion is not providing the 3mbps stream for all games then that is quite poor...

I believe that PLP is aware of this forum but choose not to comment. There is some public acknowledgement of issues like in the Herald article ("We've definitely noticed problems with the wide shots - when the ball is hoofed upfield the picture goes jittery.") It is unfortunate that a fair amount of play uses wide shots and I believe the jitter is still there in one game I checked this morning (see here). The 25 fps to 30 fps conversion issues (which this looks like to me) have been around for ages and I thought were well sorted by the broadcast industry and it is surprising that a major provider like NeuLion doesn't seem to be able to get this jitter sorted.

The separate issue of potential capacity limitations (as suggested by missing rates from manifest files) may be highly dependent on the end user location relative to the Akamai server locations. What I am seeing might only affect a smaller subset of users although Telecom ADSL must be a fairly major percentage of users. This gets confusing because I expect the capacity is being managed by Akamai rather than NeuLion although I don't know if limits imposed are for technical or commercial reasons. Missing 3000 streams are quite common on a Sunday morning from my location but others might have everything available. Even when 3000 is available, the rates from the server on a Sunday morning can be only just enough to maintain the stream compared to other times when each chunk comes in faster with more idle time.

I have shared results (from a test tool) with someone else in the industry which shows buffering issues on a Sunday morning, and I understand the data was passed on to PLP but I don't know if it was seen. I still must stress this is a view from a single ADSL location with all the DNS magic that Akamai does. It is up to PLP to decide whether they are getting enough other information to give an adequate view of performance.

PLP can be expected to put a positive spin on the performance and if the majority of users are happy then these performance issues may become more of a technical curiosity. However, I am surprised at how dominant and pervasive Akamai are within the NZ broadband scene. These same clusters of servers seem to be providing content for Sky, TVNZ, PLP and many more with the Apple IOS 7 download imposing a dramatic load when it was first released.

I am not yet at all convinced that these CDN systems are ready for paid services like PLP at higher bit rates, across a large geographic range, if 24/7 service delivery is expected. I will continue to watch with interest how this develops.

EDIT - add caveat that the missing rates from the manifest files are relevant for HLS players using these files - the streams missing from the manifest may still be found on the servers so the PLP players might handle them differently (but harder to tell if the IOS app doesn't report rate achieved)

StarBlazer

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Reply # 904869 30-Sep-2013 08:45

It was interesting to watch the Hull and Man U matches at the weekend. The Hull game was very fluid apart from missing two huge block - which I'll put down to broadcast. Even watching at 1600 it was relatively sharp and fluid.

The Man U game on the other hand was terrible (the picture and the quality on the pitch) - it was like it was recorded on "I Can Animate". Continuous flow of missed frames throughout the match - resolution was good, just very poor encoding. It was like watching at 15fps and the hover over the speed showed I had a 3000kbps feed.

I was interested to read from the Herald article "The issue was encoding compatibility between the EPL and NeuLion, our tech provider in New York.". Are they saying that the stream goes from the UK to the US where it is encoded before being sent to NZ where it is distributed - or am I reading too much into that? It is good to note that they finally admit the encoding is off and they are doing something about it - unfortunately watching the Man U game they went in the wrong direction.

I'm still enjoying getting up on a lazy Sunday morning and getting my fill of football.

Procrastination eventually pays off.

Handsomedan

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Reply # 904929 30-Sep-2013 10:16

I noticed a lot of missing frames and "time jumps" of two to three seconds during the Southampton vs Palace game.
I'm realistic enough to know there wouldn't have been a massive audience for this game, so it's not like I was sharing it with a billion fans.

I'm just glad that the start of the second half was jump and issue free, so I got to see the two goals and the best passages of the game before it clapped out again and went all stuttery.

Even my 8 year old son mentioned the stuttering and juuddering and he wasn't really concentrating.

Handsome Dan Has Spoken.

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